Can You Make Any Kind Of Living As An Artist? [Guardian Article]

Amadan said:

Come on, now. I am not one of those libertarians who thinks the NEA is sapping my vital essences. I am not opposed to government grants to support the arts. I wish more of my tax dollars supported the arts.

But the scenario of a writer wanting a SBA loan so she can quit her day job and write ovels (with no advance evidence that she can even sell her writing) is a little too Smuch government subsidy even for my tastes.

I do not think a return to the patronage system, with the government assuming the role of patron, is a good way to support the arts.

Click to expand...

So if I quite my day job and get a subsidy to make chocolate that's okay because I might hire some one? Most small businesses do not hire anyone for years. And most business loose money and never make a profit.

You have to pay taxes on writing income, art is as much of industry as anything else, from the chair you're sitting on to the movie you watched last week, art had a part and some one created a business to produce it.

I'm loving this thread. Go on...

James D. Macdonald said:

True, but irrelevant to an understanding of the nature of art.

Click to expand...

Clearly, I disagree (about both the relevance and the nature of art), since I spent several posts explaining why I think otherwise.

RichardGarfinkle said:

I don't agree. The fact that we find art among the oldest human artifacts implies that there is something fundamental to the human psyche about art.

Just as we have reason to believe that story-telling is in some way fundamental to human thinking, so visual art seems to be.

One of the most obvious candidates for this basic character of art lies in the nature of memory and the power of well crafted images to remind us of even the most sophisticated of concepts.

Click to expand...

I agree with this, though I would say that is not only fundamental to our psyches, it is a neurological function of the human brain - or rather, the result of several higher brain functions. Our brains are never going to stop doing the things that (a) cause some people to create art and (b) cause others to be mentally receptive to that art. They are the exact same functions that allow us to develop abstractions, plan for the future, resolve complex problems, etc.

I maintain that if we did not have art-making brains, there would be no such thing as iron foundries or cash flows or organ transplants or investment banking, etc., because human beings would not be capable of developing and communicating such complex ideas.

Making art exercises these creative and generative brain functions. Looking at art, reading art, listening to art, also stimulate and exercise those same creative and generative functions and fuel the interchange of ideas. That is why art is not unnecessary to life, nor is it parasitical upon society. Parasites typically take more than they give back. Art does not do that.

The way it pays these days, I'd say it's gotten to be the exact opposite, actually.

James D. Macdonald said:

Also true, but also irrelevant.

Art must, by necessity, be unnecessary. Necessary art is called "craft."

Click to expand...

Since when?

James D. Macdonald said:

Parasitical I have already elaborated: Art draws its sustenance from society, yet is unnecessary.

Click to expand...

You have asserted this, but you have not proven it. This point is in contention.

Cyclopean: Art is huge, inhuman, and devouring. At the same time art is a source of safety and defense.

Click to expand...

Well now you're just talking dada. A friendly gaga blung to you, too, Mr. Ball, but that kind of declaration seems like the sort of thing that should be answered with pornography.

By the way and on topic, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamps were entirely self-funded, while William S. Burroughs advised young writers to scarf up as much grant money or other public handouts as they could get their hands on. He also had some remarks very on point to this discussion, I think:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TC6V6D8yUs

The next part of my grand theory of art involves mapping those four bases onto the four seasons, the four humors, the four elements, and the four horses of the quadriga.

(To forestall the question: The four horses of the quadriga are the literal, the moral, the allegorical, and the anagogical.)

This all maps to the Wheel of Fortune and the period of Carnival, where we come to our final understanding of the nature of art: Art is festive.

The question that started all this stems from the liminal nature of art: Art stands at the boundaries. Artists thus stand at the boundaries, and, like others who are removed from society, are seen as both holy and dangerous. Prisoners and priests. Hermits and thieves.

Click to expand...

Let me know when the trading cards are ready. I want the whole set. I can use them to tell fortunes, and I'll call it fanfic, only it will all be true.

And this is why there is a question about receiving money for art: For the hermits have no need of money, and the thieves have no right to it.

Click to expand...

Nonsense. Money is infinitely valuable to hermits. Coins are shiny and can be used to bait fish, while paper money can insulate the hermit's humble bed and ragged pants and keep him warm.

And why should the thief have no right to money? He works just as hard as anyone and harder than some. Have you ever been a thief? It's not easy, you know. Not if one tries to be good at it.

James D. Macdonald said:

There is no controversy at all over paying portraitists. The most fervent right-wing anti-NEA ideologue has nothing to say against paying someone to paint an oil of the CEO to hang in the boardroom. The portraitist partakes of the holy.

Even so, no one would be surprised if that portraitist were also a marginal person: Using drugs and alcohol, a freethinker, partaking in non-standard sexual relationships, or otherwise existing outside of the norms of society.

That most working artists are completely conventional persons has nothing to do with the myth of the Artist as sacred monster.

Click to expand...

Would anyone be surprised if the CEO was also such a marginal person, as well as a thief and a liar, just like the artist?

This idea of marginality that allows for the attitude that art is something other than a profession... who draws these margins and where are they drawn? We don't need to run out to the raggedy edges to see how fragile this notion of the center is. No less centery a writer than Hawthorne made an art of ripping the mask of centeredness off the safe center of society's morals and notions of propriety and necessity.

At the risk of crashing in like some low-rent intellectual vandal, I feel that many of these high flying claims for art miss the central point by a country mile and very often hide an unprovable hypothesis - or worse still, the bleeding obvious - under a carapace of phenomenally long words or classical concepts which give the impression of veracity but without having to adduce a single shred of evidence. Listening to Will Self or Jonathan Meades can be a daunting experience as one tries to work out what the hell all the words mean, but once one has got through the form of the thing, the substance is frequently rather more prosaic.

So, one can make the intellectual case for art being Cyclopean, parasitical or whatever, but ultimately, I'd argue that art is there for one purpose only - to entertain. It might be there to entertain others or simply to entertain oneself. It matters not.

If I am right - which I might not be - there is simply no reason to place the artist at the boundaries, in the middle or indeed anywhere specific. We like being entertained. We also like having watertight houses. An artist is therefore as integral a cog in enjoying life as is a roofer. Art is not liminal. It is also not inhuman or devouring. We consume it and it is, by its very nature, quintessentially human.

Entertainment - and therefore art - is therefore pretty mundane. It is something we do to while away whatever time is left after we have dealt with the basics of staying alive. So, I'd agree that art is unnecessary and/or parasitical insofar as we don't need to do it to stay alive. But that doesn't get us very far, as practically everything is unnecessary and parasitical by that measure.

Regards,

Peter

Weird. I agree with everything you said except the last two sentences -- maybe the last three. Strange how viewpoints can diverge like that.

RichardGarfinkle said:

But now you've shifted from talking about Art itself to the image of artists within a culture.

Click to expand...

In the grand theory of Art we mustn't confuse the artist with the Artist.

Festivals and rituals both require a master of ceremonies. Someone builds the walls that mark the boundaries and someone constructs the labyrinths.

Can we indeed talk about Dance without noticing the existence of dancers?

muravyets said:

You have asserted this, but you have not proven it. This point is in contention.

Click to expand...

Then take it as an axiom.

Lol...wait...I think Mura's point was that she did not accept the statement as axiomatic in the first place. Right? I could be wrong. I tend to be slow.

I can see how it could be said that some types of art are unnecessary, or mundane, or entertainment, or "cyclopean" if we must call it that, or liminal--but that's assuming narrow views about what can be a very large whole, I think.

Posted by muravyets:
I would say that is not only fundamental to our psyches, it is a neurological function of the human brain - or rather, the result of several higher brain functions. Our brains are never going to stop doing the things that (a) cause some people to create art and (b) cause others to be mentally receptive to that art. They are the exact same functions that allow us to develop abstractions, plan for the future, resolve complex problems, etc.

Click to expand...

This. Perhaps art itself, in most cases, is not absolutely necessary to survival, in the same way as food and water. But art is, at its core, a symbolic communication, which is the type of communication that has allowed humans to form our singular social workings and weird-ass immense societies without getting killed by tigers and drought and other humans.

Art then, usually, takes the form and role of social identification and role and action, and social role is phenomenally vital to human existence within the framework of culture. Dance, for example, or religious art, or body modification, or luxury items, or hieroglyphs, etc. Is the Lotus Sutra not art? Are neck torques cyclopean? Are ceremonial grave goods unnecessary? Are the little ushabtis buried with Egyptian kings liminal? Do the things that comprise the makeup of ideology that hold societies together mean nothing? Human beings may need only physical things to survive, but they require more than physical goods to thrive. We need symbols; we need representation. Art does not completely fill in the gaps, but it certainly takes a huge part in it.

Cooperation and communication are the things that have kept us alive. Art may draw its sustenance from society, but it also helps to sustain it.

RichardGarfinkle said:

By the way. It's unsporting to require that people take as an axiom the very thing they disagree with.

Click to expand...

I'm not trying to be sporting. I'm trying to describe what Art means to me.

James D. Macdonald said:

In the grand theory of Art we mustn't confuse the artist with the Artist.

Festivals and rituals both require a master of ceremonies. Someone builds the walls that mark the boundaries and someone constructs the labyrinths.

Can we indeed talk about Dance without noticing the existence of dancers?



Then take it as an axiom.

Click to expand...

No, thanks.

buzhidao said:

Lol...wait...I think Mura's point was that she did not accept the statement as axiomatic in the first place. Right? I could be wrong. I tend to be slow.

...

Click to expand...

Nope, you're right.

James D. Macdonald said:

I'm not trying to be sporting. I'm trying to describe what Art means to me.

Click to expand...

Well and good. We're all entitled to our personal perspectives. But you earlier established the context of asserting that art is unnecessary and parasitic. Your explanation of what art means to you does not provide sufficient logic to support that assertion. So it's not your vision of what art means that fails -- though it may have meaning only for you. What fails is your argument about the nature of art and its role in society. It stands only as your own personal opinion, but in the context of whether the arts are a business that deserve funding or loans like other businesses, it doesn't hold together.