Your parents probably fawned over your finger paintings, or craft projects, or clay pots, or whatever crappy thing you created when you were four. There’s an audience for everything. Sometimes that audience is enormous, and sometimes, like with crappy children’s art, it’s tiny. Having a tiny audience is fine. But know who that audience is. Nobody on the street would give a flying fuck about your kid’s crappy artwork because it’s crappy. They aren’t invested in your kid. They’re not his audience.
Figure out who your audience is, and serve those people. Not the throngs of people on the street. Chances are, if you’re doing something big and bold, they’ll never accept you anyway. And that’s ok, you don’t need them to. All you need is the support of your own little audience.
This doesn’t just apply to you new age future-cubist-retro-dadaists. Listen to Pat Putnam’s wonderful description of the audience for Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran’s Super Fight, which took place in 1989, a time when boxing was still phenomenally popular in this country:
“Still, the fans didn’t like it; Leonard gave them artistic perfection when they wanted heated battle, and they booed lustily. Most fight fans would not spend a dime to watch Van Gogh paint Sunflowers, but they would fill Yankee Stadiumto see him cut off his ear.”
Know your audience.
Read more about the Leonard/Duran fight at Sports Illustrated
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