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That's an interesting take on Dali's art. The article portrays Dali as a greedy businessman first, an artist second: > Dalí ensured a steady flow of prints by
by Croftengea 3y ago
That's an interesting take on Dali's art. The article portrays Dali as a greedy businessman first, an artist second:
> Dalí ensured a steady flow of prints by signing his name on thousands of blank sheets of paper before he knew what would be printed on them.
- sandworm101 3y ago>> a greedy businessman first, an artist second: A reasonable description of every successful artist, or at least those who saw success during their lifetimes.
- mjhay 3y agoI doubt Dali ever had Warhol beat in that department. Warhol claimed that commercial success was an essential part of his art.
- saalweachter 3y agoDifferent medium, but I've always been impressed with the commercialism of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He pioneered the multimedia empire with Tarzan -- books, comic books, radio, movies... he was happy to make money off of any way he could.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoJust businessman. You can't be greedy if you're the only employee, you're already keeping everything for yourself. Trying to make more money off the market by increasing output is just "doing more business". Shrewd, sure, but definitely not greedy.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoThis seems like a narrow technical definition that doesn't really align with how people use the word in common day-to-day speech.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ilyt 3y agoMight not in general but in this case there is nothing greedy with just optimizing the process. Hell, arguably less time for menial stuff more time for art
- hzay 3y agoI think that commenter is quite aware of the popular stereotype of the "greedy businessman", and is countering exactly that.
- Retric 3y agoYou can be greedy in the same way companies can be greedy but providing poor value for the money in ways that aren’t obvious at the point of sale. Ie: Selling counterfeit goods at the full cost of the actual product in question.
- zamnos 3y agoI'd argue the other direction - it's requisite to be greedy in order to be a businessman, otherwise you'd take a vow of poverty, live off charity, and give away your work for free.
- explaininjs 3y agoDoes that really portray anything? All I get is that he was a fan of batched processing.
- Croftengea 3y agoDid you read the article? It's just one quote that shows the scale of his "art" production. It also shows he cared more about the output and money flow than what is actually printed and distributed under his name and signature. If it's not enough here is more: > “(Dalí) was completely money obsessed, to the point of a mania,” > The artist’s appetite for money ... made him a black sheep to many colleagues. His greediness is the main reason the market of the fake lithographs exists in the first place.
- vlunkr 3y agoOther artists calling him out isn't convincing to me. Every rock band that makes it big is a "sellout" to their unsuccessful colleagues. He had art that people wanted so he sold it widely and efficiently. Is that not the description of every monetarily successful artist? Or are you supposed to make poor business decisions and stumble into success on accident?
- explaininjs 3y agoIf an artist isn’t maniacal and going against the convention their colleagues demand, I don’t want them.
- vasco 3y agoAm I also very greedy for writing code once that gets executed millions of times and used to charge hundreds of thousands of customers?
- dguest 3y agoThis particular fact just sounds like good logistical sense. If I'm going to sign 2000 prints I might as well do it in one batch. Also might as well sign all them together, before mass production, rather than waiting for them to be differentiated into different prints: that way they are printed on demand from a central source rather than signed on demand from many different sources. I suspect it might be misleading to say he signed them "before he knew what would be printed on them". They were authorized with a specific set of prints (his work), it wasn't like they could just draw anything and sell it. Not to say he wasn't greedy. I would say the more direct point was > "(Dalí) was completely money obsessed, to the point of a mania,” said Noah Charney, an art historian and author of The Art of Forgery. but I'm not really sure being good at logistics makes you greedy.
- dml2135 3y agoI used to work in fine art printmaking. The weird thing about signing blank paper before the prints are done is that usually not every print in a run will make it into the final edition. If you are doing say an edition of 100 prints, you will maybe print 130-150 of them, and then choose the 100 best ones to actually publish. This gives leeway for misprints and imperfections. Prints are ususally numbered by the artist when signed, so presumably Dali would either have not been numbering these and having the printmaker number them once the final prints in the edition are determined. That, or he was numbering them and they just didn't have the same quality-control that a typical edition would have.
- ska 3y ago> The article portrays Dali as a greedy businessman first, an artist second: That's not a novel idea. It was claimed contemporaneously by other artists, if I recall correctly.