Book Review

 

Katherine T Carter's book "Accelerating on the curves, The Artist Roadmap to Success" sets out to be a guerrilla guide to taking the art world by storm.

 

She wraps up Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Dale Carnegie, puts them on a horse, and sends them charging into the postmodern fray that is today's art scene, all the while navigating the various participating factions and their demands. Her book aims to transform the artist from a soft, hypersensitive spiritual seeker into a hardened insurgent: picking targets, taking aim, bringing them down, and mounting the trophy proudly over the easel for all to see.

How to accomplish such a monumental task?

Lesson 1: Know your enemy.

There are libraries full of valuable information out there that
are untapped and unused by almost all... but they should be by you.

Lesson 2: Do not not fight a battle you cannot win.

 

Know who you are dealing with and don't waste time with the wrong people.

Lesson 3: Win many small victories aiming to a larger victory.

 

Learn how to build up your resume and be creative in finding venues.

"Accelerating on the Curves" claims a business orientation, and in its first half it fully delivers on that promise. Yet, there's supposed to be more to being an artist, right? The second half of the book fills in the blanks and presents the perspectives of key people the aspiring artist will be dealing with in their mad quest to create art, gratify their ego, and satisfy the landlord. These perspectives run the gamut from jaded, to political, to inspiring. This is perhaps less useful than the first half of the book, but is more interesting, and ultimately places the book a cut above the rest of its genre.

After many chapters of hard business truths, it is a balm to read an essay by Jonathan Goodman in which he states "The Notion of virtue - What a nineteenth century word!- seems embarrassing in it's embrace of the emotionally authentic, but we are hard pressed to speak otherwise about art's moral force."

With one sentence, he reminds us why we all fell head over heels with art in the first place, and he brings up perhaps the greatest challenge facing young aspiring artists: to maintain their own passion in the face of professors and critics, gallery directors and collectors, lovers and enemies.

 

This book will point you down the path to success and remind you that with all of your efforts to convince people to see your work, your number one priority as an artist must still be to give them something worth seeing.

 

review by Adam Miller