Art Vs. Commerce: Want To See An Artist Smile? Pay Them

Four or five years ago, there were these ads circulating whose objectives were to educate the public on piracy. The campaigns employed celebrity faces such as Britney Spears, Missy Elliot and the likes to put a face to the statistics of artists getting robbed of their money from illegal downloading. In all of these campaigns, the artists featured were award winning and chart topping, so the issue of piracy wasn’t one in which the music was not favored, but instead one in which the act of paying for the music was disdained. The onset of trends such as mp3 players and technological advances were thought to be one of the factors of these trends. However, when Kanye West’s “Runway” got leaked, I came up with some theories.

People don’t give a shit about art. They don’t care about the setbacks that an artist must endure when an album that they have worked on for months is leaked. They don’t care about the amount of money that an artist and a label loses when illegal downloading occurs. Them not caring wouldn’t really matter if there wasn’t a trickle down effect. Did you really think that Kanye West album getting leaked wouldn’t have an effect on someone else’s art? As humans we like to reason. In our innocent little heads we play these compare and contrast games. If we can get Kanye West’s or Lady Gaga’s album for free why should we invest in a three hundred dollar painting by a starving hipster who lives in Little Five? The effect from the public’s apathetic views on music and art are trickling down, and it is becoming a serious threat.

People think that being an artist is a hobby. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve had sites ask me to use my contacts to get artist interviews for their sites and the paychecks still haven’t been mailed to me. Why? They think it’s a hobby. A hobby is defined as something that someone does in their spare time as a means of relaxation. Let me tell you something: there is nothing relaxing about writing or doing interviews. There are grammar points that must always be kept in mind, hours of editing, and the celebrity that you’re interviewing might have had a bad day and decide to give you one word answers to every question. Same goes for painting, the only painters that I have ever spoken to that told me that painting was a relaxing hobby, were still using washable CRAYOLA water colors, and just happened to be three years old.

The artists of today are not happy and if you want to see them smile, then pay them. We’re not living in the golden days anymore when artists were expected to be starving, shooting up, and running around town in hand me downs covered in paint, or pencil and pad in hand waiting for inspiration. The artists of today can accurately spell and pronounce Armani, Givenchy, Giambattista Valli and they need the coins to pay for these treasures, so…pay up.

 

Tags: Art, Commercial, Commercial Work, iPod, Piracy, Pop Culture, Trends