The Business Artist

“Business art is the step that comes after art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called “art” or whatever it’s called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business – they’d say, ‘Money is bad’ and ‘Working is bad’, but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again)

The archetypal business artist Andy Warhol embraced commercialism at a time while most in the creative arts viewed it sceptically, if not disdainfully.  Warhol saw business as a dependable artistic asset saying the following in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again)

A slashie ahead of his time Warhol was; an artist, filmmaker, director of the silver-foiled Factory–a space notorious for its hangers-on, poseurs, and amphetamine addicts but also the breeding ground for the Velvet Underground, a group that invented punk rock twenty years too early–band manager and ‘godfather’ of a music scene that produced The Dom (a multimedia dance club the model for all others), magazine publisher and a television entrepreneur who intentionally blurred the boundaries and lines between art and commerce. 

The Velvet Underground & Nico was released on March 12, 1967.    
  “... everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”      
Brian Eno

Warhol connected art to fashion and business and saw little distinction between advertising art and editorial art. At Interview magazine, he broke down silos and encouraged the young photographers and artists he hired to break boundaries, too.

Sources: The World of Warhol, New York magazine / YouTube
Updated March 27, 2018.
Image attribution:   Middle: sourced via 1stdibs.com sourced via YouTube