Artists Demand For Productivity and Marketability

Creation has a big ask of its creators, to offer their souls, minds, and hearts in such a way as to direct the gaze of the collective audience. In doing so artists often mindlessly act to further established relations of production and values of ruling class. Art must be allowed to exist outside of norms and the system it exams, and often criticises. 

IDEAS, AWARENESS AND PRIVILEGE

Our awareness and the perception that follows as well as the judgments that become of it, can be understood as dual, both conscious and subconscious. We never rest in the (sub)conscious awareness of happenings surrounding us. For the purposes of this article, conscious awareness will be referred to as the masculine, and subconscious awareness will be referred to as the feminine, though it has little to do with socially constructed norms of gender. The subconscious mind is also referred to as the yin, and masculine as the yang. Every living cycle, including the creative one, has within it both yin and yang properties such as stillness and movement, form and decomposition, etc. The masculine has an external motivation while the feminine aspect of creation is intrinsically motivated. Masculine aspects of creation can be understood as a performance, or bringing into form, while the feminine precedes form.

The creative process can be understood as cyclical, as both conscious and unconscious, and as having a life of its own, separate from, but captured by the artist that brings it into form. People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people. (Jung C.). Who captures and when, under which conditions, and to what audiences can only be described as divine luck or immense social privilege. The understanding of society, and the history of ideas as brought forward by rare, male, and singular genius minds is archaic and incorrect. The history of ideas is a collective effort. But the history of ideas is also the story of who has the right to think, whose imagination is acceptable and rewarded, and who has the privilege to put imagination into form (Freeland C., 2001). We are taught to refer to long-studied practices and firm structures without considering who studies who, what these structures are shielding us from, and whom they are in service of (Foucault M.).

SELF-INTEREST AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIVE ART

Inspired action is a response to environmental suggestions. When we stand still, we can recognize where the pendulum has swung. We can also anticipate solutions. An inspired action is the necessary humility to recognize you are not in fact God. It is to recognize you are a part of a network for whom you bear responsibillity. The feminine aspect of creation is the ability to reflect the times (Simone N.). The masculine is concerned with the past and the future, and thus avoidant in interacting with the present, which is why it is insufficient in responding to social nows. When we respond to a call of the times we can more efficiently address the concerns of what is consuming our societies. The profession of artists is in that way unique as it has a social dimension and can not be separated from its political context. Meanwhile, the masculine performance is is more invested in impressing than it is interested in what it is actually offering.

When creation exists predominately on the axes of concentration on time, production, and lack and an urge to create more or withhold, to concentrate in one spot, it surely gets built but does it continue to be useful and resonant? When art is created by the fathers in self-interest its quality can be destructive for its children. Under such semblance of virtuous conduct, the fathers extorted every resource they could, but inspiration seems to resist that treatment. Perhaps, that is because inspiration is God thus it could never be at our demise. Time made the clock and not the other way around just as inspiration created us, we only discovered it.

MARKETABILITY, MARKETS, NORMATIVITY AND ARTISTS

In our interaction with the matter we are molding, it is reciprocally molding us. Famously, it was Abramovich who said, art is about who we become in the process of creating it. Her mastery is performance arts and she is an example of a creative who used her life as a self-standing work of art, since her works are intimately intertwined with her life. There is something to be said about how life can be seen as a performance but I will leave it for another time.

As the demand of the marketplace for art expands, we as artists shrink. These demands hinder the creative process as they pose an incredibly constraining ask to deliver a product in an arbitrarily decided due time. The creative process can sometimes take up to years to be completed. And even then, it is never truly completed. Artists need time to develop taste and to find their voice, then to experiment with mediums and techniques to eventually produce a product of their inquisition. Art is a life-long process of becoming. And, much more personal in comparison to a marketable, well-packaged product ready for distribution.

Conclusion

Creativity can not be forcefully extracted. Artists are not beggars of the divine but they are in service of it. In addition, artists have a social responsibility that can only be examined once they are extracted from their individuality into collective struggle. We are inclined to believe we have control over inspiration, but with this article, I propose we rethink our role in our subjugation over this sacred connection that we have to creation. Art becomes timeless when it is not consumed by the passage of time.

Sources:

1. Cynthia A. Freeland (2001) But Is It Art?: An Introduction to Art Theory, Oxford University Press, England
2. Marina Abramovich at Southbank Centre theatre in London, conversation on her life and work comprised in A Visual Biography (2023) https://youtu.be/afKPToXvQd8?si=v-WL5nyEeWPk_fsL
3. Michael Foucault (2002) Archeology of Knowledge, Routledge, England

Mentioned: Nina Simone (singer) and Carl G. Jung (analytical psychologist).