Why should artists care about famous artists like Damien Hirst when thinking about marketing?

Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle or their 80-90% point. Damien Hirst selling dot paintings for $350,000 that understudies paint didn’t happen by accident. When he put a shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde and sold it, you think that was just to make great art? That was to get newspapers talking about it. He’s a genius marketing operator - that’s why he got there, no other reason. If you think you’re going to just paint and not do anything else and make tons of money, you’re lost. Every major successful artist in history has been phenomenal at marketing in whatever capacity they did it - that’s not negotiable.

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Asked by general teaching point · Answered by Nick Friend · art-marketing-podcast · 2020-06-28