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cc-eyebeam - [cc-eyebeam] Re: why art shouldn't be property

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Subject: Creative Commons-Eyebeam Forum 2003 November 12-19

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  • From: jippolito AT guggenheim.org
  • To: cc-eyebeam AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-eyebeam] Re: why art shouldn't be property
  • Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 09:22:44 -0500 (EST)


I was going to save the $ discussion for the segment on "Mod the Market." But
since you invited me to rant some more...

Why would artists choose open, noncommercial licenses? How would they pay the
studio rent and their bills? The same way their parents' and grandparents'
generations did, the same way the overwhelming majority of them do now: a day
job. Day jobs suck, but they help reinforce the line between the choices
artists make for commercial reasons and the choices they make for their art.
Ironically, Internet artists often complain about having to hold down a day
job, despite the fact that they're the artists whose skills put them in the
best stead for landing lucrative part-time jobs.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make a living as an
artist. What's wrong is the perception that our society's art market will
ever make that possible for more than a token few.

The folks this market benefits most are the middlemen: auctioneers, dealers,
critics, art school faculty. The meager salary I reap as a curator is
premised on a plentiful supply of art to choose from, good and bad. If there
are only three artists in town--no matter how good they are--you don't need
museums and magazines to point them out to you. The plentiful supply of art
in our culture is the product of the unrecompensed labor of countless artists
working away in their studios. For no great art was ever made in isolation;
indeed, good art plays off the expectations developed by bad artists. There
is no way for a market-driven art world based on finding and immortalizing
superstars to survive without a rich culture of art to draw from. Yet to say
the art market helps the starving artist is tantamount to saying the lottery
helps the poor: it profits a tiny percentage, and distracts the rest from
their impoverished social position with dreams of sudden affluence.

There are other possible ways for artists to make a buck that don't depend on
an exchange economy--grants, the street performer protocol, service contracts
for maintaining collected art. But even without such support structures, if
all art were free it wouldn't change a thing for most practicing artists.

Cheers,

jon




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