The sale of art?

[Seasons]

Hello.

I am wondering what some of your opinions are when it comes to the sale of art. Specifically what I mean is: should authors, painters, musicians, etc. be putting their art up for sale? Does this practice contradict Marxist or Anarchist ideologies in anyway? Are artists considered workers?

I realize this is a rather bizarre question, but if anyone can give me any sort of input, I would greatly appreciate it.

Cheers!

[Blake's Baby]

Artists are more like peasants or artisan producers. Generally they engage in simple commodity production, unless they're Jeff Koons or someone like that, who comes up with an idea and then pays other people to make it (in which case, he's a boss and the makers are workers).

[Clarion]

Who's going to stop them? So long as commodity production exists artists will produce their work with the intent to sell it.

Artists are proletarian if they sell their labour time for a wage and are petty-bourgeois if they produce and sell art for themselves.

[Philosophos]

Well IMO selling your art is ridiculous. In this capitalistic society ofcourse there are people that sell their creations (if I create something good and someone offers me lots of money I might do too I don't know) but in general I think it sucks.

If you sell your creation book, poet, painting etc (something that I see as my baby but only better because it doesn't cry and it can't get screwed up while it grows older)
you sell something from the very fucking bottom of your heart. It's basically YOU selling yourself.

When I write I try to express myself to other people because I can't do it with when I'm talking. So basically if I sell my writings I become a whore.

On the other hand if you write something like "Twilight" :thumbdown: where the only reason you wrote the book is to sell you can do it because there are stupid people out there and they will buy it with their own free will.

In communism selling anything is not tolarated (communism not transitioning or anything else) including arts.

Hope I helped.

[Comrade #138672]

It's basically YOU selling yourself.Welcome to Capitalism!

[Philosophos]

Welcome to Capitalism!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuktJ8mppE0

[Thirsty Crow]

Who's going to stop them? So long as commodity production exists artists will produce their work with the intent to sell it.

Artists are proletarian if they sell their labour time for a wage and are petty-bourgeois if they produce and sell art for themselves.
There is quite a noticeable difference between the novelist on contract with the publishing house, and the painter for instance.

The former, in the form of the deadline, can be said to engage in production (of ideas, entertainment, culture...) on the lines of the socially necessary labour time as the substance of the value of the commodity.

The former cannot. There is no way that the painter can be said to engage in production as expending his labour as socially necessary labour as there is no standardized price mechanism here. Consequently, the conclusion would be that the paining does not "embody" a certain quantity of value at all (this is the difference from the petite bourgeoisie proper).

[Luís Henrique]

Well IMO selling your art is ridiculous.

If you have to eat, you have to buy commodities. If you have to buy commodities, you have to sell commodities in exchange for them. If what you do are works of art, you sell them as commodities, in order to buy the commodities you need for a life.

Unless an artist lives in a different, non-capitalist society, I can't see how it would be different.

Luís Henrique

[Seasons]

Thank you everyone for your input! At first I hesitated in posting this thread because I thought my question was rather silly... as you can see, I'm new here; and you guys have proven to me that being a member of this forum is certainly worthwhile. Thanks again for all of your responses!

Looking forward to becoming a regular member of this awesome site!

[Philosophos]

If you have to eat, you have to buy commodities. If you have to buy commodities, you have to sell commodities in exchange for them. If what you do are works of art, you sell them as commodities, in order to buy the commodities you need for a life.

Unless an artist lives in a different, non-capitalist society, I can't see how it would be different.

Luís Henrique

Why do you read what you want to read? In the next sentence I said that of course there are people in capitalism that sell their art....

[Clarion]

Well IMO selling your art is ridiculous. In this capitalistic society ofcourse there are people that sell their creations (if I create something good and someone offers me lots of money I might do too I don't know) but in general I think it sucks.

If you sell your creation book, poet, painting etc (something that I see as my baby but only better because it doesn't cry and it can't get screwed up while it grows older)
you sell something from the very fucking bottom of your heart. It's basically YOU selling yourself.

When I write I try to express myself to other people because I can't do it with when I'm talking. So basically if I sell my writings I become a whore.

All of the above is merely projecting moral and ideological phantoms onto the reality of commodity production. You'd feel like a whore, that's your own personal problem.



On the other hand if you write something like "Twilight" :thumbdown: where the only reason you wrote the book is to sell you can do it because there are stupid people out there and they will buy it with their own free will.

This is just snobbery. Commercialised art, bourgeois art, offers the audience a role it has never had before in the history of art, an active role in shaping its content rather than passively observing it. The revolution of bourgeois art is that, being a commodity just like everything else, it is shapes by the whims and tastes of consumers who it needs to be sold to.

The role of the artisan/petty-bourgeois/aristocrat/patrician/patron is usurped by the market and the artistic process is socialised.

Your objection reminds me of the theme running through Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead,' that of the conformist masses and their lack of appreciation for true creative genius.

But I'm sorry, go back to bashing the stupid plebs' taste in literature again.


In communism selling anything is not tolarated (communism not transitioning or anything else) including arts.

If commodity production is to vanish it will be by it becoming obsolete, not by the imposition of force from above. Nobody will have to be compelled into not engaging in it because there will simply be no good reason to do so, and if there were we should let them -- communism is about expanding economic freedom, not denying it.

[Lucretia]

Artists have to eat, too.

[BIXX]

I personally feel that we could apply "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" to this situation.

Your art is a contribution to society, whether or not people like it. If it's what you do best, of course you should get involved in a gift economy. I would personally say you should try to do other things as well, because I do feel like you should contribute as much to your ability as is appropriate (appropriate in my mind being not completely life consuming, but definitely I'd consider your art a valuable contribution to society. If say we were both in a communist commune, I'd advocate that you get everything you need because of your art, because you are contributing to society. Now, as for how you'd introduce your art to society, I'm not so positive, as I am kinda crap-tastic when it comes to that kind of idea. I picture it being put into a museum or something, where everyone can enjoy it.

I hope I understood the question right or else my answer makes no sense haha.

[Clarion]

Your art is a contribution to society, whether or not people like it.

Mud pie fallacy.

[Philosophos]

This is just snobbery. Commercialised art, bourgeois art, offers the audience a role it has never had before in the history of art, an active role in shaping its content rather than passively observing it. The revolution of bourgeois art is that, being a commodity just like everything else, it is shapes by the whims and tastes of consumers who it needs to be sold to.

I can't see the reason why people have to play an active role in art by choosing what the other will create and not playing a role by making some art on their own...

[Clarion]

Art is a social phenomenon. Art without somebody to experience it is not art at all. Consequent upon both the distribution of natural and learned talents and the division of labour necessary to maintain advanced civilisation, it just isn't possible for everybody to respond to their cultural poverty by simply “making some art of their own.”


We should have no sympathy for the patrician notion that an artist is sovereign over his own creation; that is the ideological expression of a different age when art was the creation of a single genius. Even when we consider those who live off the patronage of the state, their art is free from social concern, free from need to produce art that people actually appreciate. Some argue that this allows high culture to live but they are wrong, all it has done is provide it with shelter from the masses, to free it from the need to appeal to them in order to finance its creation. It has degraded into middle class pretentiousness.


Bourgeois art is a revolution, it liberates art as a social phenomenon, subjects it not to the whims of a singular genius, as the elitists wish, but to the tastes and desires of the masses. It is from this socialisation of art that a future socialist art will emerge, not from the fantasies of petty bourgeois artisanry.

[Thirsty Crow]

At first I hesitated in posting this thread because I thought my question was rather silly...
Not at all, I think your question is very relevant, especially in relation to the implications it has for the theory of value.

Stick around, have fun, and learn :)


We should have no sympathy for the patrician notion that an artist is sovereign over his own creationThis is the reality as I described it, with regard to pictorial art in particular. The artist is actually "sovereign" over his own creation in the sense that it is his possession; as a person dispossessed of the means of production, it turns out as a means of livelihood.


Bourgeois art is a revolution, it liberates art as a social phenomenon, subjects it not to the whims of a singular genius, as the elitists wish, but to the tastes and desires of the masses.Well, not quite.

The theorist Peter Buerger has developed a framework based on Marx which is simple, yet effective in my opinion.

There are two aspects that need to be addressed here:

1) production - sacral art of the medieval feudalism was collective in its labour process; the historical development, though this is definitely not linear and different from one art to another, has tended towards the individualization of production; the "intermediate" phenomenon of court art (absolutism) sees the rise of the individual producer, and this is only strenghtened in capitalism for obvious reasons (general commodification)

2) consumption - again, the trajectory was from collective to individual - a prime example being the novel

Now, to claim that bourgeois culture (the relations of production of culture characteristic to capitalism) "liberates" art is deeply misleading, not least of all from the standpoint of the relationship between the "masses" and what is now referred to as "opinion makers", the producers of different tastes; the issue is not simple, it is definitely frought with opposing tendencies, but your simplistic take on it cannot account for that, not least because you do not see a problem with the schism between "high" and "low" culture.