4 ms·

Hi. I’m an artist. I have spent most of my life practicing my craft. I think that until we have abandoned the concept of “working for a living”, this line of th

Hi. I’m an artist. I have spent most of my life practicing my craft. I think that until we have abandoned the concept of “working for a living”, this line of thought is a bunch of wankery. If I create something that people are willing to keep buying for decades without any more work on my part, then I have a nice source of recurring, passive income that I am very motivated to defend by stopping anyone else from profiting off of it. I am also a human being who needs to do things like take a break from working now and then so I don’t burn out. And explore new avenues of expression without worrying about spending a while making stuff that’s not good enough to get paid for. And work on big, weird projects. Having something that keeps selling without me putting in any work is great for all of those things. The fundamental toxicity here is that we live in a capitalist hellscape, not that artists would like to use their skills to get by in said hellscape.

gus_massa 4y ago
Would you prefer a communist hellscape where you only get paid if the Commissariat of Art likes it, or a monarchist hellscape where you only get paid if the Duke of Something is your patreon?
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  Or, as a thought experiment, some sort of UBI so that artists can follow their muse without having to find buyers for their work.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    Would you gladly slave away for the rest of your life so artists and random layabouts can “follow their muse”?
    - gus_massa 4y ago
      I don't mind money for artist, but the problems are wannabe morons that can't draw a circle with the bottom of a bottle. I don't mind money for scientists, but the problems are wannabe morons that try to prove the Earth is flat. You can continue the list... The hard problem is a better method for resource allocation.
- tutivillusrex 4y ago
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  In the communist hellscape you would have a minimum of food and housing guaranteed and could survive regardless of the Commissariat pays you or not. The monarchist hellscape is pretty much equivalent to the capitalist hellscape, except you are trying to seek patronage from the public rather than a single entity. The capitalist hellscape is a hellscape because disposable income is disappearing from the middle class.
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    In a communist country, can you send a letter saying that you will never return to the car factory because you are going to make sculptures all day long? Are they really going to continue giving you house and food or the secret police will ask nicely to reconsider your decisions? (Assuming it's not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge and there is enough food.)
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> Hi. I’m an artist. I have spent most of my life practicing my craft. I think that until we have abandoned the concept of “working for a living”, this line of thought is a bunch of wankery. If you seriously think that the deepest spiritual questions of why we create are "a bunch of wankery" then you are no artist. A producer of things, maybe. A very successful producer of wonderful, beautiful and desirable things perhaps. But not an artist.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  Ah yes, and now we have the “you can’t be a real artist if you consider any practical realities of putting food on the table with your work” wankery. I’ll just go subsist on moonbeams and philosophy so I can be a real artist then. Wanker.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    I won't push you on it any more, because you're not ready. But I hope that one day you'll find a whole lot more to the world than what you see now.
    - egypturnash 4y ago
      Congratulations on maintaining your sense of smug superiority throughout this discussion. I am, as I said, a working artist. I have done multiple solo projects that spanned one or more years, each more ambitious than the last. I have cover quotes from four people with something like seven Hugos between them on my last graphic novel. I am now returning to a project that I put down for a couple of years because it got to a point where the polish it needed was not compatible with the ways my income is structured. I recently had a boring corporate art gig work out really well so I get to spend at least a few months not worrying about where my rent is coming from, and I’m stopping less ambitious projects that were easier to crank out at high speed in favor of this crazy thing. They were also ones that felt more likely to be popular. The serious big projects? I care that they please me, first and foremost; I do them because I have something I need to say through the medium of words and pictures, I do not worry that I have peaked. I worry about paying my fucking bills in a world that’s increasingly more hostile to making a living as an artist. I worry about every social site wanting to hide posts that link to my site because these corporate hellsites are optimized to keep people scrolling past interchangeable “content” that fills the space between ads. When I finish this project, I am confident that my next project will build on the lessons I learnt doing this one, as it built on what I learnt in my previous major workings. Perhaps it will be even more ambitious. Perhaps it will be deliberately much less ambitious, so I can kick back and have some fun without pushing myself to new heights for a while. I’ll still keep getting better, every time you draw something you get a tiny bit better at drawing that thing, and it doesn’t go away unless you suffer major brain damage. Hell, even that isn’t necessarily an obstacle - there’s a story about one Warner Brothers animator in the forties who had a bad concussion in a car accident, and found that his abilities had taken a major leap forwards once he was healed up and ready to get back to work. Lose my drawing arm? I’ve seen friends shift off their dominant hand due to injury, and go from uncoordinated wobbly messes to just as good as before in a month or two of breaking out the drills they used back in art school. Eventually there is a point where my whole body will start to break down. That is when I expect to peak: when I am physically incapable of manipulating tools and seeing my canvas. But sure, I’m “not ready” and there’s “more to the world”. And worrying about intellectual property has nothing to do with wanting to be able to make a living. And I’m not really “an artist”. But you’re still a pretentious wanker.

gus_massa 4y ago

Would you prefer a communist hellscape where you only get paid if the Commissariat of Art likes it, or a monarchist hellscape where you only get paid if the Duke of Something is your patreon?

amanaplanacanal 4y ago
Or, as a thought experiment, some sort of UBI so that artists can follow their muse without having to find buyers for their work.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  Would you gladly slave away for the rest of your life so artists and random layabouts can “follow their muse”?
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    I don't mind money for artist, but the problems are wannabe morons that can't draw a circle with the bottom of a bottle. I don't mind money for scientists, but the problems are wannabe morons that try to prove the Earth is flat. You can continue the list... The hard problem is a better method for resource allocation.
tutivillusrex 4y ago
tenebrisalietum 4y ago
In the communist hellscape you would have a minimum of food and housing guaranteed and could survive regardless of the Commissariat pays you or not. The monarchist hellscape is pretty much equivalent to the capitalist hellscape, except you are trying to seek patronage from the public rather than a single entity. The capitalist hellscape is a hellscape because disposable income is disappearing from the middle class.
- gus_massa 4y ago
  In a communist country, can you send a letter saying that you will never return to the car factory because you are going to make sculptures all day long? Are they really going to continue giving you house and food or the secret police will ask nicely to reconsider your decisions? (Assuming it's not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge and there is enough food.)

nonrandomstring 4y ago

> Hi. I’m an artist. I have spent most of my life practicing my craft. I think that until we have abandoned the concept of “working for a living”, this line of thought is a bunch of wankery. If you seriously think that the deepest spiritual questions of why we create are "a bunch of wankery" then you are no artist. A producer of things, maybe. A very successful producer of wonderful, beautiful and desirable things perhaps. But not an artist.

egypturnash 4y ago
Ah yes, and now we have the “you can’t be a real artist if you consider any practical realities of putting food on the table with your work” wankery. I’ll just go subsist on moonbeams and philosophy so I can be a real artist then. Wanker.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  I won't push you on it any more, because you're not ready. But I hope that one day you'll find a whole lot more to the world than what you see now.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    Congratulations on maintaining your sense of smug superiority throughout this discussion. I am, as I said, a working artist. I have done multiple solo projects that spanned one or more years, each more ambitious than the last. I have cover quotes from four people with something like seven Hugos between them on my last graphic novel. I am now returning to a project that I put down for a couple of years because it got to a point where the polish it needed was not compatible with the ways my income is structured. I recently had a boring corporate art gig work out really well so I get to spend at least a few months not worrying about where my rent is coming from, and I’m stopping less ambitious projects that were easier to crank out at high speed in favor of this crazy thing. They were also ones that felt more likely to be popular. The serious big projects? I care that they please me, first and foremost; I do them because I have something I need to say through the medium of words and pictures, I do not worry that I have peaked. I worry about paying my fucking bills in a world that’s increasingly more hostile to making a living as an artist. I worry about every social site wanting to hide posts that link to my site because these corporate hellsites are optimized to keep people scrolling past interchangeable “content” that fills the space between ads. When I finish this project, I am confident that my next project will build on the lessons I learnt doing this one, as it built on what I learnt in my previous major workings. Perhaps it will be even more ambitious. Perhaps it will be deliberately much less ambitious, so I can kick back and have some fun without pushing myself to new heights for a while. I’ll still keep getting better, every time you draw something you get a tiny bit better at drawing that thing, and it doesn’t go away unless you suffer major brain damage. Hell, even that isn’t necessarily an obstacle - there’s a story about one Warner Brothers animator in the forties who had a bad concussion in a car accident, and found that his abilities had taken a major leap forwards once he was healed up and ready to get back to work. Lose my drawing arm? I’ve seen friends shift off their dominant hand due to injury, and go from uncoordinated wobbly messes to just as good as before in a month or two of breaking out the drills they used back in art school. Eventually there is a point where my whole body will start to break down. That is when I expect to peak: when I am physically incapable of manipulating tools and seeing my canvas. But sure, I’m “not ready” and there’s “more to the world”. And worrying about intellectual property has nothing to do with wanting to be able to make a living. And I’m not really “an artist”. But you’re still a pretentious wanker.