[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Seriously--and I don't mean to be offensive when I ask this--but, sez who? (Yes, I know I'll catch crap for this post, but, what the hell. In for a penny...)

This is one of those "truisms" that has always boggled me. That art should be created for the love of it, and not for filthy lucre. That any art created purely for filthy lucre is somehow inferior to, or besmirched by, any thought of monetary gain or compensation. What complete and utter old bollocks! (Katsunami: this isn't directed at you, but please do give it some thought).

I personally blame the early Christian/Catholic Church for perpetrating this silliness. The Church, always seeking to get the most for nothing, convinced thousands upon thousands of laborers and artisans to "donate" their services for early churches, cathedrals, and the like, for "the glory of God." So that they were buying their way into the Kingdom of Heaven with the sweat from their brow, instead of asking the Church to actually <gasp!> pay for their work. I truly think that this is to whence you can trace back this idea that art for the sake of art, (which originally existed in large part only in churches, and for the glory thereof) is somehow better than art for MONEY.

But let's look at all the artists we have apotheosed to the top steps of our admiration staircase today--Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Turner, Picasso, and, let's not forget, Ansel Adams, just for fun--all of whom worked for commissions, payment, and....da-dum, MONEY. Turner didn't die impoverished. Nor did Adams, right?

And what do we mean when we say, "starving artist?" Don't we really mean...failed artist? Perhaps on a nice day, we mean, "artist whose talent hasn't yet been recognized," when we're in a kind mood...but when I hear people say, starving artist, or would-be author, they don't mean it kindly. They mean, wanna-be. Well, if a wanna-be means, isn't yet, and you have a studio full of watercolors or a computer full of books, and people think that means, wanna-be, then that means that a person who has surpassed "wanna-be" is commercially recognized.

So, in short: WHO SAYS that art created for art's sake is somehow better than that which is created upon commission? Most of the works in Rome were created for money or for Papal favor (which = cash, back then). Much of what's in the Louvre was completed to be SOLD for money. What's the proof of that theorem, really?

The only argument I can see for this, at all, is if that one takes a commission to paint someone's daughter or wife, (or husband, let's not be sexist here) and does it accurately and competently, and makes him/her look like a beast, well...yes. Compromise may well be required. And when you work in a strictly-commercial environment, like an Ad Agency, you have to do what the client likes/wants/works to sell their product. But, those are specific cases. The idea that art for the love of it is somehow superior to art done for money seems pretty thoroughly disproven, if you look at what we consider to be art today, on all fronts. Whether written (Joyce serialized Ulysses in publication), sculpture, watercolors, modern interpretive dance (do you all think that the dancers in those companies are dancing for free, or the choreographer is working for free?), the idea itself doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

Moreover, I think this does a disservice to the artist. The argument below:



...essentially says, "what you do for art is not work." It's not labor. That, somehow, it's fun and thence, all the sweat and labor and study and effort that went into becoming a brilliant painter, or a great writer (the infamous 10,000 hours) may be freely discounted, and ignored. That because it's art, the artist didn't really work, and therefore, should be happy as an unpaid hobbyist.

I mean...what kind of thinking is this?

When I read a piece of literary fiction, or even genre fiction, I know damned well that somebody sat at their computer, pen and pad, whatever, for a year or two or 10, and WORKED at writing that. Simply because I choose to read their labor for entertainment doesn't mean that they didn't work at it. If one plays video games, do you assume that all those game designers--who are artists in their own right--did it for love, and shouldn't be compensated, either?

Honestly, this mindset seems to be cognitive dissonance. Art is something high and wondrous and noble, that should only be attempted or achieved for the love of it, but at the same time, it's ONLY art, created with time, and therefore, unworthy of being considered labor, and the work put into creating it has no value. Hunh? Do you think the same about programmers, lawyers, accountants, and other professions that sell their time by the hour?

People seem to be viewing copyright issues as some "constraint" to prevent (these same evilly capitalistic, but simultaneously nobly artistic) authors from "profiting" (gods forbid, crass filthy lucre) from their labors for "too long," too long being determined by the poster, and seemingly based on some type of worthiness standard. To the contrary--copyright exists to encourage these artists to create, so that they are rewarded for their labors; so that their labors are not taken and used/viewed/sold without compensation to the artist who created them.

And the "too long standard" seems to be established by the mere convenience of the person who thinks that the works are valuable enough to entertain, enlighten or enrich him or her...but not valuable enough to pay for that entertainment, enlightenment or enrichment. And certainly not enough to allow an artist's family or children to enjoy the fruits of his labor! Oh, no...for that, he should get a REAL job, so that his earnings aren't taken from his family when he dies. Silly bastard, why should he have the same rights as everyone else? He's only an artist, after all. Obviously, as we can see here from these discussions, indirectly opined by so many, that's not a "real" job.

I would seriously love to see the arguments here all in favor of taking an electrican's life savings away from his family when he died. Or an accountant's. Or anyone else's--particularly your OWN. You'd never even consider it. In short--you're simply arguing that artists belong to some lesser class of people, some subset that don't deserve to earn and keep their earnings like everyone else. And it's only being argued because some of you want faster access, at no cost, to the products of their artistic lifetimes. That's the real irony.

Hitch

Art for art's sake....I don't think that is quite the issue. The issue is that in any creative endevor, most of the time people will fail. You can sneer and call the failures wanna-bees, but the fact is only a few people of any artistic endevor are commercial sucessful. And of those, a rare one will be come a mega-success. The right place, the right time, the right product....Try hitting that triple bullseye.

And it has nothing to do with skill or quality. Sorry, not true. I've seen master artists have their works ignored, and I've seen pig slop become a runaway success.

The point about art for art's sake in cold-bloodedly blunt. You had better enjoy doing it for it's own sake, because the odds are massively against you making a comfortable living off of it. You can't just look at the sucesses, just like you can't trade a stock chart out of the middle. Van Gogh was a failed artist in his lifetime. Nobody had even heard of Emily Dickinson in her lifetime. H P Lovecraft invented the modern horror genre, and lived and died in abject poverty. E.E.Smith PH.D. invented space opera, and bluntly said that he made more money laying bricks that he did writing. Bad quality? His works stayed in print from the late 1950's for nearly 50 years in paperback. (He died in 1965.) Frank Herbert almost never got Dune published in the 1960's. Would he have been a wanna-bee if it hadn't got published?


As to money and copyright....Follow the money. Who gets most of it? The artist? Shucks no, the middleman gets it. Whether that middle man is a Hollywood Studio, a Music Label, or a Publishing Company, they get most of the money. And being Corporations, they insist that they deserve every possible dime that can be milked from these copyrights - forever. Sure they'll throw the few alms they are required to the artist and/or heirs, but make no mistake, they don't give a D.R.A. about the artists in question. The art's just something to flog...And the artist's cut is just a tax, a tax they don't even have to pay if they don't exploit it. You can't get a sweeter deal than that - if you are a middleman.

But the whole copyright deal was based on the <public>, not the creator, granting the limited monopoly to encourage more creation of copyright items (art). The question is - how long is the optimum length to encourage more creation? Not grant a perpetual source of income for Corporation, not to feed the widow(er), the grandkids, or the great-great-great grandkids of the artist. But to encourage the artist to create more?

And the ultimate point about encouraging the the creator - dead creators don't create.

The historical record shows that a 56 year copyright is adequate to produce the necessary incentive. And I can use the period from 1909 to 1976, as an example of all the art that was created under the 56 copyright. If certain artworks were not created under these terms, because they were too short, I cannot see the gain later on by extending the copyright in the post 1976 era. Now There may be arguements for somewhat longer, and maybe a little shorter (McCauley favored 42 years), but continually extending copyright does nothing but enrich the middlemen. It is even contraproductive, as it merely provides incentives to milk old material, rather than create new material...

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