Four types of artist
Defining artists (and arts organizations) in relationship to their "art worlds."
“We shape our self
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again.”
–David Whyte, from “Working Together”
Every artist and arts organization is unique, of course. But in a complex world, it can be useful to group unique things by category or kind. We sort artists by discipline, for example, to consider and construct the infrastructure they need to produce and present their work. We organize music and musicians by genre to find and finesse markets for what they make. We cluster artists and their conventions by era, by school, or by technique to understand their context.
In Arts Management, it can also be useful (and problematic) to organize artists by their relationship to conventional resources. Or, the distance or friction between their work and the people, stuff, and money that brings their work to the world. Sociologist Howard Becker (1982) called these systems “Art Worlds.”
In addition to describing these worlds, Becker suggested four “artist types” with different relationships to them:
Integrated Professionals
These artists understand and (mostly) follow the rules of their art worlds. Becker describes the integrated professional as “…a canonical artist, fully prepared to produce, and fully capable of producing, the canonical art work…fully integrated into the existing art world.” Such artists “…have the technical abilities, social skills, and conceptual apparatus necessary to make it easy to make art. Because they know, understand, and habitually use the conventions on which their world runs, they fit easily into all its standard activities” (Becker 1982).Mavericks
These artists also understand the rules of one or more art worlds, but they actively choose to bend or break them. These are “…artists who have been part of the conventional art world of their time, place, and medium but found it unacceptably constraining” (Becker 1982). This leads to innovation but also challenge, since the players in a conventional art world don’t recognize the work as belonging to their world, don’t readily know how to produce or present it, and have to step off their usual path to purchase or support it. Maverick work sometimes shifts and reshapes the conventions of an established art world, but then the work is no longer considered maverick.Folk Artists
Folk artists, according to Becker, make work within craft, civic, social, or cultural communities but outside of professional art circles. Often, “what is done is not really thought of as art at all, at least not by any of the people involved in its production, although people from outside the community or culture may find artistic merit in the work” (Becker 1976).Naive Artists (also “primitive” or “grass-roots,” all of which are terrible terms)
Finally, Becker describes artists with no connection to any established art world at all. They make creative work without training or reference to conventions or professional practice. They often work alone and in service to their faith or calling without interest in, expectation for, or even awareness of a market for their work.
There are many layers of problem with this framework. The most obvious is that it centers professional art, and defines artists according to their distance from or relationship to that center. As a sociologist, Becker was attempting to describe what he saw in the world, but his view was from a particular and privileged perspective.
But still, it can be productive to notice the relationship between the artists you serve and the conventions of the related art worlds. This will shape how easily you can find skilled and experienced people to produce and present the work; how readily you can describe the work to potential audiences and donors; and how well-worn the path is to where you want to go. That doesn’t mean you should follow the well-worn path. But it does mean you need to prepare yourself and your fellow travelers for the journey.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: Program & Production
Program & Production involves developing, assembling, presenting, and preserving coherent services or experiences.
Framework of the Week: Art Worlds
Sociologist Howard Becker described Art Worlds as including “all the people whose activities are necessary to the production of the characteristic works which that world, and perhaps others as well, define as art.”
Photo by andrew solok on Unsplash
Sources
Becker, Howard. 1976. “Art Worlds and Social Types.” The American Behavioral Scientist 19 (6).
Becker, Howard. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.