The White House

I have recently been reading the recent Pulitzer Prize Winner, Benjamin Moser’s ‘The Upside-Down World’. Firstly, what a book it is! I really recommend it, whether you know one artist of the Dutch Golden Age or 20 of them, this book serves as a great in between.

While Moser is discussing the work of Gerard Ter Borch, he mentions the necessary political skill of an artist:

”How much political skill, how much backroom manoeuvring, is involved in artist’s success? The talent for moving in a society is the dirty secret of many artistic careers, and is usually masked from historians, there are many people with an artistic talent. But only a handful succeed, and these are not always the most talented. Success requires another talent: the talent to discover opportunities to use that talent.”

This idea comes out of an analysis of artists that worked almost 400 years ago, but it still seems relevant in the present. I notice it at private views. Which artists seem gain the most? The ones who speak the most, or at least the ones who know exactly when to speak and what for.

User: Anonymous
16 May 2024