{"id":75722,"date":"2022-08-13T14:44:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-13T18:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=75722"},"modified":"2026-04-23T15:32:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T19:32:20","slug":"art-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/art-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Your Art’s Audience: Is Art for Yourself or Others?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who is your art’s audience? Should you make work for yourself or for other people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Practice<\/em> by Seth Godin claims that finding your art’s purpose involves figuring out who the work is for. Maybe your art is just for yourself, or maybe it’s for other people who might enjoy your work<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read below to decide who you should make art for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Who Is Your Work For?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Godin argues that you need to establish your intent not just about what you\u2019re trying to do but also about who you\u2019re doing it for. In other words, you need to consider your art’s audience. Of course, you can choose to create for yourself alone, but Godin claims that’s not professional work because it’s not serving anyone but yourself. Knowing who your work is for creates a responsibility to bring positive change to those people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In asking yourself who your work is for, there are a couple of considerations. First, don\u2019t try to appeal to everyone.<\/strong> People who like horror films<\/a> might not like your romantic comedy, but you\u2019re not making it for them. In fact, one measure of whether work is \u201cgood\u201d is simply whether it resonates with the specific audience to whom you’re directing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, if you\u2019re making something for someone else, you have to truly understand and empathize with what they want and need. <\/strong>For example, if you\u2019re a teacher designing an arts curriculum for a group of underserved kids, you can\u2019t assume that they\u2019ll have the resources to buy lots of expensive art supplies. You\u2019ll need to have an understanding of what materials they do have on hand in their daily lives that could be used to create art projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand your audience<\/a>, Godin recommends that you start with a small group of people who care about your work and think about what they want. Be specific. What do they believe? What do they love? What do they need?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This doesn\u2019t mean tailoring your work exclusively to please other people. It means considering the needs of the people who are interested in the work you do because without them, you\u2019d have no audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t create art that\u2019s exclusively for others or<\/em> exclusively for yourself, Godin says. If you try to create something that’s exactly what you want, what you\u2019re really doing is trying to force other people to want what you want or see things through your eyes. You need to empathize with the audience you’re trying to reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Personal as Universal<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Just as Gilbert takes issue with Godin\u2019s thoughts about the purpose of art, she also disagrees to some extent with his emphasis on understanding and empathizing with your audience. She uses her own best-selling memoir, Eat Pray Love<\/em><\/a>, as an example. She says she wrote the book to understand herself better. It ended up helping a lot of readers understand themselves better, too\u2014but if her sole intent had been to help others, she might have written a book that was far less popular with her audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many successful artists subscribe to this view that the more personal a work is, the more universal it is. Memoirists in particular often say that, in writing about their own lives, they are moved by a desire to express what it means to be human<\/a>. By examining their own inner struggles and personal experiences, writers such as Cheryl Strayed, Anne Lamott, and Meghan Daum say that they hope to give readers permission to feel their own messy emotions and gain new insight into their own lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who is your art’s audience? Should you make work for yourself or for other people? The Practice by Seth Godin claims that finding your art’s purpose involves figuring out who the work is for. Maybe your art is just for yourself, or maybe it’s for other people who might enjoy your work. Read below to decide who you should make art for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":75810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,42,43],"tags":[718],"class_list":["post-75722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-motivation","category-self-improvement","tag-the-practice","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nFinding Your Art's Audience: Is Art for Yourself or Others? - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Understanding your art's audience can actually help you in your creative journey. 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