Where Do I Sell Out?
Jun. 29th, 2009 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angela_n_hunt*jumps on soap box*
Over atcoppervale's blog, he posts a very important link and essay on the nature of Selling Out.
He's far more polite and measured than I am on the subject. I'm not lukewarm on the concept of receiving money for my art.
As I said in reply over there:
This made my blood boil.
Gods forbid we should feed our families with our art! Gods forbid we should actually be recompensed for our labor and our artistic intelligence! Gods forbid we should have the damned temerity or arrogance to believe that we deserve to be remunerated for our contributions!
GAH!
Oh no. We should struggle and labor in obscurity because then our art is "pure!"
Bite me, you Bastard Art Elite Intelligentsia Jerkoffs.
I live and pray for the day that I can "sell out". So I can actually spend my days doing what actually matters to me, rather than pushing paper and answering phones. Having a dayjob doesn't make my damn Art pure or higher or anything. It just makes it art.
*stabbystabbystabbystabbitystab*
:edit:
The Haters and Impatient Ones can go and soak their heads. You and I have more important things to do.
:end edit:
Those are the salient points I wanted to call out here.
I could rant for days, truth to tell. This is one of the things that pisses me off like the proverbial bull seeing the red cape. Very few things can provoke me to angry tears, faster. No one ever says an accountant should work for free. No one *ever* suggests that I should prepare their taxes for a thank you.
Yet, over and over again, people think it perfectly reasonable that I should shoot or write for nothing or for a pittance, even if the work is commissioned.
Guess what? Michaelangelo and DaVinci got *paid*. Shakespeare got *paid*. Mucha got *paid*. Charles Dickens got *paid*. Orson Wells got *paid*. Avedon got *paid*. Annie Liebowitz gets *paid*.
So here's my challenge to the World. If you see some art that you love or that moved you or made your day a better day? Pay for it, damn it. Even if it's a dollar. Without art, the World is a horrible, gray place. It doesn't sing, it doesn't dress itself in color, it doesn't mark itself down for the ages. We can't help but make it in the throes of love or the depths of despair. It is often our voice or vision of hope when we feel we have none or our record of the horrors that we have witnessed.
It has value.
Pay for it.
*jumps off soap box*
Over at
coppervale's blog, he posts a very important link and essay on the nature of Selling Out.He's far more polite and measured than I am on the subject. I'm not lukewarm on the concept of receiving money for my art.
As I said in reply over there:
This made my blood boil.
Gods forbid we should feed our families with our art! Gods forbid we should actually be recompensed for our labor and our artistic intelligence! Gods forbid we should have the damned temerity or arrogance to believe that we deserve to be remunerated for our contributions!
GAH!
Oh no. We should struggle and labor in obscurity because then our art is "pure!"
Bite me, you Bastard Art Elite Intelligentsia Jerkoffs.
I live and pray for the day that I can "sell out". So I can actually spend my days doing what actually matters to me, rather than pushing paper and answering phones. Having a dayjob doesn't make my damn Art pure or higher or anything. It just makes it art.
*stabbystabbystabbystabbitystab*
:edit:
The Haters and Impatient Ones can go and soak their heads. You and I have more important things to do.
:end edit:
Those are the salient points I wanted to call out here.
I could rant for days, truth to tell. This is one of the things that pisses me off like the proverbial bull seeing the red cape. Very few things can provoke me to angry tears, faster. No one ever says an accountant should work for free. No one *ever* suggests that I should prepare their taxes for a thank you.
Yet, over and over again, people think it perfectly reasonable that I should shoot or write for nothing or for a pittance, even if the work is commissioned.
Guess what? Michaelangelo and DaVinci got *paid*. Shakespeare got *paid*. Mucha got *paid*. Charles Dickens got *paid*. Orson Wells got *paid*. Avedon got *paid*. Annie Liebowitz gets *paid*.
So here's my challenge to the World. If you see some art that you love or that moved you or made your day a better day? Pay for it, damn it. Even if it's a dollar. Without art, the World is a horrible, gray place. It doesn't sing, it doesn't dress itself in color, it doesn't mark itself down for the ages. We can't help but make it in the throes of love or the depths of despair. It is often our voice or vision of hope when we feel we have none or our record of the horrors that we have witnessed.
It has value.
Pay for it.
*jumps off soap box*
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 05:22 pm (UTC)*sigh*
I'm off to make art at them, to flip them off.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 05:33 pm (UTC)Schwarzwalder kirschtorte.
It was good, and well-appreciated.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 05:43 pm (UTC)I just keep forgetting that ultimately, for me at least, art is an act of defiance.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 06:23 pm (UTC)It took me a loooong time to work that one out. One interesting clue that I completely missed for the longest time was that I cook much better/more interesting food for an appreciative audience. For myself, I'll often just knock out something simple and quick. For others, I'll do quite a bit.
My other "art"...photography, painting, drawing, etc. was always a gift I gave myself. The only person who really had to love it was me. Nobody else.
Defiance? Hell, hon, I've been running my own businesses for 20+ years now. If that isn't defiance, I don't know what is.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 07:20 pm (UTC)