Art Isn't a Competition, Until It Is

The other day, while doom scrolling, I ran into a meme: “Artists are treating this as a competition. Competition happens at the bottom. Collaboration happens at the top.” I’ve seen versions of this quote countless times. I know and like the artist who posted it, understand the context it’s coming from, and this piece isn’t meant as a personal jab. The quote made me pause, and I wanted to dig deeper into it to see if it was a meaningful explanation that reflects how the art world works, or an emotionally satisfying, intellectually hollow aspirational platitude.

Most Artists Want to Succeed

This idea feels relatively new in how it’s framed within the art world, but the sentiment behind it has been around for decades and has long been common in corporate culture. Lately, it’s been everywhere in art groups, communities, podcasts, and social media. Some of it holds up, a lot of it doesn’t. Let’s be honest, most artists want to succeed. That belief comes from years spent moving through music, fine art, interior design, architecture, and a long stretch inside corporate America. Artists want their work to be seen, heard, and to actually matter, and yes, many of us would also like to sell a few pieces along the way.

The Reality of Scarcity

According to Contemporary Art Issue, there are over five million active artists worldwide, collectively producing an estimated 125 to 250 million new works each year. Most collectors are one-time buyers, while only about 6,000 collectors globally spend more than $100,000 annually on art, with over 80 percent concentrated in the U.S. and Europe. Despite this volume, only one in five artists will ever exhibit, competing for space across roughly 25,000 galleries and 7,500 museums worldwide.

Making Art Isn’t a Competition, But Art Careers Are

Saying “art isn’t about competition” often sounds less like a hard truth and more like a way of stepping around an uncomfortable reality, not that art shouldn’t be collaborative, but that focusing on competition somehow makes you selfish. It can come off as a way of saying success shouldn’t matter, or at least that no one should be too focused on their own. That’s easy to say when the conversation stays safely in the studio, and a lot harder once art leaves the studio and enters the real world. To be clear, the act of creating art isn’t a competition. There’s no finish line, podium, or gold medal for “Best Use of Purple.” But the business side of art, exposure, visibility, opportunities, and sustainability, absolutely is.

Why Competition Isn’t the Villain

Competition itself isn’t evil. It’s rooted in evolutionary pressures, limited resources, survival, and selection, all of which are hardwired into us, and we don’t escape it just because we’d rather not deal with it. Competition pushes people to improve, drives experimentation, and forces refinement and continuous improvement. Working toward the level of another artist stops being personal growth and becomes competition the moment only one of you gets chosen. With a finite number of exhibitions, galleries, grants, collectors, and platforms, pretending otherwise feels naïve. Success isn’t a participation award; it’s elevation.

How Competition Shows Up

Competition shows up in the fine art world constantly, especially among emerging, developing, and mid-career artists. I’m not even touching blue-chip markets or auction houses here. It shows up when strong work gets submitted, rejected, and later work that feels objectively weaker ends up accepted. Feeling nothing in that moment would require a level of emotional detachment most people don’t have. The same dynamic plays out in more visible ways. A few examples: larger, better-designed booths at art fairs that pull attention; pricing tactics where artists with comparable skill undercut to gain traction; and marketing decisions, how work is presented, photographed, titled, described, and pushed. And yes, it shows up on social media through stronger reels, sharper captions, better timing, and wider reach.

Honesty About Wanting More

Whether admitted or not, artists compete. Wanting visibility or success doesn’t make someone selfish or cutthroat; it makes them honest. I’ve been genuinely happy and irritated at the same time for artist friends or colleagues who received an opportunity I didn’t. Those emotions can coexist.

Diplomas, Entitlement, and Expectation

There’s also an uncomfortable sense of entitlement that sneaks into these conversations, especially when competition comes up. Somewhere along the way, a diploma started being confused with a guarantee, as if earning a degree or finishing a program means the work deserves attention by default. It doesn’t. Education is valuable. It can sharpen thinking, accelerate growth, and teach art history facts that rarely factor into why anyone buys a piece of work. But it doesn’t make the work good or make an artist immune to competition. No one has ever bought a piece of art because the artist had an MFA hanging next to the canvas.

When Rejection Becomes Resentment

When rejection happens, it’s easier to say the system is broken than to ask whether the work needs to be better. That mindset doesn’t eliminate competition; it just replaces effort with resentment. Before anyone gets defensive, I’m including myself here. I’ve absolutely believed my work deserved more at certain points. In hindsight, some of it did, but most of it didn’t.

The Reality of Collaboration

That said, I’m not anti-collaboration. Years spent moving between creative and corporate environments have shown both the upside and the downside of it. I’ve also grown to genuinely dislike the phrase “there is no I in team.” It sounds nice, but in practice it often ignores how uneven effort actually plays out. This isn’t about multiple artists working on a single piece. It’s about collaboration in the broader sense, shared shows, collectives, group efforts, mutual promotion, and community-building.

Doers and Coat-Tailers

When collaboration works, it is incredibly effective. Artists push each other forward, knowledge gets shared, and doors open that might not have otherwise. Helping other artists isn’t something I struggle with. I’ve recommended artists to collectors and businesses, shared information and hard-earned lessons, and participated in collaborative efforts across many different parts of my creative and professional life.

But like any group effort, collaboration tends to reveal two types of people fairly quickly: the doers and the coat-tailers. This is where my bitterness shows up. I’ve often been the doer, the workhorse, the person carrying more than their share, and that gets old fast. To be fair, I also play a role in that dynamic. I’m a bit of a control freak. I like things done a certain way, and I often take on more than I should. Some of that frustration is self-inflicted.

Collaboration Persists

Artists put a lot on the line. Their work is personal, rejection is frequent, and that combination can grind one down. Collaboration can help soften that blow. Mentorships, artist-to-artist relationships, gallery partnerships, and collector relationships all help keep the ecosystem moving.

Isolation Leads to Stagnation

Without some level of collaboration, the art world would collapse into isolation and stagnation, producing work that becomes increasingly insular, repetitive, and aesthetically safe. Where collaboration really matters is in elevating the value of artists as a whole. Too many creatives continue to undervalue their work, reinforcing the persistent “starving artist” narrative. Everything we interact with daily, signage, media, products, and environments, exists because of artists, yet the value of that creativity is routinely minimized. If artists can collaborate on raising standards, appropriate pricing, and expectations, it doesn’t just benefit artists; it begins to dismantle the “starving artist” myth for a broader public that continues to undervalue creative work.

Collaboration Changed Culture

https://www.theartstory.org/movement/surrealism/

Historically, some of the most influential art movements didn’t emerge from isolation. The Impressionists, the Surrealists, and later graffiti and street art movements shared ideas, challenged norms, and together pushed against the status quo as a collective, eventually reshaping culture in the process. But collaboration didn’t erase hierarchy or selection. Not every artist involved became equally recognized or carried the same weight. Even within movements built on shared ideas, there was still an undercurrent of competition, artists pushing themselves and each other, refining ideas, and testing boundaries. Some work rose, some didn’t, and some names endured while others faded, collaboration creating the conditions for change without guaranteeing outcomes.

Art Doesn’t Compete, Careers Do

Creative expression isn’t a race and isn’t something you win or lose. Art, in its purest form, doesn’t keep score. But art careers are a different story. The moment work shifts from intrinsic to extrinsic validation, when it’s meant to be seen, sold, exhibited, or monetized, it enters systems built on selection. Attention is finite, and opportunities are limited. Exhibitions, galleries, grants, collectors, and platforms all involve choice. Someone gets picked. Someone doesn’t.

Competition and Collaboration Are Symbiotic

Competition isn’t the enemy. It’s the friction that forces growth and pushes artists to refine their work, clarify their voice, and take themselves seriously. Ignoring it doesn’t make the art world fairer; it just makes it harder to navigate honestly. Collaboration, community, and helping other artists matter and are necessary for growth, raising standards, and for the art community to gain strength. Supporting others doesn’t require pretending you don’t want success for yourself. Collaboration doesn’t replace competition; they’re symbiotic.

The idea that "competition happens at the bottom while collaboration lives at the top” sounds nice and aspirational, but it oversimplifies reality. At every level, artists compete for attention, opportunity, and relevance, while relying on collaboration to grow, learn, and push culture forward. Artists aren’t really competing against one another on an individual level so much as they’re competing to make work that resonates, stands out, and earns its place over time. And in an oversaturated art world, that requires more than good intentions and mutual encouragement. It requires honesty about how this all actually works, including where I fit within it.