The Creative Gold Rush

"I have so many ideas, I wish I could find a benefactor or get a million dollar grant so that I could do them all." How many times have you heard this from your artist friends? This statement (or one similar to it) is uttered about a zillion times a day from artists all over the world. American artists like to throw in a comparison with Europe and its exemplary support of the arts and lament about how the USA does not understand or support its arts. Soon after a discussion ensues of Jesse Helms and the downfall of the NEA and the subsequent demise of art education in the public schools follows. (This contributes to visual illiteracy which exacerbates the situation.) We all know that the funding for alternative spaces is dwindling, the competition for professorships, gallery representation and grants is fierce and as a result artists are guilty of the backstabbing, money grubbing, brown nosing behavior that we all criticize the rest of the world for exhibiting.

Ok guys (yes, you my fellow artists), what are we (me to – we are in this together) going to do about it?

It is my opinion that the first thing we have to do is address the victim mentality that is underlying the original lament. "Get a benefactor or get a grant" means we just want things handed to us. This sentiment reflects that artists do not feel they are privy to the test of proving worth that the rest of the world has to attest to, day after day. The thing is, we are privy to it and the downfall of the NEA is proof. What I am suggesting is that we dump this old attitude and start to think and say to ourselves and to the world: "My art has merit and this is how it has value conceptually and financially." All the way through school my professors said over and over "Art is a business." Ok I will buy that (no pun intended), if art is a business then where is the stock? I want to invest.

The second mind-set that presents a roadblock is the general belief among artists that if you are financially successful as an artist you must have sacrificed your artistic integrity to get there. This paragraph is perhaps a tangent but I am going to talk a bunch about money in the successive paragraphs and I want to nip this critique in the bud right now. Let's give this belief some consideration and assume that it is credible. You can find proof everywhere. Thomas Kinkade and Anne Geddes have absolutely no artistic integrity. Their work is laughable but yet has broad appeal. They really bring home the bacon and have employees to boot. This is proof that the work has to be vacuous conceptually to be mass produced and sold. I would say, we are smarter than them. We can make smart work that has broad appeal. It is just harder than making sentimental fluff with an inane concept. I think we can do it.

The other elephant in the room is the voice of academia declaring from on high that they have preserved their artistic integrity by retreating into the ivory tower. These are artists who have had nominal success in the gallery system but are tenure track. I would say that they are suspect because they are the ones who have mastered that particular marketing venue. For an artist to win that finicky competition, the work has to be able to function academically. No one who is too controversial is found in most universities. You can’t be too far “out there” and you need the support of other academic institutions on your vitae. And by all means – keep your mouth shut so that you don’t offend anyone unless being offensive is your persona. Some of those on the inside perpetuate/preach their opinion that artists other than those in the club have no right to make a living in the profession and if they do they must be sacrificing artistic integrity. Those that don’t keep their mouth shut for political reasons. I would include the entire gallery, grant, residency and educational system to be a part of the scene. I think it holds back artistic exploration and places constraints on an artist’s development in a different way. Are there people who have been able to fight these constraints? Yes, but they are few and far between. The situation is the same as the venue of mass production. Retreating into academic circles is not an answer.

I could pick apart the gallery system next and talk about artists who have been widely successful within that system but I am growing tired of this part of the diatribe. The point is each possible distribution venue has the same challenge. It is up to the individual artist to hang on to their integrity as they move the work from inception to the studio to distribution no matter what venue they choose. It is up to the artist create desire for their work a lesson taught to us by Thomas Kinkade and Apple Computers.

And so, back to my earlier desire, I wish to invest in art.

It would be great if people were able to:
1. Buy stock in companies that have the intention of making art.
2. Invest in an Art Index.
(Nanotechnology has one [PXN] – why not us?
We could call it the AI 500 – I kinda like the pun)
3. Speculate in Art Futures.
4. Participate in options trading in art stocks.

As these thoughts became clear to me I decided I would see what I could find to invest in. I tried to compile an Art Index. I found Sotheby’s [BID] right away and did my research to discover that if I invested $100 initially and then $100 a month from Aug 2003 to the present I would have invested $5200 and the stock would have a market value of $10,800 (approx) – I would have doubled my money less the brokerage fees. Sotheby’s is a good investment and just about the only stock I can find that could qualify itself as an art stock. But it does not fit my criteria. They do not intend to make art nor do they encourage contemporary art production. They deal strictly in the secondary market which rarely benefits the individual artist.

So then I thought maybe the Art Index could be made up of companies who inadvertently make art. The first one that came to mind is the makers of the iPod [AAPL]. If Apple was an artist, her/his concept would be to create seduction and desire and he/she would be doing an awesome job at it. From an investment point of view $5200 invested in the same way I did in the paragraph above would have a market value of approximately $23,000. A wonderful return, a wonderful company but they really are missing my number one criteria and that is to intend to make art. The bottom line is, they intend to make electronics and they use desire created by awesome product design to sell them.

I then considered Sony Pictures because they made “Adaptation.” But Sony doesn’t care about art and they have no intention of making it. If they happen to fund a movie that is art as in the case of the above mentioned movie, it is by accident. I want to invest in Charlie Kaufman. Now that is an artist I could really get behind. If only he had stock.

I went through similar thoughts and research for Edios Interactive (Warren Spector’s Deus Ex and Thief series) and Big Beach Films (Little Miss Sunshine). Edios has the same issues as Sony and Big Beach Films is private.

I delved into artists who have private companies next. There I found Kinkade, Geddes, Hirst and Koons. Kinkade and Geddes are just bad artists and I really can’t get over my gag reaction to invest. But then it is simply not possible because they are not publicly traded. Hirst and Koons are interesting artists to look at as investment possibilities. They took the Warhol idea of the Factory and ran with it, they are generally considered to be good artists and both have formed corporations. Science Ltd is Damien Hirst’s and Jeff Koons Productions, Inc is the corporate entity keeping him from being personally liable in court. (Sidebar: Jeff Koons was a commodities broker for 6 years after graduate school.) For a very short time in 1998 you could by stock in Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy (Hartford Group). The pharmaceutical themed restaurant did not really fly very well. The rest of the restaurants were poorly managed and the company did not make any money. I should say that the Hartford Group had other people involved in it and was not an exclusive Damien Hirst venture. Maybe if it had been it would have made money. In these two artists, I see a glimmer of what the future could hold. If they had stock I would put my money on them.

At this point the reality that what I was looking for really did not exist dawned on me. The world I was/am looking for has not been created. There is no Art Industry. There is no stock, no indices, no mutual funds, no futures or options trading. There are some art “hedge” funds out there but my invitation to invest and/or participate in it must have gotten lost in the mail. They are inaccessible. (Btw, futures trading would be perfect for funding art ventures.) Investments in art would provide a new source of revenue for artists to create their work unobstructed. They could use the investment money to profit personally and commercially and begin to have an impact beyond the studio and gallery. Artists who have no intention to be educators would have the choice of staying away from the classroom. The credibility of the profession of artist would be restored and we would have the collective ability to fund our own R&D (grants, scholarships etc) and other altruistic endeavors.

We have work to do, we need to stop belly aching about the over saturation of the gallery and academic systems and start hammering out the industry that is ours. It is wide open and there is plenty of room. It is a new frontier. This frontier is very exciting because it is the place where artists can stop competing with each other (at least at first) and come together on the common goals of creating and exploring to reveal the breadth and depth of humanity’s potential and to extend the boundaries of civilization. It is time for the gold rush of creativity.

http://www.nysun.com/article/60389
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000088&sid=aCTxxmKVlgWI&refer=culture
http://danpink.com/