i had a conversation with joel yesterday about what he wants to after a-levels. he is brilliant at art/design and is thinking of doing a foundation year at an art college when the time comes and then some kind of art degree. he did work experience a while back at one of the uk’s leading advertising agencies and had a good time. but i was interested to hear him reflecting on that and thinking if he did art that he really didn’t want to end up somewhere like that. i may be stretching the conversation for the sake of making a point (and the gift was very much in my mind when we spoke) but i think joel was sensing the tension between art as gift and art as commodity/commerce in service of the market.
a dilemma for every artist is how to do your art and survive when your art probably isn’t going to make you money or not a lot. hyde suggests that that issue is resolved one of three ways – artists take second jobs to support their art; they get patrons who sponsor their art (and of course those patrons money comes from the market economy as well); or they manage to create some income via fees and royalties. but whatever way they do we all know that
no matter how the artist chooses or is forced to resolve the problem of his livelihood he is likely to be poor.
artists who are rich are the exception and if they do find a way to make some money everyone starts having a go at them for selling out! the most famous artists often only make money and are really recognised after they are dead!
banksy is an interesting example of an artist living with the tension of both gift and market economies. as a stencil artist nearly all of his art has been gift, sprayed on walls for anyone to see, often subversive and cheeky. he must have lived hand to mouth for years or earned money by day to buy spray paint for his art by night. but in recent years he has become famous and has worked out how to make some money from his art – he’s published several booklets and one larger book, sells limited edition screen prints, and banksy originals now fetch quite a sum. i read an interview with him where he was asked about this and he replied that it was frustrating to sell something for £100 and then see it on e-bay for 10 times that the next day so you just up the price. there are also plenty of places to buy a banksy print that is a photo someone else has taken of one of his stencils which i guess is inevitable.
i have sensed recently that people who loved banksy’s stuff have started feeling as though he shouldn’t be entering the market in this way. but i think he is a shining example of someone who keeps the spirit of gift alive. he keeps doing free stuff – gift out in the streets. even the stuff that people are buying is endued with the spirit of gift in my view. i loved the gift of his stencils on the apartheid wall in palestine. and i was delighted to see that he has a shop on his web site that is full of free stuff – images that you can download at a high enough resolution to make a desktop or print (well a small print). you can feel the tension though between gift and market but he seems to have found a way of keeping the gift alive and turning market wealth back into gift wealth.
it’s made me realise what a hard time we can give underground artists of any description whose art is for sale in some way, even though the chances are most of those artists will struggle. i think we should do everything we can to support artists and encourage them to develop and pass on their gifts and work with the spirit of gift very much alive. after all, our culture doesn’t help artists, and i think the church doesn’t see the point in supporting artists or chooses to invest elsewhere. creativity and art are some of the greatest gifts.
i was also thinking about proost which we set up to be a way we could pass on the gifts of alternative worship, our own music and art, and that of other artists to a wider audience. but of course it circulates in the market and gift economies. we are currently revamping it for later this year. the gift has helped me realise just how important it is that the heart of what it is about must be gift even though there are commercial transactions – and i hope that it does genuinely continue to be a site where the spirit of gift is alive and artists can offer their gifts to a wider audience as well as converting some market wealth back into support their art through transactions that take place there.
we’re crap at making money and always have been so the gift has encouraged me that we might well be artists…
Jonny – thanks for this. Interesting thoughts.
I think the internet / blogs have brought huge new opportunities for artists. Though in order to make a living one needs to invest quite a lot of time into the business / marketing side of things as well as the art side of things. But then I suspect I ‘sold out’ a long time ago…
Interesting article Jonny, it often seems to me that as an artist if the aim of your work is to sell it as a commodity then you will probably make stuff which is less original, inspiring etc. and will probably sell less … where as if the aim of your work is to be a gift you suddenly free yourself from all sorts of contraints like what you think people will buy and will probably make better work as a result which will sell more?
Also I think Banksy is interesting because the aim of his work seems to be to challenge people’s precepts on society and culture – some of my favourite work of his other than the palestine wall painting was the recent Paris Hilton CD stunt and the Boadicea wheel clamp thing … But this seems to me to be different to artists like say the Chapman brothers who in my opinion would use shock tactics just as a way of getting publicity which will add commercial value to their work?
Interesting post. Writing from the perspective of reading only this post I have to say this.
What is selling out? When I was younger in the early 80’s I loved punk and new wave music. Today I go to my local grocery and New Order is blaring from the loudspeakers. (Ian Curtis is probably spinning in his grave) At one time they were cutting edge not considered posers at all. Of course there were still folks who consdered them sell-outs even back then. Usually by the musicians who were floundering in obscurity.
I have lived on the ragged edge, always one step ahead of the landlord, can’t say I liked it much. Of course there are good memories from that time, but nothing I would totally romanticize.
Fighting selling out is a noble ideal when you are young. It’s not so noble in your thirties.
Larry
Considering I just had a conversation with my wife 15 minutes ago about how poor we are and it must be God helping us to relate to the people we serve at Revolution, this totally hits home.
Most of the people are artistic in some way (music, acting, art, etc)…
Thanks for edifying me in my poverty! 🙂
go joel, go!
if you love money… if you measure success by what you can afford and how many cars, houses and swimming pools you have… don’t become an artist! if, however, you have stuff to say and a creative way of saying it, even if it’s not what the majority wants to here… and if you have a burning need to express yourself creatively and don’t mind having less spending money than your mates, then the artists life is for you!
integrity won’t bring financial reward in itself, neither will the quality of your work.
patronage used to be alive and kicking in the church… sadly, that’s no longer true.
i’m fortunate… i’m making some kind of living being me… and in my professional work i tend to work for causes where the budgets are lower than they would be in the commercial world. sometimes i think, ‘what am i doing… i could be rich!” but mostly i think, ‘no, this is what i choose to do!” i made my decision when i was a bit older than joel… i was in my first professional advertising job… and i thought, ‘you know what… other peoples cans of beans are just not important enough to me. that’s not what i care about.’
there were no mentors for me… nobody i knew who’d done the same thing… there was no map… just a kind of god given (i believe) self belief.
i am self employed… but i’m rubbish at business… but why would i be good at it? i wonder how many business people are great at art!
here’s a radical idea. rich people put a portion of their income aside to patronise an artist. all you leaders and ministers out there, challenge the wealthy in your congregation to support someone who has something to say… tell them, they may well see no financial reward for their act, but do it anyway for the good health of everyone!
so much of what we know about the past and the way we were has been given to us by artists, writers, painters, musicians, sculptors etc… do we really only value historical christian artists! if the answer is ‘no’, then it is important that as a christian community we put food on the artists table so that he/she can get on with their calling, as i said above, for the good health of everyone!
are these just the ramblings of a madman, or do i have a point?
I’ll throw this in, God has granted us all certain gifts. There are christians who are very astute in business, they dole out a lot of cash to the church and other ministries. There are those who don’t make so much who dole out a lot of time to their church and other ministries.
I am self employed and have the freedom to concentrate more on the mission God has given me. There is a cost to that. I am on the ragged edge a lot. But that is where He wants me right now.
I have to surrender to that every day. Thats ok, well, most of the time. Until my wife’s security gland starts freaking out..
Larry
when certain friends of mine come into town to spend a few days with my family, we dream about maybe one day all living in the same place again and starting a church. One of the things that we really dream about it to have the space and money to give artist’s several years of living expense’s in exchange for a very small number of works for the communities use. This would allow them the amount of time for them to spend on developing “their” style, and not worry about living. We really got the idea from the US work program in the 30’s when most of the artist’s in the New York School (abstract expressionism..pollack…etc.) painted for a salary and gave WHATEVER they made to the government.
I guess this somewhat mirror’s a sort of patron system, but also hopefully spending time with the artist developing their style in light of their faith and life living inside the incarnation.
Art as gift or commodity is not mutually incompatible.
Some of the recent campaigns by groups such as Amnesty have been truly awe inspiring as they have used images that convey their powerful messages. Art in it’s widest form has been ignored by church for too long and we need to understand its power and use in worship. Use your gifts – they are from God!
I enjoy looking at this website to see what some of the ad agencies are putting out. It includes some the Amnesty stuff
http://www.creativecriminal.blogspot.com/
thanks for the comments everyone… jon you should post your comment as a blog post in its own right!
i have now blogged it!
my main point is still to encourage leaders to challenge the rich… artists themselves cannot do it, because it will always sound like begging…
i believe that the church has a responsibility towards the nurture of artists… it should not be optional.
an irritation of mine is that as an artist you are expected to be good at making money… this is not the case for a nurse, a doctor, a teacher, so why an artist? the only reason this can possibly be, is that we simply do not value the role of the artist… do we even understand the point of the artist anymore? if we don’t, then what a poor and dowdy lot we have all become, with few ways of saying anything meaningful to the world at large. this is a serious issue.
i’ve blogged this too!
Joel has a wise head on his shoulders.
Artists may be poor, but ‘advertising makes us all poor’.
However, I’d have to disagree with Jon that artists don’t make money because we don’t properly understand what they do. Artists can’t be salaried precisely because their work is in ‘the gift’. Their work is ‘useless’.
If you want salaried work, then you’re a craftsman… Which I think is an interesting split. How did art rise away from crafts? And why? It surely has to do with humankind’s increasing wealth, that gave time for people to pursue such non-vital work like reflecting on the soul.
it is in the very thinking of art as ‘non vital’ that the mistake is made.
health practitioners all over the world now are recognising the healing and preventative benefits of the arts, both consumed and participatory… anyone who has experienced art could have told them that years ago. michelangelo was an artist, one of the greatest and many of his works were commisioned by the church… same with beethoven, even though he was not a professing christian, it was a rich russian christian who funded him and only asked for one piece of work in return, his requiem. these are just famous examples of artists being supported, there are many thousands of others.
artist know their craft, otherwise their art doesn’t get made. kings, emperors, christendom etc. have all had artists as well as craftsmen on their payrolls throughout history.
crafts people are paid for their work, whether by business, individuals or the church and their work ranges from practical and foundational to decorative, the work of the craftsman is very broad. the job of the artist on the other hand is to say something… whether it is to say that henry 8th is a fab king, or henry 8th is the scourge of the planet… christians should be funding the arts because of its power to communicate so powerfully.
parables are art… word paintings… the message being all the more interesting for the pictures described. without the practical support of friends around him christ would have starved. but he had supporters who put food in his belly.
art has become a sideshow for the church… but, for the most part, so has god and his creation… so i guess it’s not surprising that the artist is not properly valued.
and, since when was art about ‘reflecting on the soul’. that seems to be an utterly dualistic and reductionalist view of what art is… good art can and should speak into the practical, political, everyday concerns of normal struggling humanity. this is not optional stuff for a church that has any desire to relate to the world around it. as i said, this is serious stuff.
I think we are probably differing on semantics… I know what you mean about art being ‘vital’, but it’s not at the ground level of something like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. People die because of lack of food, shelter and water. No one died through lack of art.
It is, however, ‘serious stuff’. And what I think ‘reflecting on the soul’ is is not a dualistic thing – precisely the opposite. While no one died directly through lack of art, no one can become fully human without it. But, like relationships that are also ‘vital’, it has to remain in the gift. To reduce it to a salaried position is akin to prostitution: paying for something that should be part of a totally different economy.
So I’d still hold that while artists don’t deserve destitution, and do deserve our support, they also have to appreciate the economy they are working in and the sacrifices that that entails. We pay politicians handsomely in order to prevent their corruption. We don’t pay artists handsomely for the same reason 😉
i don’t understand why paying an artist makes them anything like a protistute… unless they are protistuting themselves as many creatives do to something less than what they believe (we’ve all done it!). if anything, payment rescues them from prostition.
just talking about art puts us in a place where the basics of maslow’s hierarchy of needs are already catered for… art is something engaged in when there is food on the table. and for those with food on the table to think as art as anything other than vital is ludicrous… it is vital to communication, vital to emotional wellbeing, vital to asking questions and the comprehension of ideas, it is vital to political life, vital to understanding history, vital to imagining the future… granted, all these things take place when there is food on the table, but that is the position from which we’re having this debate.
over the centuries, people have been killed for making art, many works of art have been destroyed, many artist have been imprisoned for not towing the party line… some people out there think that art is vital! and some people clearly think that it is a life and death issue…
I think that the gift/commerce dichotomy is really unhelpful because it puts making money and making art in opposition. It reinforces the idea that artists shouldnt be paid or that if they are paid then their art is somehow diminished. How do you win here? historicaly before art became Art People made it as part of the fabric of life for the church or the aristocracy or the merchant classes. it was commissioned and payed for and plenty of it was good and some of it managed to be very great. In my own practice i dont get to make much art because i cant afford it – being poor doesnt make me a good artist it just means i cant afford to make Art. What i do then is work as a craftsman, for which i do get paid, and it may be that when the final curtain comes down what i make for money may turn out to be the best art i make.
Whilst art making isnt usually motivated by the bottom line artist in my experience hope to and need to make money out of it for the activity to be sustainable in the long term. So what characterizes art is its aesthetic nature (yes i know this is a slippery subject!) rather than its gift nature, Art can therefore be both aesthetic and economic. Lets put to death the image of the romantic artist working for nothing in his garret and promote the image of the artist as highly educated skilled practiciener contributing to society and worthy of being paid accordingly!
i wasn’t trying to say art couldn’t or shouldn’t be sold – hyde says that art can and does circulate in both economies. the point is what is at the heart of making art – gift rather than money making. perhaps it relates to the spirit in which we create? i like your point about aesthetics… i certainly don’t want to romanticise the poor artist – but i know a lot of artists who struggle.
I think the musician Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner – http://www.scannerdot.com ) is another artist who is successfully negotiating this whole tension.
I just like how your permalink is “artists_are_poo”
ha! nice one…