nettime The Death of the Artist -- and the Birth of th

[d.garcia]

Maybe its time to turn to the writings of a true art lover

Someone who values in the possibility of radical singularity and
autonomous expression.

So let me recommend Art critic and theorist Thierry de Duves wonderful
little book, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx, as a useful way to engage
with the powerful contemporary myth of creativity. Although the books
overt subject is the work of four legendary modern artists, Beuys,
Warhol, Klein and Duchamp, what gives these essays relevance, is that he
examines the work and lives of theses artists through the lens of the
political economy.

All four essays are of interest but from the perspective of this posting
it is the first two chapters (juxtaposing the art and personalities of
Beuys and Warhol) which generate the most important insights. From the
friction between the two radically differing narratives we can
extrapolate the key contradictions and paradoxes that constitute the
core propositions of the Creative industries; universal creative
participation through user generated content and the perpetual
stimulation of desire and thus commerce.

In Duve's writing we encounter Beuys, as the last truly great exponent
of the romantic movement, an artist for whom creativity was the
potential that resided in each and every one of us. It lead to his twin
proposition that not only was everyone was an artist but also that art
could no longer be seen as a profession. For Beuys capitalism remained
the cultural horizon to leave behind...Beuys based his art is based on
will and thus on the principal of production, Warhol based art on desire
and thus the principle of consumption;This inescapable binary are like
the two sides of the creative industries coin, universal creativity (or
compulsory innovation) and endless commerce.

But Warhol was perhaps more prescient anticipating the core shift in
power relations that was taking place where the figure of the consumer
takes center stage alongside (or even instead of) the worker, or better
where these two figures are merged. Hardt and Negri thus speak of
affective labor, Duve claims that Beuys believed in creativity and
Warhol did notfor Beuys art was labor while for Warhol it was commerce.
But despite the apparent gulf between these two artists something
separates these two artists from the Creative Industries and it is not
simply capitalism. After all  the very essence of Warhol's work is to
ignore use value and exclusively instantiate exchange value. What
separates Warhol and Beuys from the denizens of the Creative Industries
to come was that they both (in radically different ways) inhabited what
Duve describes as a 19th century invention, the mythical country of
bohemia.

Duve describes a country peopled where flaneurs and dandies cross paths
with peddlers and rag pickers; and the only one radically denied a visa
is the bourgoeois..Dickens and Zola have described this dark fringe of
industrialization, these shady interstices of urbanization. ..(also
Baudelaire and Hugo) they drew inspiration from this marginal society
but also contributed to the fabrication of its image. .. Daumier, Degas,
Toulouse Lautrec the Picasso of the Blue and Rose period To this gallery
of portraits Beuys adds his own... And so does Warhol But the
inhabitants of Warhols version of bohemia, the inhabitants of the
Factory have no access to the 19th centurie's most powerful invention,
the weapon of solidarity.  encapsulated by Marxs conception of the
prolatarian class as united through their labor power as individuals
both belonging to the exploited alienated class and carrying the
emancipated destiny of species. Duve  points out Warhol's superstars
are all isolated individuals.

Their were no social types in Warhols bohemia, no acrobats or
ragpickers, but rather proper names: Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Ron
Tavel, Brigid Polk, Candy Darling, Viva, Ondine, Billy Name each with
his or her quirks, neurosis, sexual speciality, and idiom.. In the end
they are victims, victims of Warhol's exploitative regime, and the means
by which this was achieved points to the future described. A creative
economy based on mass self-exploitation and affective labor.



d a v i d  g a r c i a
new-tactical-research.co.uk


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nettime The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of th

[nettime's avid reader]

January/February 2015

The Death of the Artist -- and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional -- the
image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if
the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it?

William Deresiewicz Dec 28 2014

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497

Pronounce the word artist, to conjure up the image of a solitary
genius. A sacred aura still attaches to the word, a sense of one in
contact with the numinous. He's an artist, we'll say in tones of
reverence about an actor or musician or director. A true artist,
we'll solemnly proclaim our favorite singer or photographer, meaning
someone who appears to dwell upon a higher plane. Vision, inspiration,
mysterious gifts as from above: such are some of the associations that
continue to adorn the word.

Yet the notion of the artist as a solitary genius -- so potent a cultural
force, so determinative, still, of the way we think of creativity in
general -- is decades out of date. So out of date, in fact, that the
model that replaced it is itself already out of date. A new paradigm
is emerging, and has been since about the turn of the millennium, one
that's in the process of reshaping what artists are: how they work,
train, trade, collaborate, think of themselves and are thought of -- even
what art is -- just as the solitary-genius model did two centuries ago.
The new paradigm may finally destroy the very notion of art as
such -- that sacred spiritual substance -- which the older one created.

Before we thought of artists as geniuses, we thought of them as
artisans. The words, by no coincidence, are virtually the same. Art
itself derives from a root that means to join or fit together -- that
is, to make or craft, a sense that survives in phrases like the art of
cooking and words like artful, in the sense of crafty. We may think
of Bach as a genius, but he thought of himself as an artisan, a maker.
Shakespeare wasn't an artist, he was a poet, a denotation that is
rooted in another word for make. He was also a playwright, a term
worth pausing over. A playwright isn't someone who writes plays; he is
someone who fashions them, like a wheelwright or shipwright.

A whole constellation of ideas and practices accompanied this
conception. Artists served apprenticeships, like other craftsmen, to
learn the customary methods (hence the attributions one sees in
museums: workshop of Bellini or studio of Rembrandt). Creativity
was prized, but credibility and value derived, above all, from
tradition. In a world still governed by a fairly rigid social
structure, artists were grouped with the other artisans, somewhere in
the middle or lower middle, below the merchants, let alone the
aristocracy. Individual practitioners could come to be esteemed -- think
of the Dutch masters -- but they were, precisely, masters, as in master
craftsmen. The distinction between art and craft, in short, was weak
at best. Indeed, the very concept of art as it was later understood -- of
Art -- did not exist.

All of this began to change in the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
the period associated with Romanticism: the age of Rousseau, Goethe,
Blake, and Beethoven, the age that taught itself to value not only
individualism and originality but also rebellion and youth. Now it was
desirable and even glamorous to break the rules and overthrow
tradition -- to reject society and blaze your own path. The age of
revolution, it was also the age of secularization. As traditional
belief became discredited, at least among the educated class, the arts
emerged as the basis of a new creed, the place where people turned to
put themselves in touch with higher truths.

Art rose to its zenith of spiritual prestige, and the artist rose
along with it. The artisan became the genius: solitary, like a holy
man; inspired, like a prophet; in touch with the unseen, his
consciousness bulging into the future. The priest departs, said
Whitman, the divine literatus comes. Art disentangled itself from
craft; the term fine arts, those which appeal to the mind and the
imagination, was first recorded in 1767.

Art became a unitary concept, incorporating music, theater, and
literature as well as the visual arts, but also, in a sense, distinct
from each, a kind of higher essence available for philosophical
speculation and cultural veneration. Art for art's sake, the
aestheticist slogan, dates from the early 19th century. So does
Gesamtkunstwerk, the dream or ideal, so precious to Wagner, of the
total work of art. By the modernist moment, a century later, the age
of Picasso, Joyce, and Stravinsky, the artist stood at the pinnacle of
status, too, a cultural aristocrat with whom the old aristocrats -- or at
any rate the most advanced among them -- wanted nothing more than to
associate.

It is hardly any wonder that the image of the