I know a lot of people who do art for a living. They are basically treated like shit by capitalism. Nobody respects how much time, effort and training goes into art. Art is fucking hard. You get paid next to nothing for it.
Unless you sell your soul to work in advertising/marketing. Then you get paid only slightly more than nothing. You are also now expected to churn out a fuckton of art each day if you want to keep your job. Enjoy watching everything unique, creative and special be sucked out of your art by higher-ups that demand safe, soulless corporate art. Enjoy being told you’re expendable and easily replaced so you work an extra 5 hours unpaid that night. Working conditions in some advertising agencies are close to resembling sweatshops with how they exploit their junior artists in particular. I knew someone that used to work 7 days a week, even though they weren’t paid on weekends. They worked until midnight (unpaid overtime) only to start again at 8am the next day again. That’s how ‘competitive’ the industry is. They eventually had a nervous breakdown and changed careers.
Art being some bourgeoise thing where a beret-wearing snob sells a photo of piss for 5 trillion dollars is not the norm (as funny as that would be). The norm is backbreaking work for very little in return, like every other job title that isn’t CEO, Manager, or Landlord.
So yeah, even though I’m fascinated by AI art and don’t think it would necessarily be a bad thing if it was being used in a socialist setting, I think artists have every right to be upset that tech bros are finding a way to suck even more life out of art.
In short, creatives get treated like shit. Thinking art isn’t real work is chud-level shit.
Not being working class isn’t necessarily bad. For instance, peasants aren’t proletarian under traditional Marxist understanding because they have a different relationship to the means of production.
But yeah, I’m being a pedant. Making art is real work and most people who make their living doing art are proletarian.
For instance, peasants aren’t proletarian under traditional Marxist understanding because they have a different relationship to the means of production.
what is the difference anyway
Historically, peasants typically don’t sell their labor to capitalist in exchange for a wage the way that proletarians do. The peasant isn’t as deeply alienated from their labor and isn’t as deeply enmeshed in market relations.
In contrast to the past, modern agricultural workers (at least in rich countries) usually are proletarianized.
I love that AI doesn’t work at all for all the boring shit it was supposed to free us from, but the things that make a human life worth living? The things people want to spend their time doing so badly they’ll submit to the worst kinds of exploitation to be allowed to sit in the same room where it’s happening? Yeah that we can automate no problem
I know compensation does not directly alter one’s relation to labor but how can people seriously think the occupation most often prefixed with “starving” isn’t part of the working class
Art is fucking hard. You get paid next to nothing for it. Unless you sell your soul to work in advertising/marketing.
A society that turns all its best artists into merchandisers will produce a public that believes art’s value is predicated on its pride of place in advertising. Also, when that art is purely consumerist any kind of messaging will either become deliberately deceptive or purely aesthetic.
Art being some bourgeoise thing where a beret-wearing snob sells a photo of piss for 5 trillion dollars is not the norm
Piss Christ wasn’t notable for its price tag. It was notable for its presence in media. In some sense, it was worth more because it pissed off so many people, which was the intent of the artist so… yay artist? But also this is absolutely a proletariat style of art. Its expressing a public view and resonating with a public audience. It isn’t being held captive in some billionaire’s wine cave to be enjoyed by a handful of snobs.
Meanwhile, I consider Bourgeois Art the purely consumerist style that is meticulously and painstakingly rendered High Fantasy Trope printed on a collectible trading card. And the value of the art is not tied to the quality or expressive character of the image, but the rarity and power-rating of the card to which it is attached.
In short, creatives get treated like shit. Thinking art isn’t real work is chud-level shit.
I like to think that the best art imparts emotion in the viewer. Ergo, anything that Triggers The Libs is top tier talent in my books.
arguably, the least bourgeois art form is street art. the voice of the city, written on the walls out of passion—in spite of arrest. if you want to see true working class art divorced from a profit motive then street art is about the purest form of artistic expression in dystopian capitalist hellworld that i can think of.
This is only true for street art that isn’t just somebody’s name printed on every available surface.
wrong. It’s stil art, and is still outside the profit motive. There is no coherent way to exclude it.
“Do art” is too broad a category to be meaningful. Also don’t take shots at my piss photo exhibit that represents literally years worth of work (piss)
“Do art” is too broad a category to be meaningful
what is a category you would find narrow enough to be meaningful? what inferences can you make about the author’s intended meaning of “do art” based on contextual clues in the rest of the post? please write 150-300 words and include proper citations in MLA formatting.
MLA formatting
:gulag: Posts by the Chicago Gang
but uh it is a bit broad, because owners and bosses can be involved in creative processes and clearly don’t have the same conditions & stakes as their employees. “Proles ‘doing art’, as their primary job” would probably be the most unambiguous way to put it. So like a director or producer, while involved in creative decisions, their primary job is organization of artists and managing/owning capital
