Art as a public service
I am convinced no society can survive without art, because people need art to survive.
We know from paintings on prehistoric caves that humans created art almost as soon as they became humans. Even in concentration camps people created art. Inmates in the worst possible situation you can imagine- starving, exhausted, freezing, dehumanized and surrounded by death- found the time to create. Once I had a conversation with someone who argued that some people just didn’t need art. I can’t think of one single person who would never watch a movie, read a book, listen to music and have only utilitarian objects in their house. It sounds like a robot.
Most artists who create art want to share it. It can be gifted or sold to people who need art to decorate their home or like listening to music, watching movies and so on. We are willing to pay for art if society deemed it worth paying for. Famous artists sell their paintings according to a rate decided by the art world, cinema and concert tickets have a set price and you can decide if you are willing or able to afford it.
Cinema stubs
Wonderful art I purchased for my house. Painting by Julie Risien.
However if you’re an anonymous artist who creates art in your basement or garage at night or at the weekend, your art is often taken for granted. The people in your life tend to think you owe it to them. Weirdly enough, even more if they don’t really like it or don’t understand it because then they think it is not worth anything. Who would buy this, they wonder. They kindly give you ideas about the kind of art you should do (even if you didn’t ask) to make it better. Others might ask for the stuff they need (a painting in a certain color to go with their lounge, a ceramic item that is missing in their kitchen, a logo for their business, an impromptu concert for a wedding) and seem offended if you say you won’t do it or ask for payment. You’re friend or family and you do this anyway, so how hard it is to make something for them to their specifications? Shouldn’t you be happy that they like your art enough to need it?
Is it a symptom of the way we used to live? As a community, I imagine each person had their role and provided for the others, so the artist was providing art in the same way that the miller was providing flour. Our society has become so individualistic that we don’t remember this and artists get offended when they’re taken for granted, but maybe it stems from the way things used to be before everything was assigned a monetary value. Maybe we, the artists, are the ones who are taking ourselves too seriously. Maybe artists belong to their community first?
This seems to be true when you consider how often artist get requests for donations. Artists are asked to provide art for anything under the sun. As a teacher, I have never been asked to donate notebooks and pens for people in need of them. As an artist, even when you’re not exactly famous, it happens all the time. You often see artists advertising that they are giving a percentage of their earnings to a good cause. Do engineers ever do this? The “empty bowl” event is another good example. Ceramists donate or make ceramic bowls in their free time These bowls are filled with food and served at a special fundraising event where people purchase a ticket, eat the food and keep the bowl. The proceeds go to the food bank. I am not saying it’s a bad thing to fight hunger, just that artists get asked to give their art for good causes a lot more often than other people are asked to donate anything. Non-artists are asked to give money, never something they made (although parents- i.e. mothers- are often asked to provide food, but that’s a different topic. Mothers get taken for granted too). These financial contributions are usually requested through mail, which is a lot easier to ignore than real people going around, especially other artists asking you if you have a piece that you could give for this or that cause. A bowl is nothing, right? You made one before, so you can make another one. Another version of this expectation that artists should give their work for free is artists who are offered free exposure against their art, usually on social media. Unlike fundraising, which makes us feel good about ourselves and doing our part for the community, artists complain about it. But in both cases, artists are expected to work for free.
a bunch of bowls getting fired at a community studio in preparation for “empty bowls”
I can’t buy a Van Gogh, but I can get inspired when I visit a museum.
Maybe it’s a good thing that art is needed, even if you don’t necessarily get paid for it. Artists didn’t get into art for the money after all, even if having some is nice so you have time to create more. Maybe artists find it hard to sell their work because at the end of the day, a big portion of what you get from art is mostly intangible. Let’s call it inspiration.
You don’t have to possess art to enjoy it. In a museums you can just look at art and get inspired, as well as at art and craft markets. For some, museums feel like alien places but they feel comfortable visiting a craft market or a holiday market. They don’t have to buy anything if they don’t want to, or can’t afford it. But they still get inspired by what they see and it makes their life a little better.
Of course I wish everyone would buy my art so I could ditch my day job and concentrate on what I really want to do. But at the same time, I realize that I am doing a public service when I get my art out there for other people to see. I have the privilege of being an artist. In our society, it’s not possible for everyone to carve enough time and resources out of their busy lives to create something, or simply take art classes to get started. I hate that art is not more accessible, but at least I pass it forward when I put my art out there for people to get inspired by. I have gone to countless art galleries with no intention whatsoever to buy something. I just wanted to get inspired, to look at reality in a different way, to dream and be surprised. So it is fair for me to pass it forward with my own art. I wish everyone would create art, I think it’s a great practice for everybody. But if you don’t, for whatever reason, at least artists are able to provide much needed inspiration into your life for free.
Trying to sell my art at Clayfest Eugene (Oregon) among other ceramists and providing free inspiration as well.
Trying to sell my art at Green Heron Gallery in Philomath (Oregon) and among other artists and providing free inspiration as well.
Should artists be compensated for doing this public service? Or should we get away from this paradigm that everything worth doing should have a monetary value? Artists add value to a society by infusing inspiration into our daily life, but value doesn’t necessarily translate to money. I firmly believe that the best things in life cannot be bought.
So what’s the solution? If artists shouldn’t expect payment but we need art and also money to live on, what do we do? Can only well-off people be artists? Recently Ireland started compensating (= paying) select artists (2000 in the entire country) for making Ireland a better country. At first I loved this news, but then I started to wonder how it works exactly. How are artists chosen? Which art gets deemed worthy? Can artists lose their compensation if their subjects are too political or go against morality? The USSR had propaganda artists that were paid to promote the communist ideal. You could consider the church did the same thing to promote Catholicism. For centuries most artists could only survive if they made religious paintings. It’s not exactly art if you’re not free to create what you want or worry about losing your income depending on what kind of art you create.
The platform “Patreon” is an interesting way to solve this problem. The name is based on the expression : patron of the arts (the extra E for electronics, I imagine) but instead of one very rich person funding your art practice (like Leonardo Da Vinci, funded first by the Duke of Milan, then Cesare Borgia and finally the King of France Francis the first), artists on Patreon are crowdfunded by multiple people paying a small amount every month. If artists are good for the community, it makes sense that members of this community could (should?) choose to compensate them for a few dollars a months or more. Unfortunately Patreon (I believe, I don’t have an account) insists that subscribers should “receive” something in exchange for their contribution, for example a free downloadable print to use as a screensaver if you are a painter, or a random artsy gift through the mail from time to time. But I heard artists say that some of their members didn’t want anything, they just liked the artist’s work and subscribed to encourage them to create more with no counterpart. I want a version of Patreon that would allow for such a subscription: a support donation with no strings attached .
Another possibly more outlandish idea could be an art tax organized by the government, which is basically what Ireland is doing but I would let people choose who gets the money. The “art” tax would be taken out of your income (like health insurance, since art is good for your health) and each person would get to decide which artist they’re funneling this tax money towards. It would insure that artists active in their community, even if they’re not world famous, get a chance to get rewarded for their hard work. Don’t ask what artists can do for you, but ask what you can do for artists so they keep creating. If the trickle down effect is supposed to be legitimate for billionaires, then it works for artists too, but instead of supposedly creating jobs with tax breaks, artists create inspiration within their community. Crowdfunding art should be the way of the future, because it benefits everyone.