Growing up, I was taught that big was beautiful; that it would be an achievement to run a big business, make large amounts of money, buy a big house (most likely through a big mortgage), and, generally, live a big (and therefore, important) life. There have been very few people in my life, if any, who have encouraged me to ‘think small’.
But what I’ve learned is that small is efficient, and efficiency is beautiful. When you’re small, it’s easy to change and adapt when something unexpected happens. Most ‘big’ businesses go under when they’re disrupted by something or someone smaller who is able to move more quickly and respond to a changing market. When you don’t have a lot of money, you tend to use it more wisely (i.e. waste less of it) than someone with ‘plenty to spare’. And when you live in a small house, it saves you money in heating and cooling, repair and maintenance.
I’m starting to think that thinking small might be a better way.
I don’t know about other artists, but the ones I know are looking for big – a big audience or a high price tag for their work. That’s what success looks like. I started off that way, too.
But then I got to thinking – what does it mean if I make my art and ‘only’ one or two people see it, not hundreds. Was it still a ‘success’? Am I less of an artist because if my audience remains small?
No matter which way I look at it, I was making work before people were interested, and I’ll continue to make work after. The original need to make art wasn’t driven by a big commercial outcome or audience, it was driven by an interior need – to seek answers to questions I had both of the world, and more importantly, myself.
Not everyone is (or will be) interested in what I make, and that’s OK. In fact, it’s helpful, because I also can’t scale me. I can only do X books a year, or paint Y paintings. Smallness is baked into the artist’s way of producing the work.
When there have been attempts by some to scale that inherit smallness – through merchandising or hiring employees to paint/draw their way – history seems to point to a growing perception of inauthenticity in the work, even though it may have begun in the right place. Through saturating a market with one’s work, it ends up diluting it. “Household names” like Garfield & Peanuts are all both examples of this from the comics world. Sure, they have attained ‘global status and reach’, but does the link from merchandise to engagement with the original work really not change the original work? I doubt it.
The thing with a capitalist culture that celebrates scale is that, quite oddly, it also celebrates scarcity. Scarcity creates value, too, and it seems to me, that for art, small can be beautiful.