>A successful artist is an artist who has achieved the goals they wanted. And the goals can be anything they want.
My like, bare-minimum definition is this:
Because this happens all the time:
So two groups of thoughts on:
Regarding happiness:
Regarding success:
Therefore:
Like, the American dream for the prototypical man is a big house, sports car, 6-figure income, and trophy wife. Which is a nice, somewhat vague set of standards to achieve in life. What if you like #VanLife? What if you want to live in NYC in an apartment? Or on a farm? Or be a millionaire? Or join the Peace Corps or Doctors Without Borders?
We have the opportunity to define happiness & success in our lives, as well as the responsibility to engage in bringing that vision to life, because nobody else is going to waltz in our lives & be happy or successful for us!
Exactly what you said - "like they wanted to" - is the key metric. That's what gives us a "lighthouse", a goal, to paddle our rowboat in life towards! I see a lot of artists flounder simply because they never bother to define what they really want in life, so they drift, rather than having specific things to work towards, which in turn guides their daily education for knowledge acquisition, skill-building, and project progression.
From there, it all boils down to attitude & effort. Our attitude determines whether or not we make progress ("think you can, think you can't - either way, you're right!") & how much we enjoy it, and our effort is what enables gaining knowledge & skills and completing projects.
There is no universal definition of artistic success because nobody is in charge of art. There are groups who define their rules within those groups. Financially, for a portion of people, Sotheby's represents a financial investment interest. If you're rich, art is a great tax writeoff:
One of my favorite books in recent years was "Caveat Emptor: The secret life of an American art forger" by Ken Perenyi. It gives some really interesting insight into some of the mechanics behind the high-end art world, and is just a really fun, crazy story in general! The audiobook is well-read FWIW:
What if you're a teenager making millions on NFT's? Is that new medium considered art? Do teenagers have enough skills to create great art? Does merely making a boatload of money mean that you're a successful artist?
Ultimately, we have to define success ourselves. How do we achieve it? How do we maintain it? If you make millions of dollars & create a commercially successful art series, are you "done"? What do you do with the rest of your life after that?
Your post is a perfect example of that: Did you get the likes you wanted? Did you get a stable income? Did you execute the complex vision you had? Did you paint what you wanted? Were you happy with your effort & your output? Do any of those even personally matter to you?
My high school brain says "get famous, make millions, THEN I can be happy as an artist because THEN I've made it!" which is just a Hollywood lie, because life doesn't end after that lol. Personally defining success & happiness and then creating a lifestyle of daily engagement is what I've found to be the best path forward for finding success in art & in life in general!
If you like this, I highly recommend the book Caveat Emptor by Ken Perenyi.