Marketing Art

image from libraryman,com

Marketing Art

“Art is making something out of nothing, & then

selling it.”--Frank Zappa.

Every day as I super-surf the web lovingly searching for images that 

I am attracted to, & want to share, I constantly stumble upon those

iconic pictures of great artists, like Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe,

Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, & Frank

Frazetta--and I marvel at how successfully they all marketed them-

selves, becoming somehow as important, & even more recognizable

than their Art.

Picasso as the Spanish bull in the taxi dancer shirts, beautifully bare-

chested, bald & ever ready to womanize (hiding his association with

the Nazis during WWII)--O’Keeffe, photographed relentlessly by Alfred

Stieglitz, putting her raw-boned heartland sexuality on display, her fecund

floral paintings rife with vaginal splendor, becoming the wondrous Sante

Fe aging Muse--Dali as the mad eccentric socialite genius, his famous

mustache & crazed expressions transformed to both abstract caricature

& sales pitch--Warhol, the New York omni-sexual film director, artist &

social happening, flaunting his wigs, counter culture antics, & success

as effeminate outrider, who like Picasso created Art out of thin air, the

mundane & sheer bravado--Kahlo as the cross-dressing desert flower,

ersatz revolutionary with brass bandoliers across her naked chest,

creating a lexicon of uni-brow selfies recognizable on a global scale

--Pollock, whom I dubbed Jack the Dripper, balding, stooped, chain-

smoker, red-eyed, social pariah, pensive, hopeless alcoholic--

& Frazetta, who painted with fire as the 50’s rebellious muscular dark-

haired man’s man, arms forever folded & eyes insolent.

Can any artist

ever snag fame without them

selves as the logo?

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Pub Haibun Monday