readings 2/8/07

What is success for you in the arts? What does one define as successful? Is it fame, is it money, or is it purely conceptual? It can be defined as personally conceptual expression, to be able to articulate what is it one thinks, feels and has experienced. It is the mergence of personal expression and achieves transcendental financial means. Success does include being able to do what it that I want to do…using the materials necessary to achieve that esthetic. Why do we pursue our MFA’s? It is the expensive, yet necessary tool to function within artistic society, plus working with other artist can assist one in reaching one personal conceptual growth within their work. The benefits of the university facilities draws one as well since it lends one to technical growth by providing resources financially unreachable other wise. A University is a “pressure cooker” since it refines one political as well as one’s social relevance within society since that is questioned and scrutinized. This also builds one’s contacts that are necessary within the artistic process. Or is the university a “sweat shop” are we the tool of the bureaucratic realm? Is it a pyramid scheme? Students do perpetuate the universities growth and creates the “need” for more students by the means of financial gain with little return to the students themselves. The university is a dogmatic dictatorship… that leaves little choice to the students as to what they want to learn being that those choices are laid out before the students. Does the university “sweat shop” just prepare one for the true realm demands within life? Being given responsibilities lean itself to personal growth. If Jack Welpott’s theory of becoming a “flake” allows one to teach outside the bureaucratic rules! Meeting and paper work are one means to an end but there are other ways. Since we are all flakes can’t we all anarchistic-ally get along together?

What makes art worthy of a financial fiscal value? Is artwork valued by past pre-requisites financial value? How is artwork valued? Is it for personal satisfaction; is it for financial gain, or social status? Does this go back to the idea within the reading that artwork is the same commodity value as money. This is a romantic, idealistic notion of art but does it with stand within society? I would have to say, sorry a little cynically no, since material values are defined socially within the bureaucratic system. It is a material substance signed by an individual. What is a public perception of artists? Does this tie into financial value? Do artists have social responsibility? Or are the drunken poets that are self-gratifying flakes?

Artist as skilled workers, the artist as virtuoso, the artist is a rule breaker as well as an intellectually (scientific in a way, inventors) this creates a myth of a genius. The artist is also an entrepreneur this notion gives the artist a fiscal substance and negates the mythical theory of the starving artist. Artists are social healers, artwork is expressive of the social needs within society giving weight to the needs within society: addressing, expressing and offering social relevance by offering solutions to the needs of society.

To summarize in the words of our Andy W. “Be the artist that you are!”
Every artist embodies the ideas within the stereotypes and roles alluded to within the readings. Any profession has a mythology surrounding it stereotypes can be placed on someone or to take on their image such as Andy W. projecting the personal that he used to sell his work. The artist view one person’s personality vs the content of their work, which become historically documented. Is judging one’s professional persona easier to judge once they are dead, since the artist can be seen within the force of their work on the social realms. Part of the mythology of Van Gogh is the madness of his work, and the story of his ear being cut off. Andy W. created his own myth to promote himself appeared to be that he entertained himself. Andy W. was a charlaton, he made a game out of prosperity and his work, that takes gumption to bring that up within his work. Andy W. work after he died the value of his work dropped showing that his persona was of more value and further interest. He was a very calculating person, he was the mark and he was his own promoter.