Making it in the modern art world

[zbigi]

I'm not entirely sure if this story is an inspiration or a cautionary tale, but nevertheless it's interesting. It's about a guy relentlessly pursing his art while making little to no money:

https://thebaffler.com/odds-and-ends/it ... man-wilson

[Smashter]

Whoa. That was a good article. Good for him for continuing to pursue his dream despite all those setbacks, I think?

His 200k in debt, his completely unstable living situations that seem to really stress him out, and lines like the one below nudge me toward putting this one in the "cautionary tale" category:

I fly Spirit to Chicago, where all my friends are too busy buying property or accepting professorships to try the ketamine a guy gave me for letting him [do sexual act that I'm not sure should be written out on the forum ]

[7Wannabe5]

Excellent article. Great example of those whom Hanzi Freinacht described as members of the post-post-modern high "precariat" of "hippies, hipsters, and hackers" IOW, those who are achieving access and options mainly through cultural capital rather than financial capital. Actually, the way you can see that his perspective is post-post-modern is the manner in which he self-aware riffles through all his assorted stocks of different levels/types of capital in pursuit of his purpose (freedom to: internal drive to create art), inclusive of his "unmentionable" barter of his erotic capital and his straight-forward, although still humorous, request for patronage at conclusion of the article.

[jacob]

I'm not sure what I just read.

I used to think being an artist would allow me to step beyond reason toward what ought to be, to disturb the seemingly natural order of things and unwind our counterfeit intuitions.

I think I see the problem, because intuition based on reason objectively works rather well for the natural order of things. Ignoring it [at your peril] seems more postmodern to me as the resulting strategy is mostly to convince people with surplus money to part with it. IOW, the strategy stands on the shoulders of those with good intuitions about what's reasonable. Irony intended? I'm not so sure.

OTOH, I could just be unfairly taking a sentence out of context and projecting it unto my own inability to appreciate art. Would I feel the same about another pursuit using the same strategy?

[7Wannabe5]

OTOH, I could just be unfairly taking a sentence out of context and projecting it unto my own inability to appreciate art. Would I feel the same about another pursuit using the same strategy?

What if the strategy was being used by a scientist seeking patronage to support his research project into developing crops that would produce kcals in worst case climate change scenario, but unlikely to produce profits in current environment?

What if the strategy involved soliciting currently wasted "surplus" resources (such as heat/space in a McMansion or large luxury apartment currently only occupied by 1 human ) rather than money towards teaching Generation Ragamuffin (those currently alive most likely to live until 2100) how to do basic math and/or garden?

Also, I would note that meta-modern/post-post-modern functioning is as much dependent on post-modern functioning as post-modern functioning is dependent on modern functioning. Money, private property, and contract are also abstractions dependent on lower-level functioning for their continued existence.