Before you start painting, make sure you fix your teeth
Analyzing the ascent of Mauro C. Martinez, the guy who paints the internet
Hi everyone,
Science of Art is a newsletter written by me, Shagun Singh. I deconstruct and analyze the careers of artists who support themselves solely through their art. I am a user researcher, designer, and public artist.
If you haven’t read my first post where I lay out the context for this post, you can read it here.
Who is this weeks artist?
Mauro C Martinez is a painter based in San Antonio and his work focuses on ordinary aspects of our digital daily lives. His portfolio includes depictions of blurred sensitive content that one might find on social media, cursed emoji’s, and snapshots of people’s gaming setups from platforms like reddit. Certain series are created with a deliberate consideration of social media dynamics, where the images are taken from social platforms, turned into paintings, and once again posted on social media.
Martinez is an unlikely candidate when it comes to success stories. He was a heroin addict for 6 years and a college drop out. He spent early years painting right after rehab where he spent time for the heroin addiction. He mentions how those years were spent making paintings for literally no audience. He attributes his success now, to that time.
Why is he important?
Just a few years ago, original Martinez artworks could be purchased for under $500. Today, these paintings command prices ranging from $10,000 to $25,000, thanks in part to his representation by a prestigious U.K. gallery. His work is also held in various prominent collections including the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. However, there's more to Martinez's story and why he is considered a worthy artist.
A breakdown that led to a breakthrough
Martinez wasn’t always painting the internet. He was doing abstract paintings. In 2018, Martinez saw that there was a downturn in the sales of his paintings. According to him, he gave up on being a serious or successful painter because he was continuously falling short of being one1. He says that he was chasing something that wasn’t really there.
Martinez was always into memes and in response to his creative frustration, he started to paint memes, because of how removed memes are from conventional art forms. Since he was capturing the internet culture in his own way, he started to view his work more as documentation.2
His Instagram bio simply reads - Painting the internet.
Reasons for his success
Relevance
In an interview with Bloomberg, Michael Frahm, Director of Blenheim Art Foundation, talks about advising art investors and the metrics they look for when investing in an artist. Instead of adhering to a checkbox-style tactical strategy, Frahm talked about considering the artist’s potential impact on art history. When advising art investors, he emphasized the significance of understanding how crucial an artist might become and the role they could play in shaping art's historical narrative.
He gave the example of Ai Wei Wei and his political activism. The key criteria for investment involves artists doing something new, and different, coupled with having substantial material for 20 more years of creative output.
In the case of Martinez, his artistic foundation lies in portraying the contemporary, albeit mundane, realities of today. Based in a documentarian ideology, Martinez's work is considered relevant, and also ensures a continual wealth of material for future work.
Memes
Martinez coins his paintings as 'slow memes,' a term that contrasts with the rapid virality typically associated with memes. While traditional memes aim for quick online circulation, Martinez takes a deliberate and methodical approach. He actively searches for memes on Instagram, transforms them into paintings, and reintroduces them to the platform. This process serves as a unique and clever strategy to garner attention and attract followers.
Finding the right gallery
The main reason for Martinez’s rapid ascent in the art market is because he was discovered by by Unit London on Instagram, a well known gallery in the U.K.
Unit London is a gallery started by two young gallerists right out of school in 2013. Their mission is to promote young, talented, individuals and turn the elitist, commercial and social side of art, on its head. To do so, they rely on social media heavily.
While instagram is hardly a comprehensive strategy, it appears that Martinez may have undertaken some groundwork to capture the gallery's attention. Unit London is known for breaking down barriers in the art world and has done live Q&A with artists who were confined to their studios during lockdown, and given them sales and exposure through their #livingwithart initiative.
Martinez’s work and persona matches that of Unit London’s to a tee. This a beneficial partnership for both the artist and the gallery.
According to an article in Artsy, artists who build communities and have outreach with other artists are able to get in front of dealers and galleries3 more often than not. Martinez is definitely one of those artists with thousands of followers, collaborations with artists, shows at local galleries, and a general interest in being part of creative communities. In case of Unit London discovering Martinez, it is possible there was a connection that was forged through shared interest in art, technology, community, and experiential narratives.
Unit London has been able to put Martinez in front of the right collectors and institutions because they understand his work and this has led to the high prices that his work now demands.
Audience engagement and pricing strategy
Martinez had to drop out of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design in 2010 after two semesters because the banks stopped his student loans. He didn’t get gallery representation till 2020. That is 10 years of making art and distributing it without mainstream acclaim.
During this time Martinez was actively creating a huge body of work and promoting it in a variety of ways. He was teaching, conducting workshops, and streaming his painting sessions. A glimpse into his journey can be found on his FB account in 2016, showing his dedication to both creating and distributing his art through available channels beyond the traditional gallery system.
“Quick survey, fam. When do you think is the best time for a live stream? Mornings? Evenings? I'm making an effort to stream my painting sessions regularly in an attempt to engage with you guys a bit more, but I want to know when it's most convenient for you. Holla!”
It appears that Martinez has consistently maintained a significant following on Instagram, engaging with his audience from the early days of his artistic journey. There are a lot of instances of him engaging with his followers and also posting discounted sales reels, raffles, prints, stickers etc.
Martinez adopted a strategic pricing approach by making his studies available at a more affordable cost compared to his larger works. This is from his FB in 2016.
“…Understandably, not everyone can spend thousands of dollars on a painting, but I still want you to have great original work on your walls. So my studies, usually completed in between one or two sittings, will be available at a fraction of the cost of the much larger works.”
By offering more accessible options, such as studies, hand embellished prints, and raffle tickets, he likely aimed to make his art more attainable to a broader audience while also allowing enthusiasts to engage with and collect his work at varying price points. This strategy not only reflects a thoughtful consideration of different market segments but also demonstrates Martinez's commitment to making his art more inclusive and accessible to a diverse range of art appreciators. When a popular painting sold out at a gallery show, he created an open-edition print available in 3 sizes, starting at $15. Martinez extended his creative reach by engaging in collaborations with fellow artists, such as Paul Cooley from Queens.
Covering a lot of ground
Martinez talks about arriving at his style as wearing different outfits and figuring out what suits him best. Here is what Martinez has to say in one of his FB captions about his appetite for different styles, and the amount of work he was producing :
“I used to lie in bed wondering if it was an abundance of ideas or a lack of discipline that had me pushing to cover so much ground. I still don't have an answer to that, but I decided not to make those sort of judgements anymore. I just freaking love painting. Like the way a kid loves playing with mud. I can't get enough of it.”
Another one (sorry, I can’t help myself, they are SO good!)
“The greatest luxury I have afforded myself recently is release from the burden of having to justify my decisions. I'm all over the place. My Instagram feed looks like someone threw up on it, and I have no idea what I'm doing. But the purpose of my work was never to answer questions, but to ask them.”
If you haven’t guessed it already, at the time Martinez was painting a variety of subjects in different styles. He was covering a lot of ground.
The current descriptors on his Instagram and website - "Painting the internet" and "Documenting the end of the world," suggest a more focused and refined narrative that Martinez has arrived at after around a decade of experimentation.
Being able to make it this far
I was watching an interview that Martinez did for the Rio Grande International Study Center on Youtube. He did a mural for them and stylistically his work was really different at the time, which is 4 years ago. He mentioned that selling two paintings was sufficient to sustain him for a considerable period, ranging from 2 to 3 months.
Martinez has managed to sustain himself through his art for most of his adult life. He definitely loves being an artist. Here is a caption from an Instagram post in his earlier years.
“…I'm not rich. Sometimes I just get by. And that's okay. I wouldn't have it any other way. Money is cool, but not the coolest ( @thanksnyc said that). The coolest thing is to be happy, and that I most certainly am.”
Here is him doing an interview with Artist Decoded, where he is older and has gallery representation4 :
“If you are working somewhere and thinking of leaving your day job, make sure you fix your teeth and your physical health is in shape. Being an independent creative and having good health insurance is very difficult.”
Martinez realizes the hardships of being an independent creative, and has stuck to being one. He would have kept at it, even if Unit London hadn’t approached him. The fact that he is giving advice about good dental hygiene is because he is in here for the long game.
Summarizing
Martinez’s work has a point of view. It is a critique of present day technology and culture, making it relevant as a document of the present times.
Martinez’s meme paintings are inspired by viral images on the internet. This process serves as a unique and clever strategy to garner attention and attract followers.
Success in the art world often involves consistently showcasing your work on relevant channels, waiting for it to catch the attention of someone influential. Martinez was discovered by a gallery that has a clear alignment of values and a shared interest in art and technology as him. This has helped sky rocket his career.
Creating affordable versions of his large paintings like small prints, stickers, raffles, etc has helped Martinez get his work reaching a broader audience and built cultural cachet.
It took years of working on variety of subjects in different styles for Martinez to tune in on his narrative now.
Playing the long game means figuring out small things that could derail an artist, like mental and physical health. This means having a plan to take care of yourself.
I found Martinez’s artistic journey insightful because of all the challenges he overcame like his past addictions and lack of formal training. His raw talent, love of art, and self awareness around talking about his work is reflective of the successful artist he has become. That said, on a personal level, I find a lot of his work, especially his sensitive series, disturbing. Maybe thats the point. I wanted to call this out incase others find themselves where I am after seeing his work.
I started a new twitter account for Science of Art. I would love for you to follow me there so that I am not mistaken for a trolly bot. As always, I would be thankful if you could share this newsletter with friends who are thinking of taking the plunge into independent art. Make sure they fix their teeth first!
Thats it for me this week folks.
Thanks!
Shagun
https://www.emergentmag.com/interviews/mauro-c-martinez
https://www.emergentmag.com/interviews/mauro-c-martinez
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-galleries-find-new-artists
https://artistdecoded.com/198-Mauro-C-Martinez
Fantastic article. Just shared it on my Twitter. I wish you could produce more of these articles. They're deep dives into unique creators and lessons in becoming a working artist.
It's exciting to see how an artist seemingly effortlessly makes his way from the street to foreign sensation to sought by museums.
He reminds me of Ashley Wood. He worked as a comic book artist for years, then partnered with people to create a line of very expensive toys based on a brand titled Adventure Kartel. His art style may not be aesthetically, but it has an energy that makes it exciting to look at. It's also unmistakably his style, that also has the loose feel of street art, There's a clever thing he does where the comics are like packaging for the toys, so it's convenient Yin Yang branding.
You may want to do an article on him one day.
https://www.outregallery.com/collections/ashley-wood
Thank you for sharing this exciting and fun article.