Should artists be paid a living wage?

[rrneck]

69. That "something else" is at the heart of it, isnt it?

I could teach anybody how to draw in one fifteen minute lesson. The rest is just practice. I obviously haven't seen your father's work, but if he or anybody else taught themselves how to make a representational image they are teaching themselves four hundred year old technology.

Artmaking is cultural research and development. In today's hypermaterialistic culture the very concept seems alien. That's why modern (and postmodern) art seems so esoteric and out of touch with people's everyday lives. 99.9% of the images people see every day were produced by a corporation to generate revenue. That's not really what art is designed to do.

Art, in a nutshell, is anything made that gives a deeper insight into the human condition. It prompts us to ask. "why". A terminal degree in art means one has gained proficiency in developing things that ask that question. That's why art and religion frequently butt heads. They're both trying to do the same thing. And religion doesn't like the competition.

Artmaking isn't about eye to hand coordination or even about eye to subject acuity. Qiadraplegics make accurate images with their teeth. It's about our relationship to the world, each other, and ourselves and how to define and describe it at any given point in time. That's What those letters symbolize.

Unfortunately there's not much of a market for cultural development right now, is there? The powers that be like things just the way they are. That's why they're conservatives. Artists, just like all the rest of the misfits that can't find a place on the wage slave payroll, need to be able to survive well enough to stop and think about where were going and what it means. Without that our future will always be dictated to us by those who don't spend their days with their noses to the grindstone just to stay alive.