Phoebe Beasley, who has been a noteworthy presence in the art community for several decades, was once a senior advertising account executive at a Los Angeles radio station. Using creativity and sales savvy from her media days, Beasley has parlayed her passion for art into works that are admired (and bought) by some of the who’s who of African American culture–from close friend Maya Angelou to Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, and Tavis Smiley.
Her artwork has received the Presidential Seal twice, first with the inauguration of former President George H.W. Bush in 1989, and then with the inauguration of former President Bill Clinton in 1993, and has been seen in books, on billboards, and in galleries across the nation.
Beasley talked with BlackEnterprise.com on diving into art full time, diversity in the industry, and how minorities can change the way art is viewed, both in their homes and across the globe.
BlackEnterprise.com: You transitioned from working in radio to the art world. What led you to make the jump wholeheartedly, and how did you make the transition?
Phoebe Beasley: I never left the arts.
I was working night and day. I’ve been doing art exhibits for the last 40 years. I was in radio sales and marketing. When you’re an artist, you have to know about running a small company. So you’re working with shippers, craters, framers, galleries, and copyright attorneys, and you’re on your computer some of the time, so unless you have somebody doing that for you, you still need to understand it. So, the information I got from radio, I was able to apply it to the arts. It also gave me information about making presentations, but more importantly it gave me the visual information. When you’re an artist, you’re really working in a vacuum. You’re alone in your studio. You need information that the outside world gives you.What advice would you have for an up-and-coming artist?
As an artist you must do the work. You must start out doing shows with the friends of yours. Whether you do it in their homes or whether you do it in a community theater, think of ways to show your work in spaces that will show your work.
Do not overvalue your work. People come out with their first show and say, ‘I want $5,000 for the work.’ Well, how did you arrive at $5,000? Beginning artists need to be realistic about what they can sell their work for.
How do you set a price on artwork that can be subjective?
You know, it’s not as difficult as most people think, because if you’re working with galleries, or even if you’re not working with galleries, and you’ve never sold your work, you need to think about getting a price based on not only who the market is, but what work you’ve done. You have to look at how much education you’ve had. Were you selling artwork when you were in school, in college?
Is training important for today’s artists?
Yes. It is as important for an artist to be trained as it is for a brain surgeon. It’s intu
itive, but there’s so much you need to know about– not only the tools, but the trade [and] how art works. If you don’t understand what abstract art or a good composition is, at least you need some training to say, ‘I don’t even need this.’But if you don’t even have an idea of the artists who went before you–why Romare Bearden is selling for what he is, or why [Jean-Michel] Basquiat is selling for so much more–you need to understand the art world of how things get to museums.
If you want to get to the next level, it helps if you’ve had training. If you spend time around artists, you begin to speak the language of artists who are trained–professors who understand where you can go with the artwork.
Some people have the perception that the art world is mostly a white world. What have been some of your challenges being an African American artist in the mainstream art world?
The perceptions are more the reality, in terms of the gallery and how they are structured. People who open galleries, who have that kind of discretionary income, are white women, so they go with what they know. So, most of them have a Eurocentric focus about the work. That’s what they grew up with and that’s what they were educated about.
So, you have very few galleries that represent or have African American artists on their roster. And they are saying that it doesn’t relate to their patrons.
But, [also] it was not something that our own people valued. We were raised with music by African Americans, but we did not have Jacob Lawrence on the walls. So that was the missing component. And it still is, in most African American homes, that you don’t have an appreciation or celebration of your own. So, it behooves us to get more involved in support of our own culture to make sure that we understand it, we celebrate it, that we live it, and that we celebrate it by having it in our homes.
And what advice would you have for collectors?
See if you can buy prints first. Go to original prints, serigraphs, and lithographs — maybe you can find a lithograph of Elizabeth Catlett for a few thousand dollars. It may sound like a lot or it may not, but what happens is we find the time and the money for the things that we think are important.
And so start with learning as much as you can about what it is you care about. If you care about the works of African Americans, there are all kinds of books.
Make sure you go to all of the galleries. When you go to another city, find out about the galleries that carry the work of African Americans. Don’t be afraid to walk into a gallery and say, ‘I’m looking for the work of people of color.’
For information about Pheobe Beasley’s work, visit her Website.
Web Resources:
The Association of African American Museums