Let's see if this gets any play...

[sen_no_ongaku]

Proposal: Art should be created without the expectation of material compensation.

True or false?

Commonplace attitude or not?



[EDIT: This is not intended to imply that something created for with such an expectation cannot be art, though I may propose that sometime later.]

Comments

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I definitely understand your point about "units of effect". Some of the less accessible art might have a much higher effect ratio (just making up terms now) than mass produced, comforting views of lighthouses. So the sum units of emotional effect might be the same for the two of them. But I still think that our willingness to support art does, and should, depend on an algorithm between the power of effect and the number of people who are effected. (I'm totally lost on the affect/effect point.) If you create something that is totally overwhelming to the 8 people on earth who can understand it, that's excellent. But at some point we need to funnel our resources, and the question is how to do that.

Another point I was thinking about. The fewer people who can/will understand and be affected by art (and the less effect it has), the less likely the artist is to be richly compensated for it. So an artist doing really cutting edge stuff that nobody gets (like the guy whose performance art was to key 20 cars in California) has to be more passionate about the art and more willing to accept the possibility that they'll never get paid for it than does, say, someone who does graphics for computer games. I'm glad that the folks exist on that passionate edge of the spectrum. But whether the art you do and can do is worth doing based on the willingness of people to part with cash to get get it is a worthwhile equation needs to be up to each artist.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

The fewer people who can/will understand and be affected by art (and the less effect it has), the less likely the artist is to be richly compensated for it.

Interestingly, this is make sense but is not necessarily true. I can point to a few composers who have made quite a good living on making maximally erudite (and, I would say, shitty as hell) music.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

Obviously exceptions abound -- probably more people making great art and not ever managing to *market* it enough to make money than vice versa, though. Marketing yourself is definitely a big part of getting paid for art, and that I wish wasn't so.

[ppaladin.livejournal.com]

You have a good point -- marketing is a skill entirely seperate from skill at 'art' but one which is often required to be better compensated for producing art. That an artist has to market themselves one way or another is no different from the marketing that any other business has to engage in.

Can we frame the question as two different endeavors: creating art, and making a living out of art. Some artists are fortunate enough not to have to worry about the second problem. Those who do need to make a living, either have to find a way to make their art commercially viable, or must devote less time to art (or starve).

Coming back to your intial question, art can very well be created without any expectation of commercial returns -- but those artists who can achieve no commercial returns, and who are not independently wealthy, cannot remain artists indefinitely. Being allowed to devote time to art requires straddling the line between the commercial requirements of making enough to live, and the need of the artist to produce art.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

Crap -- change is make sense to "makes sense".

Too many damn simultaneous streams of thought.