As someone who is relying on your invaluable resource “From Life” about Julia Margaret Cameron for my own work I want to thank you for writing it. In that book you succeeded in bringing London in the 1800s to life. You brought the Cameron family to life. You placed her personally and professionally thoroughly as no one had before you or has since. I have no idea how many books sold or what it did to inspire your future but to me that book is successful.
That’s very moving to me, Lucy. Thank you! And building on each other’s work is another important piece of “success” that I don’t get to here. We share that for JMC! 🙏
It's funny--I spend so much time thinking about defining success and measuring it, but always in the context of organizations, strategy, mission, etc. That's been the center of my professional life for years now. My tactic there is to get really concrete. But I've never turned to look at this question with any rigor in the fuzzy world of personal achievement--maybe because the personal so resists that tactic.
Your dad is a model for me of how to be a successful painter in at least one huge (and concrete) way: he got up every day and he painted. I know you call this out--but that's not just success on his own terms. I dream of having that kind of creative engagement in my later years.
But yeah, success is so complicated. Internal. External. Satisfaction. Money. Recognition. Engagement. Pleasure. So many dimensions.
Yes. I dismiss "on his own terms" as a "consolation prize" but it's very meaningful, of course. And hard won, often. Maybe that's what I'm working towards. Complicated, indeed. Thanks for this, Josh.
As with Substack, some are better wired, fed even, by the game of self promotion. My parents were not. (Though my father had his ways.) Talent is a thin slice of what leads to public success as an artist, I think. And very few make it. But art making is also a practice and identity for many people. And if you get to do it in a creative community that sees your work and responds and bolsters this identity, I think that’s sustaining for many.
I recently finished Audrey Flack's memoir, With Darkness Came Stars, and in parts of it, she talks about what it was like to be on the fringes of this movement, in part because she left abstract expressionism but also because she was the mother of an autistic child, and so her life was just very different. She mentions her personal relationships with, I think, most of the "big 5" frequently, especially Elaine de Kooning, throughout. Certainly her sense of success and failure and how she worked in textile design figures into her sense of herself as a woman, mother, and working artist.
A really engrossing essay, Victoria. Perhaps the more so because I come from a family that had no set measure of "success" and as someone who barely thinks about these things (for good or ill).
I really like your concluding remark about needing to feel your way to somewhere new.
I almost called the piece “Metrics” before realizing it wasn’t about metrics at all. The objective standards are never the point, just the subjective experience.
As someone who is relying on your invaluable resource “From Life” about Julia Margaret Cameron for my own work I want to thank you for writing it. In that book you succeeded in bringing London in the 1800s to life. You brought the Cameron family to life. You placed her personally and professionally thoroughly as no one had before you or has since. I have no idea how many books sold or what it did to inspire your future but to me that book is successful.
That’s very moving to me, Lucy. Thank you! And building on each other’s work is another important piece of “success” that I don’t get to here. We share that for JMC! 🙏
It's funny--I spend so much time thinking about defining success and measuring it, but always in the context of organizations, strategy, mission, etc. That's been the center of my professional life for years now. My tactic there is to get really concrete. But I've never turned to look at this question with any rigor in the fuzzy world of personal achievement--maybe because the personal so resists that tactic.
Your dad is a model for me of how to be a successful painter in at least one huge (and concrete) way: he got up every day and he painted. I know you call this out--but that's not just success on his own terms. I dream of having that kind of creative engagement in my later years.
But yeah, success is so complicated. Internal. External. Satisfaction. Money. Recognition. Engagement. Pleasure. So many dimensions.
Love this piece.
Yes. I dismiss "on his own terms" as a "consolation prize" but it's very meaningful, of course. And hard won, often. Maybe that's what I'm working towards. Complicated, indeed. Thanks for this, Josh.
As with Substack, some are better wired, fed even, by the game of self promotion. My parents were not. (Though my father had his ways.) Talent is a thin slice of what leads to public success as an artist, I think. And very few make it. But art making is also a practice and identity for many people. And if you get to do it in a creative community that sees your work and responds and bolsters this identity, I think that’s sustaining for many.
Yes, indeed. And well said.
I recently finished Audrey Flack's memoir, With Darkness Came Stars, and in parts of it, she talks about what it was like to be on the fringes of this movement, in part because she left abstract expressionism but also because she was the mother of an autistic child, and so her life was just very different. She mentions her personal relationships with, I think, most of the "big 5" frequently, especially Elaine de Kooning, throughout. Certainly her sense of success and failure and how she worked in textile design figures into her sense of herself as a woman, mother, and working artist.
Thanks for this reference, Jane. I don’t know that book but it sounds both interesting and useful—
A really engrossing essay, Victoria. Perhaps the more so because I come from a family that had no set measure of "success" and as someone who barely thinks about these things (for good or ill).
I really like your concluding remark about needing to feel your way to somewhere new.
Thanks, Jeffrey.
I almost called the piece “Metrics” before realizing it wasn’t about metrics at all. The objective standards are never the point, just the subjective experience.