If you are involved in making art of any kind, you are involved in an activity of leisure. Art is not work. Paintings, poems, or musical compositions — these things do not put food on anyone's table, or a roof over anyone's head. This is a reason why I will never take money for my music.
When pieces of art (or reproductions of them) are bought and sold, our encounters with them are transactions. Art becomes a luxury object, instrumentally used for the self-aggrandizement of those who pay for access to it. I see no ethically valid approach for the artist in this arrangement. And I would quit making music straight away if I thought it had no ethical, and political, potential. This is a reason why I will never take money for my music.
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3 comments:
Some intriguing thoughts. I don't know whether there is a way in a which a work of art can willing engage with economic establishments in such a way that, through some possibly ironic means, its "ethical and political potential" IS said engagement (or is in some way related to it)... I am skeptical though...
although to be honest, just as skeptical about "art's" ability to fulfill any ethical or political potential it may have... it seems to me to be a very ineffective tool for such means. But perhaps that isn't important? Is its potential alone enough?
... I also don't consider art to be an activity of leisure... or rather, I don't really understand what that means. I am uncomfortable with calling what I do "art"... and I definitely don't consider what I do to be an activity of leisure. In fact, I refer to my composing as my work... not in the sense that it is something I do for money (definitely not true, whether I want it to be or not) but in the sense that the process becomes a part of quotidian routine... that my composing is work to be done, void of pretensions to some higher achievement...
Perhaps. ?
I see where you're coming from. If someone would have asked me just a year or two ago to give my opinion on this topic, I would have said the same things you do. I'll try to explain where I'm coming from now.
I do see art as having the ability to engage with economic and political establishments, and, hopefully, the ability to change them as well. The way I see it is that a piece of art has the capacity to have an ethical effect on the person observing it. It can influence a person to some kind of thought or action; or, it can be a distraction from thought and action. This is what I'm concerned with. Anyone who creates anything has a responsibility for the effect that their creation has on the world.
On the point of whether what you do is work or leisure: I don't see creating music as being productive labor, in the material, economic sense. I'm not sure how else to put that. Your composing would probably feel less like work if you were forced to become more accustomed to real work.
I accept the distinction between productive labour in the economic/material sense and composition, but I still don't feel that leisure is an appropriate word... at the very least for its connotations.
I agree with your second paragraph, however. While by no means an effective means for such change, I think the potential (and the possibility for localised (aka individual) realisation of potential) is a hugely important consideration. Responsibility is definitely the right word to use.
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