The role of the artist today is all about the money
Where We Came From
Over the past 3 days I wrote about how Traditional Society, which man developed over millions of years since before he was what we call man, gave way to a Transitional Society which has been spawning the Modern Society over the past four centuries. Traditional Society formed around kin groups in local areas, and was based on personal relationships. When men created agriculture, these small clans joined (usually along language groups and within a broad geographic region) under a King who served as an over-chief and took taxes to feed his soldiers to guard the kingdom. The King’s palaces drew artisans and gave rise to the first cities. In time the city-men, living by commerce measured in cash money, overthrew and killed the Kings and their landed nobles who were descendants of the King’s war captains.
Thus the Modern World began to grow. It has not yet taken over all of Earth’ some parts of the world are still Traditional Societies, and some parts are still Transitional.
The Artist in the World
In those nations which have become most Modern, men are judged and defined by what they do to make money, and by how much money they make.
This has made a great change for the artists.
In Traditional Society, there were no artists. That is to say, no man defined himself as an artist of any sort — not sculptor nor poet or painter nor talesman. They defined themselves then by their relations — by their parents and grandparents, siblings, children, and extended families. They took part in their clan and household duties of day to day living. The art they made was but a hobby, a bit of adornment to enhance the practical work of their lives.
In Transitional Society, men began to define and judge themselves by classes of the labor they performed: farmers, peasants, warriors, hunters, priests, nobles. Art still was made among the farmers and other peasants as before, for these men lived in social groups much like their traditional ways. But for the first time High Art began to be made by men who called themselves Artists. These artisans worked under the patronage of Kings, priests and other nobles and high officials, and were dependent on these wealthy members of the ruling class for their livelihood.
In Modern Society the artist is a tradesman who freelances or works for hire. The Kings and nobles have been replaced in part by the wealthiest of the ruling money-class acting much like the noble patrons who went before them. But mostly the artist of today works for the true inheritors of the ranks of landed nobles, the ones who run the modern world: the corporations.
Myths of Art Today
Many artists today don’t understand this. They think that the corporations that publish and distribute their art works are mere middle-men. The artists think they are really working for their fans who buy tickets, music, books and the like. But this is not so.
Copyright is often registered in the name of the artist, and the artist looks on this as proof that under the law he owns his art, which makes him superior to the publisher. But this too is not so.
Copyright was created for, and at the behest of, publishers. From time to time in the long history of change in copyright law, as its term has been extended again and yet again, as the punishment for its violation has been made more and more extreme, as it has passed from civil code to criminal code, artists have come forth to speak on behalf of the new extensions of the law. This has given the impression that copyright is a law for the benefit of the artist. But this is not so.
The Artist Today
There are more artists in Modern Society than in Transitional Society. That is, more men are able to earn their bread from their art alone. Almost all of these men are hirelings who work in advertising, and company art departments, and directly for publishing corporations; or else they have formed their own corporations that work on assignment from these larger companies. This is not the sort of life kids think of when they dream of being ‘artists’ as they are growing up. The creativity of these artists is confined (like the talent and skills of all corporate hirelings) to making clever new ways to increase the company’s income — and no more.
What kids (and most adults) think of when they consider the ‘artist’ is a man whose work springs from deep in his heart, that expresses some urge within him, some vision all his own that he longs to share with his fellow men. This is what we think lies at the root of the artist’s soul. Note that ‘money’ does not belong here, and indeed the common view of the ‘artist’ is of a man who scorns money in his search for self-expression, beauty, and truth. And that nothing in our common notion of the artist is fulfilled in the job in the company art department.
There are artists of this idealized kind in Modern Society. There are many of them. The great mass of them, though, do not make their living from their art, but in other ways. Some teach their art, others find jobs as critics of art. Some work in museums or galleries. For many, their art is but a sideline. For many it is but a hobby.
A rare few find fame and fortune and their life stories inspire kids to dream of being artists themselves. This is what they think it is to live as an artist (not to work as one, but to live as one) and in this dream, money does indeed play a starring role. Great wealth is the dream of all of us in Modern Society, for money is the measure of a man today. Wisdom, virtue, excellence in any field — we value them only insofar as they might make us rich. But our day dreams and fantasies all turn on being rich (and famous) and not around being wise, honest, just, or skilled.
And so thoroughly have we come to believe in this ethic of the money-class, that talesmen will write, over and over, that they need copyright laws because they would not, could not write if they were not assured they would be paid. And some seek for copyright to be eternal, not thinking that this would be of benefit only to the publishers; for these artists, it is not enough that their grandchildren should be paid for what their grandparents wrote, but their great-great-great grandchildren should get the money too.
How far we have fallen.
(Composed with pen on paper Thursday-Friday, 20-21 March 2008)
