Comments

1. eric wrote:

   I’m at work so don’t have time to elaborate on this, but this is really the artistic question of our generation. At best it’s been ignored, in most cases the people who ask these kinds of questions have been derided for “Trying to mess up so-and-sos paper flow” or some such nonsense.

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 1:41 pm ¶

2. Aja wrote:

   I read Resistance, Rebellion, and Death a few months ago, and I’m still trying to digest a lot of those ideas. I’ll admit that a few years ago, I had a real hard-line approach to making art; it had to stand for something, it had to be non-commercial, it had to speak to some larger truth. I think it was easy for me to think that way because a) I wasn’t making a living from art and b) I hadn’t yet examined the relationship between art and commerce. Art can and should be a number of things. It’s unfortunate that artists are one of the few who feel that it’s ok not to make money from the things they produce. Labors of love are still labors.

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 2:10 pm ¶

3. Jess wrote:

   Art was driven in part by money even before capitalism was invented. You think those paintings in the Pyramids were done because some ancient Egyptian carver/painter just felt the inspiration? Hell no.

   Or all those paintings we see in the museum. Very few, if any, were produced out of some “pure artistic impulse.” They had patrons.

   One of the reasons we do art of any kind is to make a freakin’ living and for other people to see it. I joke that those of us who are writers do it because we lack any other skills, which is why I started as a carpenter and it’s about the only thing I can depend on.

   Now, if we lived in some magical society where we were just given everything, never having to worry about making money or anything like it, then you can talk about pure artistic impulses. But we don’t, and never have, and probably never will get to that. Even the people that did the Lascaux cave paintings had to get food, and I would bet that the person who did them was given some when s/he couldn’t join on the hunting and gathering trips.

   This isn’t to say I don’t understand that the markets do affect art, and hip-hop especially. But at a certain level I never bought that certain art forms were invented as some kind of voice of the dispossessed, though they can function that way. But Woody Guthrie had to feed the kids, and he had to do things to sell records occasionally.

   Somehow these questions of authenticity kind of drive me nuts. It always seems to lead nowhere.

   I don’t buy the argument that demand for certain kinds of art exists independent of the marketing thereof and all that. But I do think there comes a point where you have to say, I will either make money by doing art and make art designed to do that or I won’t. If the answer is the latter then I don’t have a right to complain that nobody sees me or understands or whatever the heck.

   Let me put it another way: do you know anyone who writes who wants nobody to see their work, ever? “I want to write a novel but put it in the attic so nobody but me ever reads it.” I have never seen that except from people like Darger who are crazy to begin with.

   I mean, am I missing some huge important issue? Or am I so caught up in trying to make a living from writing that I have become blinded?

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 2:24 pm ¶

4. PPR_Scribe wrote:

   Agree w/Jess that money and patronage have always been an aspect of “art” in many societies and in many times. We may be a little nostalgic at times, feeling as if music (or other art) of our youth (or someone else’s) was more “authentic” than what is around now. But the fact is the “the youth” of today (or any other day) will make sense of their lives and experiences using whatever art or other tools are at their disposal–and/or they will play a part in creating new art/tools that does so. Just cuz the stanky leg is broadcasting on the radio does not mean that this is the only thing they have at hand to soundtrack their lives.

   Today’s kids are much more aware of their role in the market aspect of their art than kids of my generation. Unlike the 70s and 80s, young people today have instantaneous means to influence art and artists through social networking, YouTube, etc. etc. Also, they have unprecedented means of bypassing the official market systems altogether to become consumers (e.g., file sharing, bootleg movies, easy and inexpensive self-production of art). Producers of art recognize both these trends and are constantly playing catch-up to remain relevant–and solvent.

   Young folks of today will be alright, as far as art is concerned. In fact, I think if I pay attention I could probably learn a thing or two from them.

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 3:12 pm ¶

5. Squidfly wrote:

   Make Art only if you need to keep the crazy Rat bouncing around in your skull quiet…and if you can’t do anything else.

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 3:56 pm ¶

6. Tracey wrote:

   Wow. I could go on on this post for pages and pages. I actually love rap and hip hop music now but only after finding out of the mainstream artists particularly Sabac Red and such and http://www.guerrillafunk.com/index.html
   It seems that money does ruin a lot. The music industry doesn’t seem to be interested in promoting politically conscious music focused on something other than materialism. I’m not always a fan of their lang but think they are examples of how a lot of times you do have to be shallow in your lyrics to make a lot of money.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sKb0t5B_M4
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wash_RT1wg

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 4:06 pm ¶

7. Ejunco wrote:

   If money is only the issue yeah it f****everything up.

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 7:12 pm ¶

8. Arabi wrote:

   @Jess,
   Your analysis seems to just re-affirm the myth of a totalizing capitalism, even positioning its logic in the origins of ancient art. Yes, perhaps those ancient Egyptian sculpturers had patrons because supplies required resources but that doesn’t mean they picked up pick and hammer simply to “make a living”.
   This pragmatic argument is too reductive for me and seems too easily maneuvered to justify the transgressions of capitalism.
   I can produce art and give it away for free if I want my work to reach an audience. Lots of artists choose not to feed themselves with their work.
   But people do it all the time,because unfortunately, the basis for imbuing an object with value is all too often predicated on its worth in the marketplace.

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 10:11 pm ¶

9. atlasien wrote:

   But true capitalism has only been around for a few centuries… art has been around since human beings evolved.

   Art always had communal purposes. It wasn’t just about an individual. Sometimes those communal purposes involved money, sometimes they didn’t. It’s only recently, in very rich societies that prize individualism, that art (especially “fine art”) is supposed to be primarily the pure unsullied expression of a heroic, unique, artist soul. The idea of actually signing a painting was once a radical one.

   Art always served a function in the community and had a wide variety of pragmatic purposes: entertainment, evoking religious awe, displaying the power of the state. Art also did very pragmatic things for the artists… they got food and money, social status, increased sex appeal. Shakespeare was in it for the money… none of his contemporaries thought his plays were much more than fleeting entertainment.

   The ancient role of art is still around today, it’s just that capitalism is layered on top of it.

   The new part, and the confusing part, is that capitalism has turned the idea of authenticity into a commodity. So a mass-produced piece of art that looks or sounds cookie-cutter and mass-produced has much less value than a mass-produced piece of art that cleverly pretends it’s really authentic, unique and NOT mass-produced.

   You get a lot of this hypocritical presentation in hip-hop… rappers bragging about their tough lives whether or not they really had them.

   But I think this dynamic is just as prevalent in other genres, like indie music, the hypocrisy is just less obvious. It’s irritating listening to some indie rock song that goes “my girlfriend doesn’t understand me because my emotions are so complicated and deep, sucks to be me, I’m a special snowflake, waaaoooh” when it’s just the same as a gazillion other songs in that genre.

   A song like the aforementioned Stanky Leg can actually be refreshing because it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than mindless entertainment serving a very simple purpose. I mean, little kids love it, because it’s basically a fart joke in the form of a song.

   Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 10:56 pm ¶

10. Arabi wrote:

    Actually,
    I make no assumptions about the function of art, past, present or future because a particular products possibility of meaning and use value is nearly infinite.
    I do think that the pure, artistic soul is a fiction but so is the communal soul.

    A few things to keep in mind:
    I do think in this culture we focus more on the product rather than the process. For some, the act or craft of creation is the most meaningful and important aspect of art, who cares about the end product(In certain spiritual practices that take this perspective, the true end product was the human). Thus, we may assume that are artist creates for us.
    Also, we must remember that there is an interaction between artist and audience but it is often characterized by misperception. We interpret the work of an artist according to our own view of the world and this may not match the producers. In other words, we can’t really know the intentions of the artist and the artist can never really know what we’ll read into his/her work.

    BTW, Atlasien, do you consider directors, actors and writers who create movies and books based on the experiences of others hypocrites? I say this because I think we are quick to assume that the rap persona of a rap artist is identical to the human body, with his/her dispositions and history, that takes on the persona.
    The boisterous tales they spin may not be theirs but that doesn’t make it inauthentic.

    However, in a way your right about the “hypocrisy” or contradictions inherent in the genre of Indie Rock and rap. But this is true of all Genres which have their own conventions of form and what not. Popular forms tend to reproduce themselves near endlessly. How much is this driven by the audience?

    I agree that authenticity should not be predicated on “uniqueness” but than again what makes something authentic vs. inauthentic? Can we really make such a distinction without making presumptions about the artist?

    Seeing as this discussions focus is art, politics, authenticity and capitalism, I would recommend folks read Walter Benjamins “The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction” In was written in the 1936 but is as relevant as ever. There is a link to the essay from the wikipedia page about the essay.

    Posted 07 Apr 2009 at 2:01 am ¶

11. atlasien wrote:

    @Arabi: No, because I’m not pinning myself down to a strict definition of authenticity, especially one determined by intent.

    I’m just noting that authenticity is heavily marketed and commodified by large corporate concerns… and this is part of a much larger system than what the artist does in projecting a persona. Projecting a persona is ancient and independent of capitalism; the commodification of authenticity is not.

    Posted 07 Apr 2009 at 7:43 am ¶

12. Jess wrote:

    Arabi–

    Like I said, capitalism wasn’t invented yet a long time ago. But you’re buying into the myth of the artist nearly as much.

    The only people who can afford to make art for nothing are people in positions where tey have time and resources to do that. That’s pretty rare. In most ancient societies, for instance, we forget that a good chunk of your time was spent doing something, anything, that got you food by the end of the day. You had no choice.

    When people started producing food, you still had to go work in the fields (or have someone else do it) because the food doesn’t appear magically.

    So you had a choice: do it yourself or do something valuable enough that you could exchange it for food. A guy who makes tools can give those to other people and get food (later on money). Someone with a talent for carving stuff might be able to exchange that.

    In that sense you kind of have to think about the function of art because it’s on;y now that we can even talk about art for art’s sake. That concept would have made no sense whatsoever to anyone prior to the 16th century or thereabouts, and even then it’s sort of a Western concept.

    In the modern world, we have more time to do things, but Arabi, again I ask, do you know anyone who makes art of any ind and wants no one to ever see it? Someone who isn’t Emily Dickinson.

    Posted 07 Apr 2009 at 7:59 am ¶

13. cocolamala wrote:

    i have two unrelated points:

    1. the assumption that members of pre-capitalist societies had longer workdays is not correct. the european feudal calendar had many more holidays than we have in our calendar year (the linked paper says there were only about 120 work days). hunter gatherer societies did not spend 8 hours a day obtaining food/shelter/water.

    We [westerners?] work 40 hour weeks, but that is far from the only model of labor that will provide a sustainable living.

    other societies have divided work/art/family time very differently than contemporary western culture. i can’t say with confidence that in those cultures, the time to create art was whatever time was left over after the workday was finished.

    2. diarists and journal keepers produce creative work but don’t always want others to see it. western women too have a history of doing atwork furtively on the sidelines.

    emily dickenson is a good example because her status as a woman probably exacerbated her desire to hide her creative work from the outside world. virginia woolf also wrote about how creative output is linked to social status. as a woman, she defied expectations about what she should be doing with her time (writing vs. domesticity). the woman who wrote “as I stand here ironing” also touches on the conflict between being expected to be a wife 24/7 and her desire to be a writer.

    Posted 07 Apr 2009 at 4:25 pm ¶

14. cocolamala wrote:

    this points to the division between arts and crafts.

    i some cultures there is no difference, but in western society, we have the “arts for arts sake” issue.

    in terms of sexism, a lot of the art historically practiced by women is defined as a craft — for example, the fabric arts (needlepoint, embroidery, making clothes or weaving fabric), basketweaving, pottery. If its useful (although adorned), or can be exchanged– it’s not [fine] art. coincidentally, these artistic outlets can provide a measure of finacial independence as well, which subverts maintaining a social order grounded in sexism.

    artforms that historically excluded women and weren’t practical objects made for use or exchange, like writing (requires literacy), and painting (requires tools and leisure, and education), and public performance (singing, acting) are still considered fine arts.

    in terms of how this relates to hip hop and market forces. now the market is setting priorities about art. conscious rappers are excluded from the market-friendly category and “un-conscious” rappers are rewarded by the market with high visibility.

    what is the market hungry for? can we redirect this “appetite for destruction”?

    Posted 07 Apr 2009 at 5:11 pm ¶

15. elle the elephant wrote:

    This issue about authentication versus selling out is so important to me, because it seems in modern America that there is this ingrained idea drilled in our heads when were born that Corporatism at all cost is good and anything that isn’t did for a profit is illogical, that the business model is the only model that is good, any other type of model is alien. This corporatism has gotten so strong that people can dehumanize each other into products and easily cast each other aside. This has developed a sociopathic personality trait that seems to be present in the ruling classes. Seriously, would the criminals that run AIG be giving each other bonuses if they actually had a consious?

    Posted 07 Apr 2009 at 5:43 pm ¶

16. G.K. wrote:

    Speaking of AIG, I was one of the many people protesting directly in front of the company’s entrance last week on Wall Street, along with the activist group I work with and about a dozen other community organizations—-it was marvelous and amazing to see all these people unite for one common cause. Even though we had a huge downpour rain on all of us at least 4 times during the day while listening to about a dozen groups give speeches and rant like hell against the system, walking about another hour and a half after putting AIG and Bank of America on blast, possibly scaring some bankers so bad their stock options dropped like it was hot,and wound up half-soaked and still not too tired in Foley Square (at least I wasn’t, I can’t speak for my colleagues and everybody else who was there) at the end of it all, there was a big sense of accomplishment. (I had a good old time screaming, “Where’s our bailout? When are we gonna get some of that 160 million back?” along the way!)

    On this subject of art vs. commerce—the way the system is structured, an artist or anyone who wants to be one) is always going to have to go for the gold, or whatever makes them the most cash the quickest. Also, I disagree with Jess about rap—it definitely started out as a voice of the poor and dispossessed—I mean, look at early godfathers of rap Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets—of course they made a partial living for their efforts, even though none of them ever got rich doing what they were doing, and they could have made more money if they weren’t using their talents to dog out the establishment. I’m sure most early rappers who started in the late ’70’s/early ’80’s never dreamed that they could actually make millions of dollars off rap, let alone make a living doing exclusively that. Rap started out as a from of expression by poor inner-city young black folks who felt completely ignored and forgotten by mainstream society, and only in the last 20 years has it become a multimillion-dollars bankrolling business. Sadly, as long as art is defined by its monetary worth and not by its contributions to society, that’s how the state of art vs commerce will remain.

    Posted 07 Apr 2009 at 9:28 pm ¶

17. Nate wrote:

    @ cocomala

    the makertis always going to pus whats a) easy b) controllable (as in both the product being owned, as well as the artist) and what people want (more, specifically can be made to want) to buy…

    The only think that really challenges this on a direct level, is a change in consciousness. Both indiviudal and group. Take smoking (in the west) as an example.

    Posted 08 Apr 2009 at 4:55 am ¶

18. Jess wrote:

    @cocomala —

    no, people didn’t do 40 hour weeks, but you still had to get food, no matter how much time it took. And you still had to do things that facilitated getting food. Else where would it come from? A hunt can take days. Gathering foods can take a while too. Your “workday” might be shorter, but you need to define that a bit, since a good chunk of hunting is waiting around (depending on what it is you are hunting).

    Now, a lot of the things they did that fall under “getting food” would be classed as artwork now. I mean, take pottery — those Acoma pots were used for very practical things like cooking, and those beautiful carved spear points found in very old strata were made that way for a reason and it had to do with maximizing the damage to a musk ox, not pleasing the aesthetic sense of a museum-goer 10,000 years in the future.

    And even in modern Japan the distinction between art and craft is often not made. (That’s why Japanese design is so cool — there is a fundamental belief that even utilitarian objects should be beautiful).

    Art as a separate thing only appears when you have divisions of labor and even then it took a rather long time for humans to get to the point where there was enough food and time for that — to get to where you could carve stone statues and build monuments and all that other stuff.

    Think about it — carving a stone monument takes months with bronze tools. Who feeds you while you are at it? There’s a reason agricultural societies are the ones who start building stuff like that (and making more stuff that would be classed as craft).

    ANd while the medieval calendar had more holidays, I mean, have you ever seen a farm operate? I haven’t seen anyplace where they do subsistence farming and aren’t doing something every day (even if it isn’t all day). Animals need to be fed, cows need to be milked, (or goats) and fields need to be tended so the pest animals don’t take your food. Quite a lot. And you had to do it until you died. (No retirement in those days, even if you had kids to help care for you in old age).

    All this is just to say that there’s a false choice being presented.

    And by the way, even a diarist who says “I don’t want someone to see it” really wants someone to see it or they wouldn’t write it down at all. I think too many people who keep journals and what not aren’t being honest with themselves. If you want nobody to see it, don’t write it, period.

    Emily Dickinson lived in a sexist society. She was also seven kinds of crazy. (That may have been because of the society she was in). Doesn’t mean she wasn’t a damned good poet. Kafka said he didn’t want anyone to see his stuff either, because he thought it wasn’t good enough, but that isn’t because he wanted nobody to see it at all.

    @G.K. — I like Gil-Scot Heron, and I understand what you say about the origins of rap, I was just thinking that there is a lot of self-mythologizing hat goes on in the arts, and we should take a step back sometimes, and just accept that we aren’t lone rebels standing bravely against the Man. That’s Hollywood’s version of an artist, you know?

    Posted 08 Apr 2009 at 9:11 am ¶

19. cvalda wrote:

    Something that’s distinct to capitalism is that people have to sell their labour to survive, because the land that used to sustain us directly is now privately owned. That means money takes a different form; not something to trade certain goods on market day, which most people won’t bother with for the rest of the week, but the entire basis of society. Not idealising feudalism here, but the enclosure of land had disastrous social consequences, and turned money into the baseline for human existence.

    If you’ve grown up in a city, you need money to survive – so you have to sell your labour, art or otherwise. I’m reminded of the argument that since the ’80s, hip hop and drugs have subtituted for industry.

    Posted 08 Apr 2009 at 5:52 pm ¶

20. Viviti wrote:

    A pedantic minute: Camus was not Algerian but French. Algeria was a region of France, and effectively a settlers colony until independence in 1962 (2 years after Camus’s death). Camus was a Pied-Noir (Algerian-born European) who wasnt in favour of Algeria gaining full independence from France, so calling him a White Algerian might be a little stretch too far.

    Posted 09 Apr 2009 at 6:53 am ¶

21. m.dot wrote:

    @Jess
    Are you an art historian? Its rare that I come across a person who can take complicated arcane Ideas, (art, capitalism the history of economies) and make them acessible. Where did you go to school? I want to go there lol.

    @ Viviti, I tend to ride for self determination. Last time I checked, my Boo, Camoo, defined himself as a white Alegerian man. Your willingnes to nitpick reminds me of the people I went to Law School with.

    @Atlasien,
    Your analysis is dead on, but I am going
    to go ahead and push you a little bit
    on the rappers .
    You say:
    You get a lot of this hypocritical presentation in hip-hop… rappers bragging about their tough lives whether or not they really had them.

    But I think this dynamic is just as prevalent in other genres, like indie music, the hypocrisy is just less obvious.
    ====
    I hold Black artist to another level.
    Every generation before hip hop had Black artists that made music, and a decent
    percent of that musics SOLE PURPOSE
    was to help folks make sense out of their
    lives.

    How is Lil Wayne’s Lollipop or Jim
    Jones’ Pop Champagne (which has
    one of the illest beats I EVER heard)
    suppose to help me make sense of mylife?

    Black people are this countries oldest
    residents but it’s most recent citizens.

    Let me say this again.

    We are this countries oldest
    residents but it’s most recent citizens.

    Our art should reflect that.

    When the people don’t have their art,
    when they don’t have their homes,
    when they don’t have their humanity,
    what do they have?

    God, I hope.

    Posted 09 Apr 2009 at 10:34 am ¶

22. Joseph wrote:

    @m.dot
    Not to stick my nose in but… I think what Viviti is saying is that referring to Camus as a “White Algerian” without explaining that the only reason the white French were in Algeria was to conduct a bloody colonial project, erases that history. And since Camus is most famous for writing The Stranger, which begins with the pointless murder of an Algerian Arab (immortalized forever in the unfortunately-titled Cure song “Killing An Arab”) some of us are touchy about him.

    Your Boo notwithstanding, Algeria is about as “White” as South Africa. I’m just saying.

    Posted 09 Apr 2009 at 11:35 am ¶

23. Viviti wrote:

    @ Joseph
    You must be in my head… when I hear Camus and Algeria I think J. M. Coetzee and South Africa

    @m.dot
    I guess you can take the girl out of Law school but not the Law school out of the girl I’m all for self-determination but I think sometimes context sheds a different light on things, without necessarily taking anything away from the importance of someone body of work.
    Furthermore, I cant recall coming across a pieces of work of Camus where he referred to himself as white Algerian but I haven’t read him in his entirety and only in French, so translation might also come into play, but he wrote some pretty damning stuff on the “muslim people” in Algeria trying to disguise their thirst for revenge over the French community as national independence.
    Back to the topic of art and la condition humaine: since you like Camus you might dig (or already dig) another of his contemporaries: André Malraux

    Posted 09 Apr 2009 at 2:56 pm ¶

24. m.dot wrote:

    @Viviti
    You are right. I am wrong, and I apologize for the Snark. I am uber possesive of Camus. In December, when I WASN’T eating, having crazy relationshop blues, taking the GRE and applying to grad school, it was me, God and Camus.

    My tendency to be Hawkish came out and it wasn’t called for.

    I will check out André Malraux. Is there anything in partic you reccommened?

    What was Camus’s rationale for not wanting Algerian independence?

    And since Camus is most famous for writing The Stranger, which begins with the pointless murder of an Algerian Arab (immortalized forever in the unfortunately-titled Cure song “Killing An Arab”) some of us are touchy about him.
    =====
    The only thing I know about Algeria is Camus and Friere.
    When you say “us” whachuyou talkin’ bout Willis?

    @Joseph
    Your Boo notwithstanding, Algeria is about as “White” as South Africa. I’m just saying.
    =========
    I am not sure what you mean here, given the fact that South Africa, in modern history has been ruled by an oppressive small white Powerful majority, by and large.
    It would, of course make sense if you were drawing a parallel b/w the two (S.A & Algeria.)

    Oh. And the best Art Makes You Feel Real Touchy. Thats the point.

    Posted 09 Apr 2009 at 9:24 pm ¶

25. Viviti wrote:

    @ m.dot
    The Voices of Silence: a collection of essays on the idea of art as a mean for man to transcend death;
    Antimemoirs: his semi-fictional autobiography
    To be honest, I am not a fan of the man (ex art smuggler in Cambodia turned Minister for Cultural Affairs) and the writing can be obtuse at times but he has pretty interesting ideas about art, human dignity, fate and individual choices.

    From what i know of Joseph, I think we both have origin in places still dealing with the aftermath of a of french colonialism. And the problem “we” have with Camus is his persistence in downplaying the reality of his privileges as a white man. Although he admitted the lack of justice of the french rule of the time, Camus saw Algeria as a fundamentally french territory inhabited by two communities: the muslims “natives” and the non-muslim Europeans, refusing to acknowledge any coloniser/colonised dychotomy, and dismissing the Algerian liberation struggle as a fight only motivated by the indigenous population’s religious fervor and greed…
    The only difference I see between Algeria and S.A is that when majority rule came about in Algeria, 90% of the million European settlers were repatrited to France in 1962, while about “only” 1/5 of white South-African left post 1994.

    Posted 10 Apr 2009 at 11:44 am ¶

26. Joseph wrote:

    @m.dot
    Unclench m: I am a big fan of your writing.(Hannah Montana dish towels= BWAH) I’m not attacking you, just making a point about one little thing you said. (Or, rather, backing up Viviti’s initial objection to one little thing you said).

    Re: “Us” What Viviti said. That is exactly right. (Well said Viviti)

    Yes, I was making a parallel between the colonial projects in SA and Algeria, sorry if that wasn’t clear. And my point was that your Boo can identify him/herself however s/he likes, but that doesn’t mean that the native population of Algeria aren’t Arabs. The white French were only in Algeria to conquer. Thus the twinge caused by the phrase “white Algerian.”

    If you are interested in learning more about Algeria, Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, subtitled “A Negro Psychoanalyst’s Study of the Problems of Racism and Colonialism in the World Today” and written during the Algerian struggle for independence from the French, is a great place to start.

    Re: The “Best Art”: LOL… yeah, I know. I am a performance artist, so I am familiar with the concept of “Touchy”. Listen, I am not trying to talk you out of loving Camus. There are plenty of great artists with jainky politics, I am just pointing out that he is one of em.

    Posted 10 Apr 2009 at 8:40 pm ¶

27. M.dot wrote:

    @Viviti,

    Thank you for you willingness to engage. The crowd @ Racialicious is No Joke. I love it.

    The Voices of Silence sounds like the business. I will check it out.

    The only difference I see between Algeria and S.A is that when majority rule came about in Algeria, 90% of the million European settlers were repatrited to France in 1962, while about “only” 1/5 of white South-African left post 1994.
    =====
    Nodding head @ cpu saying…Ahhhhh haaaaahhh.

    And the problem “we” have with Camus is his persistence in downplaying the reality of his privileges as a white man.
    ====
    Im dating a white man now, and I totally get this. Not because of his privilage per se, but because of the conversations that he and I have had about how people are SIMPLY SOCIALIZED to listen to him, yet they are socialized to ignore me, humor me or call me “articulate.”

    @ Joseph,
    I meant to say that all I know of Algeria
    was Fanon and Camus. I said Friere and Camus, because I read Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Wretched of the Earth around the same time. I know. NERD.
    Perhaps that Fanon deserves the reread. Hat tip.

    There are plenty of great artists with jainky politics, I am just pointing out that he is one of em.
    =======
    Wachu know about something being janky? Lols. Thats Bay slang circa ‘94.
    My politics are janky too. I struggle with mines just like everyone else.

    Posted 13 Apr 2009 at 12:18 am ¶

28. Alexis wrote:

    This is an interesting article, and these are very interesting exchanges.

    Black folks, and folks in hip hop, are very keen on money, and the reality of money’s power in our society. “Voice of the people aside,” it was an authentic hip hop artist who said “cash rules everything around me — dollar dollar bill ya’ll!” or something like that. My point is, I am black, and I always try to tell people that hip hop artists are not “selling out.” They just clearly see the game of life and our society for what it truly is, they are not romanticizing it, they are not trying to pretend that they are not participating in it (like some artists do), they are not in denial about its effects, they are playing the game for what it is, and seeing this culture for what it always has been and always will be — a rugged, ruthless, individualistic society created by and for corporate interests.

    Cash DOES rule everything. Black artists tend to be very real about that, and not sugar coat it, or pretend that other ideals are driving their behaviors. Anyone who has a job, been signed to a label, or done anything in which someone has made an investment in you who is not your mom, knows that that person expects that value back and then some. I don’t think hip hop has ever sold out. It just made the transition from folk art to commodity, but black people have always understood commodification, because we have always been commodities to this society. The materialism in hip hop is just the materialism of capitalism laid bare. We do it without shame, because we have been treated shamelessly. If people can be bought, raped, beaten and sold, who needs compassion for a song? Why not get in on the game?

    Now for the healing qualities of music and art for the soul, these things can, have and will always exist in the midst of commerce. It is because of commerce that we are able to buy art and be exposed to it in the first place. Every book , record, movie, or painting you have ever seen exists because of some greedy, rich bastard. I think that the quality of soul that goes into art is actually decaying. That is a much richer problem to me than the art/commerce debate.

    My question is: Why is the human soul on the decline. Capitalism created slavery, but slaves invented the seeds of gospel, blues, jazz, rock, pop and hip-hop music. If commerce could kill art, its greatest victims could not have been so productive. What is killing the soul then?

    Posted 13 Apr 2009 at 12:41 am ¶