Hi Oliver, as someone who undertakes creative activities that one might call art, I read this post with great interest. For example, your description of what makes a group of volunteers move from here to there is very valuable.
My question to you is whether you are solely exploring what one might call the Art Market - where art takes part in a transaction of some sort? My confusion comes from some of the artistic activities you reference such as activities undertaken by volunteers together, for example. Because, whilst using some of one's time to 'make art' clearly has an individual cost where that time could be spent being 'productive' in some other way, it seems to me that the vast majority of people make art' for the pleasure of making art, maybe to learn something about themselves, the world around them, to enjoy doing something communally or in isolation, to allow the brain to step outside of everyday thought patterns, to try to suprise oneself etc etc. Certainly many people set out from the very beginning to create something that will 'find an audience'. Some of those will hope that this audience (one patron or 100s of 1000s of streams), will enable them to make a living from their art. But many don't and many more are oblivious to the need for an audience for their work at all. It is the activity that is rewarding in its own right. (And sometimes not rewarding at all but people feel compelled to continue regardless).
So, to go back to my question, if you are only examining the point at which art is traded between people, I can follow your reasoning but if you're looking at the generation of art, I think there are other mechanisms going on - which I find extremely fascinating, particularly when they become part of a resource debate about, for example, what children should learn at school.
Finally, you said you would explain 'how (art) helps the world not only in a spiritual wellbeing sense, but in a hard-nosed, tangible, economic prosperity sense'. I might have missed something but I didn't see the answer to this. I have my own theories based on the idea that creating art is largely independent from the art market but I'd like to know better what you were thinking here.
Finally, finally, I'd just like to posit that moving from an elaborate artistic output to a starker, more simple form isn't a demonstration of economy in art - of responding to there being less resources, you could say. 'Less is more' is, in itself, an extremely profound form of artistic expression that most people undertaking artist activity are taught to explore and which, nearly always, produces a spectacular array of insightful and rewarding artistic output!!!!
This is great
Hi Oliver, as someone who undertakes creative activities that one might call art, I read this post with great interest. For example, your description of what makes a group of volunteers move from here to there is very valuable.
My question to you is whether you are solely exploring what one might call the Art Market - where art takes part in a transaction of some sort? My confusion comes from some of the artistic activities you reference such as activities undertaken by volunteers together, for example. Because, whilst using some of one's time to 'make art' clearly has an individual cost where that time could be spent being 'productive' in some other way, it seems to me that the vast majority of people make art' for the pleasure of making art, maybe to learn something about themselves, the world around them, to enjoy doing something communally or in isolation, to allow the brain to step outside of everyday thought patterns, to try to suprise oneself etc etc. Certainly many people set out from the very beginning to create something that will 'find an audience'. Some of those will hope that this audience (one patron or 100s of 1000s of streams), will enable them to make a living from their art. But many don't and many more are oblivious to the need for an audience for their work at all. It is the activity that is rewarding in its own right. (And sometimes not rewarding at all but people feel compelled to continue regardless).
So, to go back to my question, if you are only examining the point at which art is traded between people, I can follow your reasoning but if you're looking at the generation of art, I think there are other mechanisms going on - which I find extremely fascinating, particularly when they become part of a resource debate about, for example, what children should learn at school.
Finally, you said you would explain 'how (art) helps the world not only in a spiritual wellbeing sense, but in a hard-nosed, tangible, economic prosperity sense'. I might have missed something but I didn't see the answer to this. I have my own theories based on the idea that creating art is largely independent from the art market but I'd like to know better what you were thinking here.
Finally, finally, I'd just like to posit that moving from an elaborate artistic output to a starker, more simple form isn't a demonstration of economy in art - of responding to there being less resources, you could say. 'Less is more' is, in itself, an extremely profound form of artistic expression that most people undertaking artist activity are taught to explore and which, nearly always, produces a spectacular array of insightful and rewarding artistic output!!!!