Image by Saxon
Ever wondered what drives art thieves to risk it all for the sake of a masterpiece?
I was thinking about this the other day and I really couldn’t come up with a good answer. Sure, there’s a black market out there where some of the world’s richest will pay top dollar for historical pieces that will never be seen by the public again, but many times, art that is stolen is so high profile that it would be practically impossible to sell.
What makes these pieces so valuable and enviable anyway? What about it drives these thieves to take on some of the most advanced security systems in the world just to lay their hands on it?
And most importantly, how can you start creating more work like that?
Despite the headaches and complications that come from having your art stolen, most artists I know would be least a little bit tickled to think that someone was so possessed by their work that they resolved to steal it. Even though it’s frustrating, it’s surely a vote of confidence in your craft.
I set out to find exactly what it is that makes an art thief drool. I talked to an internationally recognized artist and designer Pablo Solomon, rapped with a museum security consultant Steven Paley, chatted with photographer and gallery curator Jolene Hanson, and listened to a host of other artists. Here’s what I learned. If you’re a creative professional, these are lessons that can make any work you do more sellable to your audience.
It Touches Them Personally
We always hear about the art thieves who steal the world’s most significant art in order to give some billionaire bragging rights amongst his friends, but more common than that are the thieves who steal for their own personal collections. They follow their favorite artists closely and they know exactly what they like. They feel personally connected to the work.
Do you know your audience? Every time you create something, do you have their deepest desires in mind as well as your own? Do you connect with them personally and know their greatest hopes and fears?
If you do, it doesn’t really matter what you’re making – you’ll sell plenty.
It’s Very Shareable
Beyond creating for your audience’s deepest desires, do you do it in a way that’s extremely shareable – that makes people want to talk about it with their friends?
Not every art thief steals work that is significant to them. Sometimes, they just want the in thing. If people all over town are talking about your work, then you’re the in thing. Count on attracting plenty of thieves.
No worries, though. This is a fine predicament where you’ll be selling a lot more than you’re losing. And just the fact that your work is being ripped off is another talking point that makes it even more shareable. (Being stolen turned out to be extremely good PR for the Mona Lisa.)
In order to make your work shareable, it has to do more than just touch on your audience’s greatest hopes and fears. It has to do it in a way that makes them comfortable telling other people about it. Those are scary emotions for most.
How can you take a heavy topic and portray it in a way that makes people comfortable?
It Reinforces Their Perception of Themselves
Art thieves are no ordinary crooks. They often think themselves the highest class of criminal, not to be associated with petty thieves and other heavy-handed thugs. They’re refined and sophisticated. In fact, many think themselves artists.
Whether or not that’s actually the case doesn’t really matter. People buy (and steal) art that reinforces the image that they have of themselves. If you know your audience, then you can create work that strongly reinforces their identities and makes them excited to buy more and more of your stuff.
The Artist Has a Strong Personality
Debates have raged for centuries (and they’ll continue to do so) over what’s more important: the artist or the physical art. Regardless of the argument, you and I both know that people connect to creative work just as much through the person that created it as the work itself.
Many art thieves, and most people, look for a story in the artist that is incredibly interesting in one way or another. Your craft is important, but so is your personality. J.D. Salinger was a recluse. Andy Warhol was flamboyant and a bit of a nut-job. They both created masterpieces, but they also mastered their own personalities.
You have to be authentic because your audience is incredibly skilled at sniffing out a fake, but if there’s a little piece of you that you’ve been hiding because you aren’t sure how people will react, try letting it out for a while and see what happens. You might be surprised.
It’s Super Niche
When an art thief is looking for a piece of work that can be resold and fetch an excellent price, they’re not going to go after the most widely popular piece they can find – it’s too well known and they’d never unload it. Instead, they look for pieces that are relatively unknown, but incredibly valuable to a small group of people.
They look for Niche Art.
Let’s face it, there are millions of landscape painters out there, but how many landscape painters also place a chicken in a cowboy hat riding a robot horse in every one of their scenes in order to really excite the chicken/cowboy hat/robot horse crowd?
There are thousands of creative directors out there fighting for work, but what about the guy that everyone knows only works for small film companies that make clay-mation art porn? Is he hurting for work?
Obviously those are ridiculous examples, but you get the picture. The more specific you get with your work, the more infatuated your audience becomes, even though it grows smaller and smaller.
When everyone knows you’re the go-to person for something, you’ll have a lot of ‘thieves’ studying what you do and trying to copy, but it doesn’t matter because they won’t get it right. You’re still the go-to guy or gal.
It’s All about Connections
What it all comes down to is that creative work that becomes valuable enough to attract an art thief has to make a deep connection.
- It connects someone with a strong emotion
- It connects people with their friends
- It connects others with themselves
- It connects the audience with the creator
- It connects someone with a specific fascination
Not everything you create will hit each one of those criteria, but the more of them your work into your art, the more valuable it becomes. You’ll attract more and more thieves, but it’ll hardly matter when you’re selling your pants off.
How Stealable Is Your Work?
Financial considerations aside, how would you feel if you learned someone loved your work enough to break into a building and steal it?
On which of the art thief’s criteria does your work score highest?
How can you make your work more ‘stealable’ (apart from leaving it in an unlocked car)?
About the Author: Tyler Tervooren fends off digital art thieves by giving his most valuable work away at his blog, Advanced Riskology. You can follow him on twitter at @tylertervooren.
What a cool take on product development. Thank you for this fun and helpful perspective!
“Talent borrows, genius gets stolen.” 😉
Wow – Thank you, Tyler.
You are absolutely correct. Great perspective, yet still irritating. (Why steal?)
Aside from stealing – “It connects someone with a strong emotion” is one of my top goals in creating. If it touches a person emotionally, the strong connection will likely touch a person’s core being. My hope is the connection will make a lasting impact for good.
Possibly my favourite compliment ever in the comments at Lateral Action. Well done Tyler. And Marcy. 🙂
My paintings have not been stolen, however one of them was damaged while it was entered into an exhibition. We were unable to determine who smired a caustic on the back of the canvas, that made the canvas weak. It was a small area, so I partially repaired it, leaving the cracked scare on the front. Then I wrote a poem about the peice, and the damage done to it.
Instead of getting angry, I tried to conect to the soul of the viewer.
I forgot to say, the painting was of an elderly homeless woman, with the Statue of Liberty, St. Peter’s Cathedral, and the Eiffel Tower, painted in transparency in the sky above the woman. I believed it was done because someone didn’t like my message. D.S.S.
Ah. Well Dolores, you can’t please everybody. Hopefully the jerk that damaged your work influenced others to take notice.
Lemons to lemonade, eh?
Not nice to have someone attack your work, but it obviously provoked a reaction.
I remember being very pleased when I read a poem at a workshop and someone said it should come with a strobe effect warning, as it made them feel dizzy. 😉
Thank you both for comenting on my post. I am sure you both can understand the distress I felt when I found the damage.
Tyler, this is a crazy awesome perspective. Another real world example of art thieves is music on the internet. I think a lot of bands nowadays owe their popularity and fame to “thieves” passing around their material on forums, Myspace, Facebook, etc. Now many musicians are beginning to recognize this power and give their material away from free (even big names like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails).
“Financial considerations aside, how would you feel if you learned someone loved your work enough to break into a building and steal it?”
If someone was willing to take such a risk to enjoy my work then I would be honored.
“On which of the art thief’s criteria does your work score highest?”
Probably “it reinforces their perceptions of themselves,” but I need to work on almost all of these categories to be honest.
“How can you make your work more ‘stealable’ (apart from leaving it in an unlocked car)?”
I need to make it more personal for others.
Such a touchy subject. So many no-names have benefited tremendously from the exposure, and so many established artists have “lost” sales.
It’s hard to say who’s right and who’s wrong, but the digital revolution and peer-to-peer sharing is here to stay and those that have their work “stolen” the most are the ones that will continue to make a living. 🙂
What an eye-opening perspective.
Isn’t the saying, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery.”
Perhaps that should be amended to, “Art theft is the highest form of flattery.”
Your point that it reinforces their perceptions of themselves is spot on. Validation is intensely powerful and critical if our work is to be saleable/stealable.
Thanks for the fun and insightful read.
I have always been discouraged about the theft of music through the Internet. I think the culprits do not comprehend what it feels like to an artist, to have something, that is a part of your deepest self, disrespected in that way. I believe that is the larger disappointment. They do it in theatres with video cameras to steal movies, to show to or sell to their friends. I have worked for thirty five years to get my art recognized. Everyone tells me my paintings are beautiful, but that is as far as they go. We put so much of ourselves into the whole job of being an artist of any kind. Now I have come to the phase on not needing to sell my art any more. I am working on a project to help Charities, help others. My project is to give a print to every person who sends me confirmation of making the appropriate donation to one of the charities charitychoices.com I hope this works to do something productive with my large volume of artwork and prints. Sometimes I wish they would disappear.
Hey Dolores,
I definitely understand that sentiment, but I think there’s a sharp generational divide on the issue. For the musicians of my generation (I’m 26), we all grew up downloading and sharing music. Since that’s how we interacted as children, that’s simply how many “do business” now.
The amount of creativity in musical entrepreneurship has really taken off and even though it’s still unclear what the new model is, I’ve been incredibly impressed by some of the up and coming bands that have seen success by leveraging their popularity by basically giving their music away and selling other high ticket items (personal access to the artist/band) to replace it.
Pretty interesting. Does it mean that others that aren’t into that model should have their copyrights trampled on? I don’t know. Maybe not, but it’s pretty clear that the industry has changed and we’re never going back.
I love what you’re doing with your art. Great way to do something awesome for people in need.
As well as a generational divide, I think there’s an important distinction to be made between commercially motivated pirates (the people who are in cinemas recording films and selling copies) and fans who share files as a way of discovering new music. The music industry likes to lump them both together under the heading of ‘piracy’ but it’s not the same thing.
Maybe we should devote a post to this subject…
I love the example about music. It is true – fans who share music and giving credit to the artist is giving back so much to the artist in reaching far more fans personally than any amount of marketing strategies money can buy. For example, I believe there are times friends and family share music they love with others and attach a personal story, struggle or experience to the song that now penetrates deeper than just an awesome song.
But, I do agree there is a difference in “commercially motivated pirates”.
I can understand what you are all saying. I once was a victim of home break in. They took the TV and stereo, but not my paintings, I had hanging on the wall. I was almost aggravated about that. So I know having someone steal your work could give you some notoriety, if it is reported in the news paper, etc. But some of the people selling their music on the Internet, are living on a shoestring. They need every dollar to keep going. Those are the ones I have the most sympathy for. I have a niece who has been struggling for many years to be recognized for the fantastic voice, and striking beauty she has. I feel so sorry for her. She paid for a thousand copies of her first CD and she has sold a lot of them, but not the amount she needs to sell. Oh well, we have to learn to live with what is, not what we wish it to be. That is what I have done. I am a much more content person, since I adopted that attitude.
Ouch! I feel your pain re not having the painting stolen. 😉
To be clear: I’m not talking about stealing from creators who depend on selling their work for a living. I’m one of those myself so I have a vested interest here!
But filesharing is a reality, and the artists who succeed online are the ones who strike a judicious balance between making some of their work freely available (so that people can discover them) and charging for the rest of it (e.g the whole album, or better quality sound files, or the physical CD with interviews etc).
I use the same model on Lateral Action – I give away a lot of advice for free, on the blog and my Creative Pathfinder course, which helps me find clients for my coaching business, and customers for my e-learning products.
Tell your niece to have a look at my friend Steve Lawson’s site – he makes a living as a solo bass player, which is pretty niche! http://www.stevelawson.net/ Another good site for advice on making a living from music online is http://www.newmusicstrategies.com.
And she might also like to read my piece about Why Artists and Creatives Have an Unfair Advantage at Internet Marketing.
This is a very creative post …i’m totally loving the angle through which the lessons were extracted. Brilliant work Tyler.
I hope someday soon, I can adopt this style of writing. Maybe, I might finally succeed in Touching Them (my audience) Personally just as you mentioned above.
Mark McGuinniss,
Thank you so very much for taking the time to help me with my delema. I get the joke, and it is funny to me too. To wish for someone to steal your work is definately pretty desparate. lol
About making my art available online, it would be okay with me, however, what would be my unline art to give away, is in Lithographs Printed by a printing co. with six color seperation. on 100 lb. rag paper. I have 1000, each of four of my paintings. I have donated many of them to Charities for silent auctions, and raffels, while the rest of them continue to take up a lot of room in my storage. I have a deep desire to do something productive with them, by helping Charities. I just don’t know of a way to do that online, with four thousand Lithograghs. I have sent out several hundred emails showing a small group of some of my paintings in them, including the images of the four Lithographs. I am not asking for any money to come to me, just confirmation of a donation, and the small amount of shipping charges, only what I actually spend to ship, deposited into my paypal acct. Then I will ship the piece of art. So far, it isn’t generating any contacts. I have emailed to several hundred people, with no feedback.
Hi Dolores, that sounds like a frustrating experience. However, I’m not altogether surprised that sending emails out didn’t do the trick. People get so many emails these days, including marketing of all kinds, that it’s very hard to cut through and get noticed.
Have you come across One Thousand Paintings? Now, you may or may not like the paintings themselves, but try not to focus on them. Read the story of how the artist is selling them: the price of the paintings depends on how many are left. When the sale started, it was fairly cheap to get a painting; but as more and more sold, and the story got picked up by popular bloggers, magazines and the BBC, the paintings sold faster and the prices went up.
In short, the artist turned his picture sale into an event, that got people excited and wanting to join in. E.g. as soon as Seth Godin bought a painting, lots of other bloggers wanted one…
I’m not suggesting you copy his strategy, but if you want to get people excited about your paintings, have a think about how to present them to people in a way that really grabs their attention. The art itself is rarely enough, no matter how good it is – you need to capture people’s attention with a compelling story. (And if you’ve got a link to a charity, that might help you think up a powerful story…)
Mark McGuinness,
Okay, I have to get more creative. That shouldn’t be difficult for someone who created over a hundred images on canvas, and writes novels, etc. So I’ll start working on that. I agree that I also need to start contacting the charities themselves. Maybe some of them will give me pointers about how the system works. Maybe even doing some promoting, for the project, In exchange for Lithographs, or canvas prints to use in their events.
Thank you again for your valuabe ideas, and suggestions. Just know your effort is not in vain.
Yes! You’ve got plenty of creativity – it’s about applying it to the process of promoting the work as well as making it!
If you’d like a free introduction to internet marketing, this is the best one I know: http://www.authorityrules.com