I'm an artist therefore I am automatically entitled to money

[Oosp]

[looking at porn] But is it monetisable?

[jamiefairlie]

Surely all the art created pre-capitalism means the answer is 'no'. Those neolithic people who trekked out to those remote caves on Lofoten in Norway to make art on the cave walls weren't planning on selling it on Etsy.

Ah but, you might say, now that capitalism is dominant, it has also become the main driver for creating art. But there is so much art that people create just for the pleasure of creating it - it's just not seen or heard by that many people.

Not a money reward but perhaps your status in the tribe was boosted or people admired you for it. Positive feedback of any kind is a reward and therefore an incentive to do more. As soon as anyone gets that taste it stops being purely for the pleasure of creating and at least somewhat for the rewards it brings.

[The F Bomb]

This leads me to another tangent which is just because something is consumed en masse (i.e. has a lot of likes/clicks) that doesn't make it better than anything else, it just means more people have seen it, likely because the creator paid for it to be boosted further into the public eye. Monetary value has zero impact on the actual quality of art (until it corrupts it), it just ensures a higher level of engagement. If you can afford to create and don't care about how many people engage with your work, you are free as a bird.

Amen x

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Not a money reward but perhaps your status in the tribe was boosted or people admired you for it. Positive feedback of any kind is a reward and therefore an incentive to do more. As soon as anyone gets that taste it stops being purely for the pleasure of creating and at least somewhat for the rewards it brings.

lots of good art has been written just for fame and wealth ("let's write a swimming pool", maybe Shakespeare and Menander could count)

its not that money or finances corrupts the 'authenticity' but rather that learning to be good at something at sufficently high level is as much about cultivating one's freedom as it is acquiring knowledge and learning techniques

[Vodkafone]

Not a money reward but perhaps your status in the tribe was boosted or people admired you for it. Positive feedback of any kind is a reward and therefore an incentive to do more. As soon as anyone gets that taste it stops being purely for the pleasure of creating and at least somewhat for the rewards it brings.

That can be a part of it I'm sure, but I also think that John Berger's view that art allows people to express what they know (I would add 'feel') has truth.

[superthunderstingcar]

I doubt Rowling was thinking about a theme park near Watford when she wrote The Philosopher's Stone tbh. It's your celebrities/James Patterson giving a few prompts to ghost writers and using their name to sell the book that is the most cynical cash grab.

With Rowling it's difficult to say for certain because her later stuff was written when HP had become huge (and then she/her publisher had to rely on her name to sell pseudonymous crime books) but I don't think she is the worst for capitalist distortion of art.

If this is in response to my

"art" done to squeeze every last ££££ out of a trademarkable property (coughHarry Pottercough).

then fair enough, I should have specified everything Rowling has done since it blew up to become the massive franchise it is today, which is everything after the first three novels - IIRC, those were the ones written before she sold the film rights to Warner Bros.

Maybe I should have picked a different example of something that was created cynically from the outset - Ricky Gervais's standup, perhaps, to contrast against the example of Stewart Lee?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Not a money reward but perhaps your status in the tribe was boosted or people admired you for it. Positive feedback of any kind is a reward and therefore an incentive to do more. As soon as anyone gets that taste it stops being purely for the pleasure of creating and at least somewhat for the rewards it brings.

For every one of these there was, we must assume, the equivalent of the guy who brings an acoustic guitar to a camp fire.

[Vodkafone]

For every one of these there was, we must assume, the equivalent of the guy who brings an acoustic guitar to a camp fire.

Those are the ones they find skeletons of with signs of blunt force trauma.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I'm coming at this from the amateur end of things. I create very niche fanstuff, mostly involving characters/pairings overlooked by the rest of the fandom. The currency is likes/kudos/reblogs/reviews. It's soul-destroying to labour on something and put it online to radio silence, and meanwhile the latest cliché-ridden, paint-by-numbers, 1001st story involving the fandom's special darling one true pairing gets rave reviews. Sometimes it feels like people just want the same old slop over and over, slop I could serve them up only I have integrity harrumph harrumph etc. And this is just my hobby. I can't imagine trying to make a go of art as a profession, especially now when it seems like you have to either work for a massive corporation (who hate taking chances on original work and love cancelling shit for the tax write-offs) or have to give away your labour of love for free or close to it, just to get it seen.

(btw @madhair60 if you ever decide to release a book version of Merry Hell please tell me, I'll buy a copy)

[greenman]

Good thread. My broad sentiment is that artists should create primarily for themselves and, perhaps, for their community. If some artists want to put a price on their creative enterprise, they enter a different realm where the market dictates whether they get paid. If they're not good enough or don't understand the market well enough, they will get paid appropriately.

I really enjoy photography in my free time. I've sold a number of prints on request but if I wanted to live off photography, I'd need to be better, more distinctive and vastly more engaged in marketing my work. Or, I'd need to enter a more commercial sector, such as weddings, family portraiture or explicitly commercial work. Being good at something and being paid for something are completely separate, in my mind.

If you choose to become a working artist, in any field, you'd better be extremely good or extremely commercial because nobody owes you nothing.

To be honest selling landscape prints for a living I struggle to create any photography which isnt "for myself". The locations maybe done for commercial considerations(but also because what sells best is around were I live allowing me to work more) but I struggle to use anything but my own taste(for better or worse) as a guide to creating them. Not only do I have little interesting in trying to take stuff of a location purely because I think it would sell but honestly I struggle even to take such pictures at all, straight forward rustic shots of a certain village, church, etc. Even when I'v tried doing that I find myself trying for something more., ending up more interested in some cloud formation behind them or lighting on them.

[bgmnts]

I'm coming at this from the amateur end of things. I create very niche fanstuff, mostly involving characters/pairings overlooked by the rest of the fandom. The currency is likes/kudos/reblogs/reviews. It's soul-destroying to labour on something and put it online to radio silence, and meanwhile the latest cliché-ridden, paint-by-numbers, 1001st story involving the fandom's special darling one true pairing gets rave reviews. Sometimes it feels like people just want the same old slop over and over, slop I could serve them up only I have integrity harrumph harrumph etc.

Why don't you try and make some slop, see what happens? It's probably a skill to serve up slop.

[madhair60]

slippery starmer slurping up slop

[Mister Six]

I don't really get this as if you just want to make art but not receive attention, money, kudos from art then this is easy enough, Capitalism doesn't stop me playing the piano in the evening, if I could make money from playing the piano however it would be me engaging with Capitalism surely.

Capitalism stops most people from being able to afford a piano (or the lessons to play one) at all.

Likewise, Rubin's access to capital gives him a degree of artistic freedom that most don't have. Studio time (or having your own studio, which he probably does), instruments, producers/engineers, session musicians etc all cost money.

Practically all artistic expression beyond vocalising (singing, storytelling, beatboxing) and creation requires some kind of financial input, and in some cases (filmmaking, orchestral music, theatre, large-scale sculpture) that means quite extraordinary amounts of cash.

So criticism at Rubin for talking from a place of privilege for being able to do what he wants artistically because he no longer needs to struggle to put a roof over his head, much less pay for the resources to fit his chosen artform are fair.

Plus, there's time. Speaking of which...

Also literally everyone needs to make a living? Are we suggesting art is worth more than other forms of work?

I think the point is that "making a living" gets in the way of art. Engaging in making art - not just noodling on the piano, but actually creating musical works - requires the mental space to contemplate and create, things that are difficult to do in a world where everything is a constant grind for money, money, money, and businesses are doing what they can to bleed all energy and time out of their workforce in the name of "productivity", at the same time reducing job stability in an environment of ever increasing costs and number of expenses.

Because of that, and because of things like the introduction of student loans and a general drive towards viewing everything through the lens of financial value, there has been a notable drop in working class people in the UK arts over the past few decades. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this is true across the West as a whole.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Why don't you try and make some slop, see what happens? It's probably a skill to serve up slop.

Well I'm making fun of my own hubris there. But honestly, in fanfic, if a pairing/ship is common enough, it's pretty easy to write a story that hits all the beats that fans of the pairing love. I did it in my first online fandom (not cynically, I did like the pairing in question). Unless you're technically inept (no paragraph breaks, bad spelling, no punctuation etc) or fill it with weird kinks/"edginess", your work will get praise because there's an audience for it.

[bgmnts]

Well that suggests you have a particular talent for writing stories to me.

[ZoyzaSorris]

Some really shockingly bad philistine takes on here, from exactly the posters I'd expect who I suspect have never had a creative thought in their lives so I guess I'd understand why they have such bovine point-missing views.

[The Mollusk]

Such as what from who

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Well that suggests you have a particular talent for writing stories to me.

You're very kind. I've gone completely the other way and now I do write largely for myself. I still get a bit sad when something I spend hours on gets very little engagement, but on the other hand I've been pleasantly surprised when a story featuring an unusual pairing or an overlooked character gets kudos/reviews.

[PlanktonSideburns]

This gangly boy posted a nice song on this subject today

[ZoyzaSorris]

Such as what from who

Not you

[shoulders]

Re: I'm an artist therefore I am automatically entitled to money

Also disagree with this attitude and have encountered many toxic versions of it, such as musicians and photographers being very aggressive and bullying to me because I or others chose to make their art free to consume or do whatever with.

If you have made something that no-one has asked you to make and the value of it is genuinely unknown there can be no default expectation of financial reward for that. You actually have to grow a fanbase to get anywhere near that. The hardest work, and the most joyless for an independent artist is the marketing.

Btw, before anyone starts, I support universal basic income so more fundamentally I agree with living a decent existence because you're alive. 

[13 schoolyards]

Whenever someone points at an artist and says "hey, they managed to become a success - or just earn a living - while staying true to their vision", they're overlooking the hundreds or thousands of other artists who started out at roughly the same time with roughly the same level of talent and ability, only though bad luck or lack of connections or lack of personal attractiveness or just not quite being in tune with the zeitgeist they went nowhere despite putting in just as much hard graft.

It's just a numbers game, and every single success in the arts is either a massive fluke or the product of a lot of cynical marketing (check how many best selling authors came from publishing / are related to other best selling authors / are celebrities already). You might as well follow your own artistic vision, it's just as likely to lead you to success as "selling out".

[The F Bomb]

To be honest selling landscape prints for a living I struggle to create any photography which isnt "for myself". The locations maybe done for commercial considerations(but also because what sells best is around were I live allowing me to work more) but I struggle to use anything but my own taste(for better or worse) as a guide to creating them. Not only do I have little interesting in trying to take stuff of a location purely because I think it would sell but honestly I struggle even to take such pictures at all, straight forward rustic shots of a certain village, church, etc. Even when I'v tried doing that I find myself trying for something more., ending up more interested in some cloud formation behind them or lighting on them.

You're good enough, then. It doesn't sound like awareness of what sells locally affects what you want to shoot, but there's some overlap of your own taste and consumer tastes. That's a good place to be.

[Urinal Cake]

Universal income.

[greenman]

Why don't you try and make some slop, see what happens? It's probably a skill to serve up slop.

Could well be I spose but I think also in training yourself to make something more you potentially lose your ability to take "snapshots", I find it very hard to take pictures of anything without weighing up lighting, rules of thirds, leading lines, etc.

Its going to sound a bit arrogant I spose but honestly I do think selling photography is very often a bit of a grift. One of the biggest problems I ran up against starting out was that whilst plenty of artists co op places existed around me it was almost impossible to join any of them because they already "had a photographer". Painting they would have no problem with having half a dozen people involved but photography what tended to happen is you would get one person who did not do it full time, or rather they often did something like wedding photography and the viewed selling snapshot prints of the local area as easy(for them anyway) money and would veto any other photographer joining probably fearing they would be doing the same.

[TrenterPercenter]

Capitalism stops most people from being able to afford a piano (or the lessons to play one) at all.

You want pianos and piano lessons on the NHS?

I jest, you want a socialised system that provides individuals with the means of production and the time and space to be creative.  I can get onboard with this but it's socialised right?

Can we think this through a bit.  Is it everyone gets a go and if you've got the talent you get to keep having a go or do those that don't meet some standard get to go back to their "equally respected" care work, we can write a song that they can listen too whilst they wipe people arses.  Wait a minute though art is subjective, definitely my art is, so perhaps the noodling on my piano is eventually going to lead to "an art" and so can I be excused from other work until I get there?

I jest again.  I think proper funding for the arts is important, art is very important imo,  and access should be improved with a particular focus on working class people.  I don't believe that artists in the main are the most socially minded group in the workforce, yet I appreciate more working class people doing art would/might change this (hence why I think it is important).  The clear issue however is that if you view "talent" as a rarity, then you have a commodity that people often just use in capitalistic ways anyway, social capital for example, I am good at guitar so I deserve more attention etc (plus a tacit depreciation of other work) there is in a sense an inherent element of capital already in art perhaps.

Also our famous artists of today rarely talk about this (and those in the past in more socialised times also seemed to enjoy fame quite a bit and had issues paying taxes etc...) those that do are an exception to the rule as far as I can see.

[superthunderstingcar]

'Art' is one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I make art; you have a hobby; he/she/they produce commercialised trash.

[FeederFan500]

I do kind of agree with TrenterPercenter in that in a non-capitalist society an "artist" still has to justify their existence on some level. Like you can't just have everyone doing their own thing claiming they are misunderstood and expect to be supported by the rest of society.

I'm not advocating for art to be judged on what price it commands but there will still be some arbiter of taste, as to who gets to spend all day creating, and who gets to spend an hour doing so after toiling the land.

[All Surrogate]

Criticise after dinner.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I do kind of agree with TrenterPercenter in that in a non-capitalist society an "artist" still has to justify their existence on some level. Like you can't just have everyone doing their own thing claiming they are misunderstood and expect to be supported by the rest of society.

You could, under fully automated luxury space communism.

No but seriously, even if we had Universal Basic Income and automated all the shit jobs that we could automate (cleaning, for instance), I feel like most people would still want to do a non-artistic job. Especially if less pleasant jobs that can't be automated (for example, nursing) were well-paid with decent amounts of time off. I would much rather people who are out of work have enough money (via social welfare or UBI) to pursue a creative dream, whether it pans out for them (commercial success) or not, rather than be fucked around by a temp agency or labour in the Amazon warehouse for sixteen hours a day. We aren't all suddenly going to sit around demanding to be paid for paintings of our own shit if we can draw the dole for as long as we want or if Universal Basic Income is introduced.