With art, as with
most things in our present society, there are a few people who reap
all the rewards and many others who work for nothing. One or two
famous artists emerge from a culture of art; art in itself being
visual, audio or verbal languages.
It is a tradition
of form and function that is layer upon layer added to and drawn from
by successive generations of creative people. No artist is an island
and as such owes a debt to the world around them, yet not everyone
that pays into this cultural mix is rewarded for there contributions.
In fact many are expected to work for free as art is superlative, its
a hobby, you should do it for the love of it.
The
reason people are not rewarded for a creative input to society, is
that, if people are compelled to create whether they get paid or not,
why bother paying them? Big business continually “borrows”
(steals) art that comes from the bottom, graffiti and hip hop came form underground, under valued cultures. They are now big business. Millions are made, a few stars born and
the majority of the underground artists are left behind. They have
to take second jobs, work their arse's off or go without regardless
of how big or little their contribution to society.
Lets call this the
“Banksy syndrome”. How many people know of Banksy and buy into
that brand yet know nothing about street art? As such they see
Banksy, as street art itself; look what he has done for the
respectability of graffiti, look how he has exported street art
around the world and made it popular. In actual fact he is a product
of a larger cultural movement, not the movement. Sure he has done
things, but in the greater context of all those other artists that
have doing things he has been extremely lucky to capitalize on his
time and place and perhaps take a larger slice of the pie than is
fair.
This may be one of
the problems; we don't know how to value peoples contribution. If you
wrote a catchy pop song and then went on to make millions in
royalties are those millions a fair return for a fair contribution?
What if you are a self indulgent bedroom artist whose work never sees
the light of day? Should your endeavours be supported? Maybe you need
the time to be self indulgent to find you're talent before releasing
it onto a grateful world, or maybe you are just an unnecessary burden
to society. How exactly are we to decide and distribute the support
and appreciation these people need/deserve?
Just because it is
difficult to make judgements that lack any hard or fast rules and
where value is uncertain, doesn't mean they should be ignored. In fact
by there very nature difficult judgements, that we as individuals and
as a society are faced with, are often the most pressing as they
demand real thought. As decisions become less clear and we evade to
greater degrees responsibility, we ere ever further into blindness,
as our society becomes more undernourished.
How do we take
responsibility for nurturing creativity in society? How do we asses
value and see that people get paid?
If anyone has some
ideas please send em in...
Part 3 of
getting paid, paying youre way; are there any solutions?
