The Groove Issue 136 - 3 Important Steps in Developing Your Creative Career
3 IMPORTANT STEPS IN DEVELOPING YOUR CREATIVE CAREER
When I write and talk about a creative career, I don’t circumscribe the idea to artists. Yes, of course, I am an art advisor - I build art collections and have worked with and known hundreds of artists. But creativity is an expansive term that extends to anyone who is able to execute a project or build a business in a way that hasn’t been done before.
The lessons that I extract from the lives of successful artists are ways of thinking and attitudes that can be used by hedge funders, fashion designers, teachers and anyone else.
In 1926 at the age of 22, Willem de Kooning embarked on a British freighter from his native Rotterdam, arriving in Hoboken and soon moving to Manhattan where he intended to pursue a career as a magazine illustrator. Penniless for many years after that, de Kooning’s big breakthroughs came in the 1940s and 1950s when he developed a new synthesis of figuration and abstraction, painting and drawing, balance and imbalance. After that he stayed on an ascendent career filled with retrospectives in major museums, auction records while he was still alive, and a very wealthy practice.
How You See and Market Yourself Matters
Willem de Kooning in New York in 1946.
In modern day parlance, we all have a personal brand, whether you like it or not. And if you don’t brand yourself, someone else will do it for you. Aliza Licht just released her second book, On Brand, an extremely valuable guide on how to develop, refine and even rescue your personal brand. “How you brand and market yourself can weigh just as heavily on your success as your actual skills do,” she wrote. I couldn’t agree more.
de Kooning had to take a series of odd jobs to survive in a foreign country where he knew no one. He was a house painter and carpenter and had no clue there was an artistic community nearby. When he moved to Manhattan, he found the abstract expressionists concentrated in the Village. Energized by this community, he started painting on the weekends. Slowly, the dream of becoming an illustrator began to fade away, and the one of becoming a full-time successful artist took over.
This shift sparked an attitude in de Kooning of knowing and crafting his personal brand. He saw the odd-job facet as a necessity that was helping him put food in his mouth while seeing himself as a true artist. This is the state of mind that allowed him to transition to his dream career full time.
Of this he said: “It was a gradual development but it was really more of a psychological attitude… It was just an attitude that it was better to say, no, I’m an artist, I have to do something on the side to make a living. Do you see what I mean? So I styled myself as an artist and it was very difficult. But it was a much better state of mind.”
It really is up to you how you establish, present and speak about yourself and what you do. The more clarity and conviction you have about that statement, the easier it’ll be for others to see you in the same way.
Play The Long Game
Willem de Kooning, Seated Woman c. 1940, oil and charcoal on Masonite
We are all rushing and expecting massive success to happen quickly. Technology, reality TV and social media have created the illusion of this accelerated path. But solid, sustainable careers take time. Especially if you are attempting something new.
Author and Duke University professor Dorie Clark wrote in her book The Long Game: “Eschewing short-term gratification in order to work toward an uncertain but worthy future goal—isn’t easy. But it’s the surest path to meaningful and lasting success in a world that so often prioritizes what’s easy, quick, and ultimately shallow.”
It’s hard to believe that someone who has been considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century spent more than 20 years just getting by. de Kooning's work was occasionally exhibited in group shows during the 1940s and he was given his first solo show in 1948 at the Egan Gallery, when he was already 44. None of his work sold during the show, though “Painting” was bought soon afterward by the Museum of Modern Art.
While it’s not necessary to struggle for decades, we need to reorient ourselves to see the big picture so we can tap into both the consistency and power of habits and attitudes, which coupled with excellent work will have an enormous impact on our future success.
Dare to Do What Nobody Else Has Done
Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950–52, oil and metallic paint on canvas.
The space for creative breakthroughs and contributions is full of contradictions because while it’s true that everything has been done, it’s also true that nobody sees it like you do. Since your experiences, upbringing and vision are unique to you, it’s still possible to do things in a way that hasn’t been done before. But that takes courage.
In the New York of de Kooning, artists almost always lived in silos. “If you do abstract that’s your thing, otherwise you aren’t serious,” was the sentiment.
But de Kooning couldn’t care less. And one day he thought, “what if I cross figuration and abstraction?”
So he started playing with this idea in 1940, and from there he developed what became some of the most important works of modern art: the Women series.
These paintings reflected his interest in the expressive possibilities of paint and the human figure, and his desire to push the boundaries of traditional representational art. The women were composed of distorted and fragmented forms, with body parts and features merging and blurring together. They challenge traditional notions of beauty and femininity and have inspired generations of artists to explore the boundaries of abstraction and figuration, and they continue to be studied and admired for their innovative approach to painting.
But they weren’t well received in the beginning. Some saw them as a betrayal, a regression to an outmoded figurative tradition. de Kooning himself said, however, "Beauty becomes petulant to me. I like the grotesque. It's more joyous." He added in another interview, “Yes, they attacked me for that, certain artists and critics. But I felt this was their problem, not mine.”
You have to dare to do what hasn’t been done before if you are pursuing creativity and innovation in your career. There was both abstract and figuration when de Kooning started painting, but nobody had truly merged them both in the way he did. Just like bookstores already existed for hundreds of years before Amazon was founded, or flip phones and BlackBerrys were in people’s hands before Apple launched the iPhone, it's all about how you see and execute your unique point of view, even in this saturated, fast-paced, insane world.
JUMPSTART: IGNITE YOUR CREATIVITY FOR PROFIT, INNOVATION, AND REINVENTION
I’ve put together a free webinar for those of you who are not members of my online course and inner circle.
In the course, there are dozens of hours of transformative content for you to watch or listen at your own pace plus access to live groundbreaking monthly calls. These handful of testimonials say it all.
If you’d like to watch it, please register here (it’s on auto-repeat every 15 minutes once you have registered).
But if you are ready to enroll now, you can do so here.
HOW CREATIVITY RULES THE WORLD
If you enjoy The Groove, you will love my book.
How Creativity Rules The World is filled with practical tools that will propel and guide you to get any project from an idea to a concrete reality.
Have you gotten yours yet?
It’s in three formats: hardcover, eBook and audiobook.
TEDX TALK
Have you already watched my TEDx Talk: “NFTs, Graffiti and Sedition: How Artists Invent The Future”?
I share three lessons I have learned from artists that always work for anyone in their careers. Watch it here.