Style, Branding and Personal Identity in the Art World

Branding and Personal Identity may conflict in artists' search for recognition in the art world.

illustration of Branding in Creative Life Post

Style: Developing a Style of One's Own

Developing a style of one's own can be a confusing struggle for many artists working in all creative realms. Doing so requires us to face up to public needs for branding while we face individual needs of artistic identity. It becomes' important to differentiate style, branding, and artistic identity. My focus is on visual art, but the points made apply to writers, poets, musicians and other creative talents seeking to make their mark while keeping faith with their creative urges.

Style and Branding in Fine Art

Style

Issues of style and branding in fine art have become enmeshed. Describing works by given artists often refers to their identifiable styles. Style can refer what you paint but even more to to how you paint it. Although some artists are best known for one content area (portraits, landscapes, abstracts); others work across several genres. An artist's style is what lets us recognize their work, their manner of expression, regardless of content. We know if it's Lady Gaga or Lady Day singing the same song. We know if it's Cézanne or Caravaggio who painted a particular apple. Even if we can't name the artist, we can see that one portrait painter uses heavy, textured, brushstrokes in her work while another uses thin glazes of impressionistic color in his. One artist emphasizes geometric and angular shapes in her abstract works while another prefers fluid organic shapes in his, and so on. Two main points are that artistic styles can differ in recognizable ways and that people like to categorize things.

Tastes and methods change. No evidence exists for one style being "better" than another in art history across cultures or even within the productive lives of given artists. Picasso's early "rose period" paintings differ greatly from his cubist works, which differ greatly from his neo-classical and later modernist artworks. Which style you like best is a personal preference. Same goes for artists. Personal preference rules. Some, like Picasso, are experimenters in style who pursue multiple stylistic approaches. Their styles change as their interests change. For such artists, their output differs very much stylistically over time or even across media and series within a given time period. Other artists, like Andrew Wyeth, retain a similar style across their entire life and output. Both are master artists in terms of creativity and skill, and it seems a fool's task to weigh artistic worth on the issue of style or stylistic consistency.

Picasso's Stylistic Diversity

Style: Preference and Choice

For artists, style is the way they chose to express and communicate an intent, idea, feeling, or whatever impels the art. For both artists and audience, stylistic preferences can be broad or narrow. There's no accredited "school of style" despite changing stylistic fads. Knowledge, skills, reinforcement, and personal comfort zones contribute to whether our preferred choices as artists or art appreciators are broad or narrow, inclusive or exclusive, and whether they remain consistent or seek diversity.

Some pundits claim style is about being consistent, and that narrowing one's stylistic range results in more clarity and focus. I'm not a pundit and take a somewhat different view. My view of stylistic choice is that it needs to accord with the artist's personality, with their manner of personal expression and discernment of what matters in work they create. It does make it simpler for everyone if your style can predictably be identified. If you like to dress in different styles for different occasions and enjoy exploring different design and product preferences, your style is likely to be less easily identified. However, that multi-style preference is a stylistic choice. That choice differs from someone who cares nothing about style and just grabs whatever's handy, without choice or discernment.

Branding is about recognition

An individual's style can be consistent or varied. Consistency makes things easier to recognize, and that's why "branding" is so important in advertising and commercial enterprises. It's important not to confuse artistic style, which is an individual's preferred manner of expression (cohesive or diverse) with brand, which is a generic product label.

Branding is the labeling and promotion of a product by means of a recognized design. Trademark recognition make sit easier to market and sell products. This holds true for artists as well as running shoes. Artists with a consistent product style are more easily branded than those with diverse style . If you weren't familiar with Picasso's work, you might think it was done by a pack of different artists. Some familiarity with a multi-style, or stylistically diverse artist's work is needed before you see connections across their varied output (Picasso likes line and contained, drawn form and invention). Even if you don't see connections, you can still appreciate whichever creations in their diverse output you prefer.

Work by the multi-style artist is harder to brand, but gives the audience more choice. The snag is that work needs to be seen by an audience before any familiarity is established. Today's world of cramped attention and over marketing makes it possibly harder for stylistically diverse work to get seen or placed in established venues (galleries, museums), much less to become recognized.

What Do You Want?

What is it you desire most as an artist? Or as an art viewer and consumer? Creative persons (both artists and audience) need to focus on whether sales/investment and recognition are their primary goals. If so, we know that branding plays a role.

As an artist, once famous, your name becomes your brand. Until then, a consistently recognizable style helps to make it. It's much harder to become recognizable and famous if your work is stylistically diverse. But diversity may, in fact, be your personal trademark. Demands for success/recognition and artistic integrity then battle one another.

What is it you want as an art consumer or fan of art? You may prefer recognized brand-name products or may prefer to discover and curate your own choices in an eclectic mix of styles. The eclectic art fan will likely choose and put together those items that have the most meaning, beauty, originality: items that fit together for them personally.

Artistic Identity: Exploration and Commitment

Artistic Identity is a critical factor in developing a style of one's own and refers to a committed sense of who you are as an artist, what you value and want to express, and how you choose to express it.

Artistic identity, like personal identity (well reported psychological investigations by James E. Marcia and associates), involves a process of development that requires exploration and commitments based upon exploration of alternatives. Commitment without exploration is like becoming the suit you fit yourself into, or mimicry of already established givens. On the other hand, continual exploration without commitment at some points, leaves identity in limbo.

Whether identity exploration is broad or narrow depends upon individuals and their social-cultural environment, as does the broad or narrow range of commitments made. But once achieved, identity does not necessarily remain fixed. The core remains stable, permitting new choices constructively built upon this foundation. Persistence is more important to exploration than is consistency. Commitment requires consistency but can apply across a wide or narrow range of choices made. Identity, as a developmental process, evolves with continuing exploration and commitment.

How to know the"right" path for you?

If art and life are connected (as I believe they are), then consider how they interact in your life.

Take a moment. What are you like? What do you want? Is it your preference to explore broadly and push the bounds of stylistic diversity? If that's you, then that's how to construct your style and artistic identity. If you prefer a relatively narrow stylistic range, then that's how to construct your style and artistic identity. Neither path necessarily has more depth or reach to to it. Broad needn't mean shallow, and narrow needn't mean deep.

Those who prefer broad and inclusive versus narrow and exclusive may have a more question-filled and exploratory time establishing an Artistic Identity. But this may also be one of the most vitally interesting developmental routes to take in life and in art. The critical question to explore is: what is "my way"? Your answer must rely on yourself and guides you trust and value. For me, I've come to my present answer by reviewing how I've lived and what I continue to value. My interests are wide-ranging, working in diverse fields using both reason and imagination. I value diversity and multiple perspectives, and I remain curious to explore new directions. I don't feel scattered, confused, or lost. I'm clear that my path, my personal and artistic Identity involve commitment to exploration and learning of diverse skills across a fairly broad stylistic range.

Eclecticism as a Style: Come to Terms

Preference for diversity makes stylistic consistency harder to recognize or brand, as already noted. What to do if that's your preference? My urge is always to follow a creative impetus, along whatever stylistic route expresses it. One painting, prompted by a nostalgic moment, looks calmly impressionistic in style. Another, depicting a harsh reality, is vehement in expressive brushstrokes. You wouldn't necessarily know the same artist had made these two paintings. (I would, as would some familiar with my output.). But why am I an artist if not to express my vision in my way? I've made my peace: my style is eclectic and that's how to brand my artwork. In art, as in life, I am developmentally rather than categorically oriented. Now, how about you?

Conflicting Artistic Goals?

A useful compromise for artists inclined to follow a diverse path yet also want their art to connect with others is to create art in series. Make each series fairly consistent in style and manner of production, but work on different series simultaneously. It may take longer to complete each series, but you'll be satisfying your diverse creative inclinations. The results may be all the more successful as a result, and each series may better accommodate to viewers' perspectives by presenting stylistically coherent works. That's something I've tried to do in my website, for example.

Viewers may still come away from your work feeling it was done by several different artists. Is that OK with you? If your art is stylistically diverse, think of Walt Whitman's brazen but brave reply to "Do I contradict myself?" He said, "Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

There may be no contradiction in your art if it is consistent with your personal and artistic identity.

The bottom line is for artwork to be done will all the skill and creative juice needed to be effective to communicate to people you intend to reach. Getting it seen is another matter. Let me know how you do that, will you?

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