When I freelance commercial Dolls and toys making i charge my work was worth what I thought my work was worth to each company,regardless of time involve in doing.
Some work took one week/ two days / a month. My price was always what ever I wanted & got it. I learned early ,commercial art is all about money, fine art is about one's pleasure. ab ________________________________ From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, December 10, 2010 8:30:05 AM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art As a writer I get paid by the word (catalogue work) - with the client setting the maximum word count- in other situations I get paid flat rate (magazine work) - for academic writing - an honorarium, sometimes On 12/10/10 11:13 AM, "William Conger" <[email protected]> wrote: Even today an hourly wage for artmaking is frowned upon. Since the Renaissance, then artists succeeded in their occupation being included among the Liberal Arts, the occupations of gentlemen, and removed from the illiberal arts. The illiberal arts were usually those skills practiced by slaves in antiquity, painting among them. But there were exceptions even then and the social status of the artist and artmaking always a bit blurry until the time of Alberti who argued that painting is a liberal art, "worthy of free men" because it utilizes geometry (his perspectival theory) and thus can give a true picture of the world. Leonardo argued similarly is saying painting was superior to poetry (established liberal art) because it employed the sense of sight, regarded as superior to the sense of hearing. An hourly wage denotes work done for hire according to established rules of procedures set by those who do not do the work themselves. If we apply the hourly wage -- say the minimum pay rate -- to artmaking, most artists would earn well below the minimum. If they were to charge by the hour, at, say, a rate comparable to an average lawyer, the prices of their work would be extremely high, much more that the market would pay. That causes me to wonder why lawyers charge by the hour but like wage earners who get to set their own worth. Maybe artists should put one of those little lawyer's clocks by their studio doors and punch in and out, and punch again when unsolicited visitors stop by with Berg-like questions and comments. Billable hours in the studio. I like that. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, December 10, 2010 12:38:29 AM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art Its all according to your hourly wage On 12/10/10 1:25 AM, "ARMANDO BAEZA" <[email protected]> wrote: Quality aside ,it take more money to make large works of art than small ones. ab ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Thu, December 9, 2010 6:31:30 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art It would be interesting to see if the better art were consistently made in more prosperous times or if stress & poverty spurrd invention etc. Kate Sullivan In a message dated 12/3/10 11:58:17 AM, [email protected] writes: > Dear List; > > Why do we fret over the art as commodity in today's world. . And why not > look to > the distant past to see how closely linked art and money were? Abbot > Suger, in > his lavish 12C building of St-Denis, used the richest materials and > jewels, > etc., as a metaphor to illustrate the richness of heaven. For some > reason, > modernity has justified art partly on its spiritual value without ever > determining what that is. Perhaps Kandinsky came closest when he spoke of > > 'inner necessity" as the spiritual impulse; others did as much in > different > terms. But no-one can say what, exactly, the spiritual is and how it is > embedded in art, beyond alluding to it it largely romantic form. At least > Suger > was honest enough to admit he couldn't "express" spirituality in material > terms > without metaphor, without equating the uniqueness of the former with the > rarity > of the latter. Thus the richer, rarer and more costly a thing is the more > easily > we can attribute to it the elusive spiritual substances that otherwise > escape > our grasp. True for Suger, true for today's money-based art market. > > We know a big diamond is not a spiritual presence but we easily accept > the > pretense through metaphor; likewise, we know that a painting costing a > million > dollars is not necessarily a significant, spiritually imbued artwork, but > we can > accept the pretense that it is through its market value, especially if > that > value is freely determined by a public auction. > > The question regarding art and money deserves closer analysis than it > gets. It > deserves a study of how we place value on immaterial qualities, or how and > why > we think they exist at all or have any value. It is one thing to value > material > things with money as a relatively simple process. It is another thing > altogether > to try to value immaterial beliefs, customs, symbols, knowledge, feelings, > and > the like, in material ways. It is of course done all the time anyway. For > > example, every court in the land does this on a routine basis in > determining > settlements or compensations. Art is just one of many, many examples. > We > don't really have any alternatives. We are matter, art is matter, matter > is > equated with matter. The spiritual, the aesthetic, the subjective > "qualities" of > experience and desire, etc., are not matter. But, paradoxically, they > cannot > exist except by metaphor; that is, as if they were matter. > > I plead to either bring this Art and Commodity issue up to a more > interesting > level or drop it. The banal underlying interest of those who focus on > art-money > is political and generally ultra-conservative, as if one can separate the > moral > and spiritual qualities of life from its material reality. Strangely, the > > argument enables "free-market" amoral exploitation because after all, the > important things, the spiritual things are unsullied by money. > wc -- --
