The artist as a brand : Is the concept of integrated brand management transferable to visual artists?

In order to succeed in increasingly saturated markets, visual artists, like companies, face the challenge of having to build strong brands. The resulting research question of the thesis is whether artists, as human beings, are even able to establish a brand in the sense of integrated brand management, since they are not traditional companies with standardized, tangible products. Based on a comprehensive problem description of the situation of (visual) artists, which should justify the development of a brand with artists, visual artists are examined for their brand-relevant characteristics, which give a first starting point for the possibility of building a brand. A literature analysis on the subject of brands and humans/artists should illustrate in more detail that a theoretical linkage of the themes and thus a transfer of the brand concept to the artist is possible through the identity-oriented approach of the brand, which understands a brand as an image in the minds of the recipients. In order to build up such an image, there is a need for a formally and content-coordinated, integrated communication. The aim of the practical analysis part of this thesis is therefore to demonstrate an integrated communication with the aid of a semantic analysis by contemporary German artists Gerhard Richter and Jonathan Meese in order to be able to draw conclusions about a possible brand in both cases