Artists as entrepreneurs

It is highly likely that for many people the combination of art and business evokes either big money auctions or blockbuster exhibitions funded by global companies. Some would even go as far as to say that where art is concerned business is a dirty word.

Convinced that the relationship between art and business needed exploring, he came up with the idea of founding a business incubator for artists

The term evokes compromise and commercialisation rather than creative freedom. However, artists have to sell to survive, so business is therefore a key part of living from art. What if we made efforts to see art and business as mutually beneficial?

Here, we are not talking about sponsorship or donations. There is instead a need to recognise that a business plan, communications, sales skills and corporate relations can be part of a toolkit that turns artists into ‘artrepreneurs’.

Business incubator

This is something French artist Fabrice Hyber acknowledged back in the 1980s. While other artists shunned working with firms, Hyber embraced the approach. In 1991 a business partnership allowed him to break the world record for making the largest bar of soap, designed as a self-portrait.

In 1994 he founded a limited company to encourage dialogue between artists and companies. Convinced that the relationship between art and business needed exploring, he came up with the idea of founding a business incubator for artists: Les Réalisateurs.

Calling on both his former art school l’Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Nantes Métropole (ESBANM) and Audencia Business School, he opened the first incubator in 2013.

The principle is that artists are accompanied over 12 months by experts from both schools and by Hyber himself. While he is on hand to provide creative advice, ESBANM ensures that the artrepreneurs have top technical support.

Meanwhile, Audencia offers four types of classes: the contemporary economic world, the corporate world, arts sponsorship and the contemporary market for art. Thanks to corporate support and grants, the incubation period costs the artists nothing. Their only remit is to present an interesting idea at the start of the 12 months and to turn it into artistic reality.

After two years of fine-tuning the approach, the class of 2016 provided the chance to fit the final piece into the art and business jigsaw. For the first time, the incubator’s artists were coached by students from Audencia’s cultural management course, one of whom is on an exchange programme from the Louvre’s art history school.

Taught to adopt a business mindset from the start of their projects, the four artists have developed a profile that is hoped will allow them to live from their art.

Class of 2016

One good example is Réjean Peytavin, whose concept is nothing less than a new interpretation of time. His percentage clock discards telling the time in the traditional way and instead displays the percentage of the day used up or remaining.

It is an artistic statement but, thanks to les Réalisateurs, one that has business backing. The Audencia students guided Peytavin towards MEITO, an association of technical and electronics firms all working in the west of France. MEITO has given input from the start of the project and is now helping to find firms keen to invest in the production of the clock.

The works of the other artists integrate with the business world in different ways. One of them is in contact with firms that could play the role of technical consultants and partners to help perfect her idea of producing art that represents the many uses a piece of land has undergone over the years.

Much like geological strata, these layers of land use will give a visually striking insight into urban renewal. To meet the challenge, just the right industrial material has to be sourced for the layers. This could become a viable business idea as archeologists have already expressed an interest in using the perfected technique to present their excavation work to the public.

Another 2016 artist is working on a limited edition of sculptures of the Erika wreck and oil spill. However, these sculptures will not be shaped by the artist but rather produced from an industrial mould.

The final artist has chosen to criticise liberalism’s dark side by working on the production of a theatre work based on the views gathered from office workers and metalworkers.

A global incubator

The success of the incubator is borne out by the rest of the 2016 intake and by those from 2014 and 2015 who now have firm careers as artists. For Fabrice Hyber this is just the first step. His aim is to set up a global network of this sort of incubator. Perhaps art and business have found that they really can get along.

Laurent Noël is Associate Professor at Audencia Business School.
www.audencia.com/en