[-empyre-] RE: empyre digest, Vol 1 #101 - 1 msg

[John Haber <jh624@columbia.edu>]

I loved Jon's piece, but I'm not buying.  True, the art world creates a few 
stars, leaving a lot of artists out of the picture, struggling for 
recognition and survival, while a good chunk of the purchases goes to 
dealers.  But it seems to me that all he does is put his stamp of approval 
on the status quo, as if artists could declare a victory and leave.

If indeed most artists need a day job just to survive, it's hard to see how 
suggesting that as the norm can change their lives at all, much less for 
the better.  Besides, consider the obvious:  why do they want to exhibit 
and sell art?  One reason is to be seen.  Galleries expose people like me 
to art for free; they draw crowds, in spaces and with equipment that not 
every studio artist or online visitor can replicate.  I'm not convinced 
even software art, with the potential for access to surfers via browsers 
and Napster- or Morpheus-like libraries, can generate the same recognition 
-- especially for software complicated enough to need to reside on a CD on 
hard drive rather than online.

Another is gratification.  As a photographer told me last night, there's 
nothing like the feeling of creating something just for oneself and then 
seeing someone want it on their wall.  But of course the main one is money 
-- the means to spend more time making art.  I'm not an artist, just a 
writer, but I know the tradeoffs of a day job.  It takes an almost 
debilitating amount of time and energy.  Sure, one learns from it (and I 
imagine Net artists who program for a living learn even more), but hey, 
every experience feeds into art, but I'll still shy away from the edge of 
an active volcano.  And sure, artists who have it in them will keep going, 
maybe they could do still more if they had the chance.  Besides, that kind 
of cutoff sounds pious but may be irrelevant to who could make decent art. 

The artist's motives aside, there's a reason that appeals to me:  Sunday 
artists have shorter careers, depriving me of great art.  It really takes 
time and experience to grow.  Anyone can name at least a couple of famous 
artists with embarrassing youths, perhaps even art they refuse to exhibit. 
 Conversely, see if you can name the first drip painter, and then tell me 
what happened to her.  This concern, I think, is especially important in 
software art, which is having to get through a childhood of its own -- of 
changing technology, evolving audiences, and the easy temptation for now to 
take technical wizardry for art.

Jon's right to attack extensions of copyright over the years and big 
threats from Hollings now.  There are also real problems in the system that 
critics of Modernism and Postmodernism have long analyzed -- 
institutionalization of styles (and even of shock), an aura surrounding art 
that easily extends to new, reproducible medium as the system absorbs each 
threat.  But he should ask about his own role in the system.  He's in a 
safe place, certifying winners, in an institution that indeed does have to 
play for, as he puts it Bush (and private donors) writing checks.  (I 
suspect he's also biased from personal experience; as he says, his father 
DID stick with it, as he saw fit, and Jon may take that for granted, even 
as he's aware of all that it cheated the artist and family.)  I can't 
promise the Marxist analysis he dismisses would either overturn the system 
or make it a more productively self-aware version of our institutional 
capitalism.  At least, though, it could ask more how copyright extensions 
build on or betray the promise of protecting individual creators.  It'd be 
a complicated, interesting argument.  As Jon suggests, the dilemmas of 
making a living for the software artist (and perhaps software art, too) 
perhaps aren't a new paradigm.

John
jhaber@haberarts.com
http://www.haberarts.com/