.Image from the Internet
A recent Marketing Mondays asked you what advice you would give to your 20-year-old self. Your responses were helpful and uplifting. Now I'd like to flip that and ask:
What was the worst advice you've ever received?
As I mentioned in that previous post, a bogus piece of "advice" I got was the one about the dealer being the artist's enemy. That same professor counseled me, "You can't show a painting off the stretcher. That makes it a wall hanging." (Really? Tell that to Sam Gilliam, Robert Morris, Amanda Ross-Ho and Arturo Herrera.) And this gem: "You have to decide whether you want to be a woman or an artist." Since he was no feminist, I'm not sure if he was telling me to paint like a man, think like a man, or become a man. Perhaps he meant that I should drink heavily and then commit suicide as a tortured middle-age painter?
Actually, I think he was telling me not to be an artist.
Actually, I think he was telling me not to be an artist.
I persevered, no thanks to this man's misogynistic misdirection. It took me a while to realize the the damage it did to me as a young artist trying to make my way--and longer still to understand that many art students were given similarly misguided counsel by countless others.
Let's shine a light on that stupidity, shall we?
What was the worst advice you received as an art student? And as you've progressed in your career, what was the worst advice you received from colleagues, dealers or other art professionals. And how did you overcome it?
