The happiness trap: How to win the battle between money and meaning

“If you’re using your passion and skills to help others, but not making money, then this is solely a hobby or pro bono work, not a business.

If you want to build a business, then you can’t avoid the fact that you’ll need to start making money. If you battle with charging for something you love doing, then you have work to do.

If you’re in this group it’s time you started to act, and think, more like an entrepreneur:

• Develop a different money mindset

• Learn about different business models

• Discover proven approaches to boost your income

• Get access to some simple yet powerful tools

“Money is like a mirror, showing you who you want to be. In the mirror you see the reflection of the free you, the secure you, the enabled you. So you believe money really is those things. You see those powers when you look at money.” Tom Nixon

about work

Dealing with form color and scale as a path towards sustainable liberation, my process is a funny one because I’m actually a perfectionist doomed to fail, over and over again. Hunted by the powers in play, I choose submission over the illusion of having a choice. When not complaining I know I’m a surfer riding one of the most amazing waves there is, When I do catch a good one, Its connecting me to eternity, Universal knowledge and all my previous and future lives, worth it. so here I am, doing the only thing im good for. catching waves.

Thomas Nozkowski in his own words.

“the idea of knowing what a painting is going to end up being just drives me crazy. That’s absolutely against the rules. I want to be happy in my studio. I want it to be exciting, and I don’t want it to be a job.”

Untitled (MH-5), 2014

“For political reasons, I found the kind of large scale, macho-man abstractions of early SoHo beneath contempt.

These were painters that I liked and admired, and I remember going to shows and seeing a painting that was 20 feet long—it’s like the 800-pound gorilla that sits wherever it wants to sit.

I didn’t want to paint that way, and I decided I would paint at a size that was scaled to my friends’ apartments, that could hang in a three-room walkup tenement on 7th Street.

That was the first big decision. “

“The idea that you can work very quickly is crucial. Another component is the idea that you can have these things in your home, that it’s not a special project to have an art collection. You can have 10 paintings hanging on a wall—what a feast! On a practical level, you can carry them around with you. I have a house in the country and a house in the city, and they fit in the backseat of the car. The issue is to be able to keep working, to be able to pursue your dreams for lack of a better term. This allowed me to do that. “

“The nice thing about the world is that everything stretches out to touch everything else, creating these references and connections beyond the visual scene at hand.

There’s a painting in this show with some Matissean curvy shapes painted in a Matisse blue—that’s not an accident, it was a decision to draw upon that blue for that particular move.”

“I just don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. When I first started working this way, I thought that if I was as absolutely, painfully sincere as possible about what I was doing I would within some short period of time develop a signature style.

I thought that somewhere deep inside was this signature style that would come out if I just let it. To my amazement, no such signature style came to be! I’ve come to understand the signature style as a weakness—that’s as far as you can go. It’s not where you want to go, it’s where your system takes you and stops. It’s like the Peter Principle, “failing upwards.” How far can you fail?”

“I do like the idea of saying “look, every question is different, every problem is different, why shouldn’t every painting be different?” You don’t want to get carpal tunnel, always doing the same damn painting!”

As a painter, you have a project: there’s a thing in the world you want to make a picture of. How do you make a picture of a feeling, of a mood, of a quality of life, even of something like a sunset? The answer is that you just start, and you do it as well as you can. At a minimum, you will succeed in having a picture of how well you could do something. You’re reaching for that sunset. 

I work every day. I have a little less stamina as I’ve gotten older, but here’s a thing—all of my ideas about why I make work, why I think other people should make work, are up for grabs. It may or may not mean anything. But what it does mean for me is it gives me a reason to be in the studio that I find compelling. I’m fascinated by being in the studio. Sometimes I’m not happy about it, it’s a real battle. But for me, there’s always something new to find, something new to do. I certainly hope that lasts forever. It feels like it will. It’s been 40 years

RIP

Drawing Now 2019 highlights

Drawing Now is the name of a historical exhibition that was held in the MoMA at 1976. Check out the MoMA page, its a real treasure, it allows you to dive into every bit of this exhibition. dont miss the catalog, the press release (typing machine is so nostalgic ) the artist list, the works with the curator hand writing comments and more…

Fast forward to the present the latest Drawing Now art fair in Paris, has changed artistic directors.

It is interesting to see how much influence a detail like that has on the overall vibe. French cultural icons can be rather ‘old white man club’, It is nice to replace them with a fresh international Fem touch. get a glimpse of what the fair looks like here:

My first impression was the Pierrette Bloch’s stand, warm grey walls brings out the white paper so elegantly, the press release of the gallery here .

Just around the corner at Gallery Eric Dupont you can see a beautiful expo by Paul Pagk

Hanns Schimansky: L’Espace de la ligne at the Jeanne Bucher Jaeger Gallery

Congratulation to my friend Katrin Bremermann for her duo with German Stegmaier at Goethe institute in Paris and great job to martin for putting that together

I always thought Paul and German represents two sides of the same coin in the way they exploit their frame.

It was a nice surprise to see Marine Pagès papers at Gallery Bernard Jordan. hopefully we will see more of them in Paréidolie Marseilles in the summer …

PewDiePie & Socrates

If you are raising a teen you must have heard of this guy PewDiePie, He has more than 90 millions followers on YouTube and considered by his fans as a culture hero/ gamer / meme reviewer / an original creator and a celeb / artist.

anyhow

I am not sure what made this oxymoron happened but here PDP charming his way through the republic by Socrates, written by Plato.

And why should you listen?

One of the ideas discussed in this book is that philosophers are happier because they are all about the truth.

What is the truth? I know I am extremely interested in how things are. how systems work. what works what doesn’t work. expression and impact. Is that the truth?

Looking at the art world we are such a living example of how each has his own truth and each argues that is the official truth.

So can one be interested in “D” truth or its forever a personal context truth?

Hope for the Niche Artist

The world is changing, and with it the industries. The value exchange in the world, used to be structured into hierarchical industries with gatekeepers etc, now undergoing transformation.

Just like sandman turned to sand in the marvel spider-man movie the art industry is going through a similar process

And just like sandman it will be rebuilt again, only different.

The major difference is that niche artists are becoming the masters of their universe.

With networking thinking, and the shift in the means of production. any original artist with a mailing list will be able to find ways to make a living that are not entirely dependent on the system.

Artist will learn to see themselves as small business owners and their bread and butter will come from their mailing list.

sales too

The work with traditional relationships with dealers, galleries, curators and museum directors is not going to disappear, we artists need and love our dealers and curators, but we are becoming partners in crime rather than dom subs.