The real problem with being poor is that you never really get to play the grown up. You have no money, you don't develop that much taste because you cannot execute on that taste. Likewise, someone else always has the purse strings and thus makes all the decisions. If you are good at Jane Austin-speak, you'll become adept at being the perfect guest, the right size for hand-me-downs, great at being unpaid help for posh events that let you pretend. But you will not grow better at decision-making because you will make none that are not reactive.
Having lived most of my life as a fully employed and earning performing artist, I wasn't part of the genuine poor class, but rather the artist class. This group has the same issues as the poor, no health insurance, no real sense of where the next paycheck is. But we develop our tastes, get good at recycling items and tarting them up, we decide we wish for our freedom. But what freedom do we actually exercise? It generally sits flabby and palid in the closet waiting for a really good choice to appear. The green see-through chiffon or the chocolate body paint? They both sound good, but they always come with a price tag that someone else sets. What is art and what is commerce?
If it is popular is it still art? If it is perfectly delivered, easy to produce, is there still art in the mix? I always learn something different in performance than in studio - is that fair to the audience? For a singer there are gravy gigs, Easter Messiahs, Holy Week, High Holidays work, that perfect church or synagogue that guarantees weddings, funerals, services without much learning to do. How to manage the balance between building confidence and adding knowledge through risk taking?
Having decided a few brief years ago to take a day job and starve on my own time (note to self - gained 2 dress sizes on this plan), I find that there are points to recommend as well as detract from this plan. I really can choose my medium, pursue the outlay to learn something new, go hear or see someone else who does it well, take a lesson or five. How many times can you sing the same piece of music and add something special to the performance? Is delivering the same performance alright if it is excellent enough? At some point this experience creates challenges to personal growth. But does the growth happen in studio or on the stage or both places? Back again to self-confidence through repetition v. growth through terror....
Here's the final question: an early lesson for me was that striking the right price was important. At some point it is better to 'donate' the performance or piece, but demand quid pro quo of some other sort. That ultimately became my path from $25 pay for a full concert (including my paying an accompanist) to earning $1000 for a single performance of work I had performed numerous times. When I can afford to rest, put myself into peak form for a performance, feel my most confident, I can deliver an 'experience' an audience that is transformative. How do we value this in terms of dollar price? And how does an artist maintain freshness - access the artistic universal soul?
How does the audience perception change when they pay? If you have the chance to attend the opera (dance, film, rock concert, pro football game, etc.) through the generosity of a friend, employer, winning a contest - WILL YOU SHOW UP? I think chances fall in this scenario. Yet this model pays for many of us to do the thing we love, commerce often pays for art.
My best recent experience was listening to a free classical concert of Russian piano music at DePaul. I knew up front I could only attend the first half because of additional work on my plate that night. A friend found the listing, we met, ate, listened. Paying for the ticket would not have caused me to stay for the entire event. The quality was amazing. I was there to enjoy the music which I could share and discuss with my friend, not because I hoped someone would see me. I was quality audience. Did that help the performers...maybe.
2 comments:
Tidbits of thoughts in reply:
*) Where personal items are concerned, there's part of the price vs. demand curve (toward the low-price end) that bends the wrong way a little, because of prevailing opinion that "if it costs so little, it can't be any good."
*) Is the artness of art happening at the time of creation, or at the time of appreciation? What about works that are neglected and then discovered? Or lauded and later rejected?
*) Is that artness related to how much of one's life energy is going into the artwork as opposed to other things?
I think there has been an ideal among some people about purity of an artist, with no head for unartistic things, that's in direct confrontation with another ideal among some other people, about purity of a work that's done entirely for expression (as opposed to the thought of pay). Absent the rich patron you can't have it both ways; either the artist thinks about money when they're making art, or when they're NOT making art!
Good questions anonymous. On your second point where does art happen--time of creation or appreciation. My though is that it happens both places and more. Art is a complex dynamic involving people and ideas and craft and time zones. Isn't art somehow happening in all these slots?
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