Selling Out? Says Who?
There’s been a lot of froufrou and folderol in the blogosphere lately about artists “selling out.” Making Art for commercial purposes! Oh, heavens! Dear Jehosphat! Not that!
Why do we assume in our culture that artists don’t need to get paid for the work they do? That their children don’t need to eat? We don’t say “starving plumber” or “starving mechanic.” No, it’s starving artist. As if our kids are epiphytes and can live on air. As if there’s some virtue in starving to death.
Pardon me if I sound bitter over this. My parents always told me to get my head out of the clouds, that the artsy-fartsy stuff wouldn’t put food on the table. That I needed my feet on the ground and I needed to do real work. I needed to be a doctor, to fulfill one of my parents’ unfulfilled desire. Or a lawyer, that would be okay too. I was smart enough, driven enough, capable enough.
The trouble was, I didn’t want to. I didn’t know then I wanted to write for a living. In my house such a thing wasn’t possible to think. So small are the limits of the world, when dreams are shut out.
When I actually started conceiving the idea of writing for a living, not just as a shameful hobby I was unable to stop, I had to struggle with all those voices in my head informing me that I was worthless, and anyway, a real artist would starve and create just for love. That an artist didn’t have any right to expect a living wage.
Bollocks, I say.
Art is a necessity for a culture. No really, it is. Every culture has art. The Scythians to the Spartans (who were Hellenes, of course they had art.) The Russians? Golden ikons. Eskimos? Bone and blubber and fur. Every single culture has art. I don’t know why we don’t consider it necessary.
Don’t tell me art is just a luxury. Souls need feeding just like bodies do, and that food is art. Otherwise cavemen wouldn’t have painted their caves. It’s as necessary as air, or water. But we have this idea in our culture, probably springing from Calvinist or Puritan denial of pleasure, that it isn’t. That it’s faintly dangerous, and those who choose to practice it deserve to starve.
But that’s not precisely what we’re discussing here, is it? No, we’re talking about selling out.
In other words, about an artist getting paid–and paid quite well, because it’s not selling out if you’re still starving–for producing work the public likes a lot.
Excuse me, but isn’t that the point of art? To produce something people like a lot? Yes, there’s the joy of just doing it, but the point of doing art is to communicate, and if you produce a piece that speaks to many people, how is that selling out?
I know, you’re thinking of bringing up boy bands, Britney, and pop art. Manufactured expressly for the purpose of separating people–most often teens–from their money. Does that make the rehearsals any less grueling, or the emotional cost of paparazzi stalking easier to pay? As much as we look down on boy bands and Britneypop, the fact remains that it speaks to kids. There’s a formula for creating the art that speaks to them on that level, well and good. But it’s not selling out. It might be swill, but it’s swill that serves and fills a need in the teen psyche. Who are we to say it’s not art, when thousands of teens feel otherwise?
What about Nirvana? Funny how everyone was yelling about Kurt Cobain “selling out” until he committed suicide and paid an ultimate price for achieving success. Being a successful artist is like being a sexually-free woman in our society–as long as you pay a horrible price or are whipped into repentance, it’s okay.
So an artist produces work a lot of people like, and gets paid for it. All of a sudden other artists turn on him. “It’s too bad about X. He’s sold out. His work’s derivative and in any case, he’s not a real artist because real artists suffer.”
Bollocks again. The reason artists starve in our society is because we don’t value them. Shamans and artists in some other societies are granted living wages, or at least stipends, in order to help them continue their work. And how do they prove themselves worthy of a stipend? By producing art that speaks to people.
Now, nothing’s perfect. In Soviet Russia those with exceptional talent were trained and fed by the State. Unfortunately, the repression forced those artists to eventually flee, if they were lucky. Can you imagine a starving Baryshnikov? How much poorer would the world be if he was too hungry to dance.
How much art are we missing out on because artists can’t afford to feed themselves, or their children? Because they don’t have time, working nine to five or longer?
Or because they shoot themselves in the foot by thinking that any art someone will pay for is “selling out”?
As I write this, the kids are watching one of the Harry Potter movies. I love Harry Potter. I’ve read all the books and am looking forward to the seventh. I’ve read–who hasn’t?–about Rowling being unable to afford heat in her apartment, so she wrote most of the first book in a tea shop while her child slept beside her.
How much more could she have written during those years if her apartment hadn’t been cold? How much more could she have written if she and her child had enough to eat? How much sooner would we have that blasted seventh book?
Yes, I’m belaboring the point here. But you get it. Selling out? Please. Find something else to hate your fellow artists for. Or, if you truly want to get over it, be as happy for your fellow artists’ success as you are for your own. Every time an artist hits it big, it kicks the starving-artist syndrome square in the nuts.* If we were happy about that instead of jealous, we might stand a chance at changing the way our culture looks at art. Eventually.
Yeah, I know. I’m an optimist. So sue me.
* Not to mention the fact that people are shelling out hard-earned money to buy their art. Who are you to say it’s not worth it? It’s their money, after all.
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