*miserychick is actually happy

I’ve been to several artist talks here in Toronto, and one of the questions from the audience that almost never failed to get asked is how the artist funds their work.

Which, I find, is a rather personal question to ask after you’ve just listened to the artist talked passionately about his/her work for an hour (or so). Sure, I can understand the curiosity and everyone in the room who’s listening might be wondering the same, but it takes a certain type to actually word it out. Imagine your friend taking you to a house party in a really fancy place owned by someone you don’t know and you show up uninvited then asking out loud how much they pay for rent. *awkward*

Tonight, after Golan Levin presented his body of work, in what was quite an excellent talk, at the OCAD auditorium, some questions were asked and answered and then there was:

“So, who pays for all the fun and why?”

Golan chuckled a bit, he took it in stride though and said that he often wonders the same. To be fair, the prelude to the question was probably the fact that he started his presentation with a little diagram showing how his work doesn’t fall into the ‘useful’ category because people tend to make money there, thus revealing that he doesn’t really make money doing all this stuff. He answered the question by saying that he doesn’t do the ‘fun stuff’ all the time. “I do other stuff too, I just don’t show you any of that here.”

(photo by @katehartman)

And the thing is, at most of the artist talks, this is usually the answer. They will do whatever they have to do in order to do the art. Exceptional cases are when the artist has a collector / rep gallery or is funded to do specific work by certain institutions. But even in those cases, before they can get that kind of funding, everyone will have done something to make money and they’ll never show as part of their art work. Because it doesn’t matter. Because the work has to come out so you just do whatever it is you need to do to make it happen. Most people understand this, and it’s why we don’t ask.

Perhaps the question about who pays for the art isn’t really about the money or the artist at all.  Maybe it’s a way of wondering how it is that the artist gets to do these cool things but I don’t. Just like walking into a party in a fancy apartment and wondering how it is that people get to live like this but I don’t.

Posted on Friday, 5 February 2010 at 0:51 UTC