Art and the Free market
Posted by richrobinson 7 years, 12 months ago to The Gulch: General
I saw an exchange on Facebook the other day that went something like this:
Person 1 : "Art defines culture. It's an investment in society as a whole. Don't let the false promise of a market free to determine the value of a degree blind you from what really matters. Money is not everything."
Response: "Wow. So much BS in such a little paragraph. Who determines this mythical value to society? In your view it must be the government. Because the only other determinant would be the free market. And if you're adding value there you expect to get paid. Most artists are NOT adding value to society. That is why they take refuge in nonsensical bromides and want to mouch off the rest of us via the government."
Wondering how other Gulchers think and feel about art???
Person 1 : "Art defines culture. It's an investment in society as a whole. Don't let the false promise of a market free to determine the value of a degree blind you from what really matters. Money is not everything."
Response: "Wow. So much BS in such a little paragraph. Who determines this mythical value to society? In your view it must be the government. Because the only other determinant would be the free market. And if you're adding value there you expect to get paid. Most artists are NOT adding value to society. That is why they take refuge in nonsensical bromides and want to mouch off the rest of us via the government."
Wondering how other Gulchers think and feel about art???
I don't have any cultural message or any political agenda in my paintings, but I do always put my deceased son's name inconspicuously in my work in my rememberance of him.
My approach to the business end of the effort is to create a market for my creations. My critics are my buyers and My buyers gift the art to their customers in appreciation for their business as I have suggested them to.
I intend to increase the value of my future work by increasing the demand for my time.
dobrien:
I'm adding you to my list of everyday heroes.
I know a few things about the increasing cost of art supplies at least up until about 10 years ago.
To keep tubes of just primary and secondary colors of oil or acrylic paint on hand beside an easel ain't at all cheap unless you're a Picasso.
Not to mention needful colors like burnt umber and raw sienna.
A big tube of white paint is also essential for lightening any color or blend of colors.
Then there's the know-nothing customer who comes along, sees likes something they like and starts belly-aching about the price.
Not to mention lowlife louts who puff themselves up by verbally abusing the sight of an artist they see painting outside.
You never see that in movies. Painting something outside on canvas only looks cool then.
I wanted to find a market to target. Build up interest and work on a commission basis. I am also pricing low in regards to time spent and supplies.
I am planning on building demand and having the supply potential shrink anticipating a compensation more commensurate for my effort.
It certainly is disturbing to see the behavior you describe. Manners, civility, social etiquette are not valued to the benifit they offer a community. Bullying low life ignorant louts are glorified by the entertainment media and a gentleman is not a character trait admired or portrayed very often.
I would like see some of your work
"Alabama Dino".
Last time I looked at eBaby a lot of nice original art was not moving at all.
Had better luck there getting rid of most of my VHS movies. Like DVDs a lot better.
I wound up steady pay working security guard jobs until my Department of Corrections retirement plan cranked up at age 60 nine years ago. Three years ago I stopped working altogether.
I've inherited some money but haven't given any thought to buying another digital camera.
My best work was sold a long time ago anyway.
Now I'm trying to be a fiction writer in my spare time. Deep into the last century I made an "A" in creative writing.
Stephen King is the same age I am. Sigh!
I really can't add anything to that.
Ever notice how the artists that insist the most that they should not have to compete in the free market work in media that has no major market?
Film - competes commercially
TV - competes commercially
music - competes commercially
literature - competes commercially
Painting/sculpture/hard media - split markets. Media of this type that is intended to be reproduced in volume competes commercially. One-offs serve niche markets.
Competing in any market, whether large and commercial or a small niche all have one thing in common.
For a market to have a transaction someone has to purchase whatever is being sold. That requires the "artist" to produce something that appeals to someone for that purchase.
"Artists" without that ability, or without it in sufficient measure always fall back on the "investment in society" meme. It is crap, and always has been.
This is a relatively recent development, throughout history artists had to earn their commissions.
TANSTAFFL
I have no problem with somebody doing that if he wants to, but I have a big problem with government making us subsidize it.
;)
Culture defines art, Person 1, not the other way around, if by culture we mean the ambient population who reward with their dollars the values being embodied by the artist's work. Art is mind made visible. A transaction between artist and patron reveals the sense of life of each.
What constitutes art? A painting, a sonnet, a symphony, a movie, an evening gown, a necklace, a sculpture? All these and more. From the earliest ages, humans have created images, whether carvings or cave drawings, weavings and embroidery, embodiments of their imaginings. Human brains have this app that lesser animals don’t. Created images give a look into the artist’s psycho-epistemology. And the urge to create, the search for novelty and invention, and the instinct to mimic and imitate, are another mind function that has lifted mankind beyond the limits of the animal kingdom and made civilization possible. (Never mind that we keep breaking it.)
Like anything else produced by individuals, art is a commodity and an object to trade. However, it is not the first tier of need. Food and shelter, warmth and safety come first. Then come self-adornment, decoration, representation. Each step evolves, grows, embeds into the social structure. If art is a selective recreation of perceived reality, its forms and meanings change with every human filter through which perceptions pass, and each observer imbues it with additional subjective nuances.
Art becomes a meme delivery device in a constant state of transformation. It’s how we program our societal software, or it programs us. That’s also how propaganda subverts pure art to manipulate people emotionally to accept the rulers’ orders. It’s hard to find honest art that is not pushing some agenda, that exists only to provide pleasure. Government may subsidize art as a tool of public control. Injected into foreign markets, art can even be used to subvert those populations. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wor...
The question is, should government use taxpayer money to subsidize some artists or art organizations when the private market does not bring them enough return? Does the prevalence of this practice render it acceptable or, for want of a better word, moral? Natural selection is indifferent about winning by fraud or privilege or by superior merit. All survivors are winners, and that makes chicanery a survival tool. The Universe is neither benevolent nor malevolent. It just is.
What is merit? When others vote with their money in an open market, rewarding individual talent. When they are willing to trade a piece of themselves to acquire a part of the artist’s essence because it adds value to their lives. I know artists who are fully pragmatic about pandering to customers’ tastes because that’s what sells. Is that art? Artists who create from the deepest well of their being and find no buyers, or few, can switch and go the pragmatic route or persevere until they find their clientele. Or rethink their purpose. Some things go “viral”, some never appeal. The climate of the culture, its entire accompanying meme ecology, the atmosphere created by the interactions of each individual element, analogous to quantum fluctuations, is the survival medium of an artist’s strivings.
Why bother creating art? It is the individual’s drive to leave a footprint on the sands of time, to wrest for one’s existence a moment of permanence, to carve one’s meaning from one’s earthly years, and most of all to transfer to other consciousnesses the vision held within the artist’s mind.
The same is true of any ideas, political and philosophical. The confluences of nature may experiment with even the most bizarre creations. That is not to say that government should step in with force to give all of them equal success. For who is the government? Just certain individuals with enough power to make decisions about who should live and die. And that is a system that the U.S. Constitution was instituted to remove from human society. And now we can see the process of one set of ideas seeking to annihilate another: coercion versus freedom.
So the short answer is: No. Keep government from dispensing favoritisms. Keep government out of the arts.
clothing ... and what do you do when those are satisfied?
art.
we are involved in interpersonal prose art, here.
I treated my wife to food art in bed this morning.
I gave the dog a form of rubdown art just after.
there's musical art playing in my head right now.
papa possum gives us poetry once in a while.
we work our asses off;;; what's it all for? . art, of
some sort, IMHO.
just my two cents. -- j
.
For what it's worth, I think the government needs to stay out of the art market. The appeal is subjective, and there's a healthy audience willing to pay for what they like.
Culture and Art today define an anti-civilized, anti-lectual, bizarre paradigm that denies all things good, valuable and life sustaining.
I posted a piece last week I think on the history of so called "Modern Art"...the same happened in literature...all of it had it's effects on education. It's a process I call the making of useful idiots that made useless idiots...which by the way have found their way into education and government.
Free Market is an oxymoron at best of times TANSTAAFL and L includes art.
"Art defines culture" - Art influences culture. That's close enough for casual conversation..
"It's an investment in society as a whole." - Change it to "an investment in whoever appreciates it," and I agree.
" false promise of a market free to determine the value" - I agree. Markets are not the only measure of artistic value. Art can have a singular beauty to individuals. There may be no market of buyers/sellers who seek/produce that exact form of beauty.
"Money is not everything." - This is obviously true and needs no explanation.
If Person 1 makes these true statements and then says, "so therefore give artists a handout," that is a non sequitur that reject. The statements are true but not a reason for a handout.
Free Market is an oxymoron at best of times TANSTAAFL and L includes art.
Free Market is an oxymoron at best of times TANSTAAFL and L includes art.