Art, money, and the corporate world – how do they relate? Patronage is
certainly an ancient tradition, and one wonders, as Lolly does below, if
being under the wing of the Medicis was a better deal than being a
Microsoft pet. What are the alternatives? And how does new media art
engage these realities? Weigh in at list@rhizome.org, or at diller and
scofidio BBS on tech90s.
From tech90s, http://www.tech90s.net:
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benjamin weil wrote:
Timothy Druckrey's posting brings up a really important issue, in
regards to the way art is being financed, when it no longer manifests
itself within the comfort of the art world circuits, namely: unique
collectible objects to be treasured, sold, and resold.
Public art funding often comes from corporations, who want to show an
image of enlightenment by hiring artists to polish their brand and
identity in a different way. Whether it is possible or not to produce
art that is challenging in this environment remains a core issue. The
current state of things lets me think that the support of corporations
is something that will increase, in the light of dwindling government
support worldwide. It is therefore more than ever time to find
strategies so to be able to work with that corporate money in a way that
does not compromise the provocative qualities of a "good" work of art.
It could make sense to research history, as the way most of the "old
masters" we celebrate today as geniuses used to work was very much
conditioned by a type of patronage that included an enormous amount of
formal constraints (the subject matter, the size of the canvas or the
sculpture, and - in the case of painting - the kind and amount of
pigments). Still, we value those works. And the reason is probably that
those artists managed to circumvent the constraints, or, rather, use
them profitably to achieve what are considered masterpieces today.
Establishing criteria for the "evaluation" of corporate art commissions
is somehow hindered by a well grounded - and often enough, justified -
suspicion on the interests it serves. However, the commissioned artist
is maybe too often and too quickly assumed to have a peripatetic
attitude when accepting - embracing - this mode of financing her/his
research.
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nick. s wrote:
reading this post, i thought of all of the design firms i know that have
art platforms of some kind. off the top of my head, io360, razorfish,
avalanche, presse media. i think that sometimes it is about giving a
certain inflection to a commercial enterprise, or showing off in-house
or industry abilites, but sometimes i think it is also just about
patronising the arts. this seems to work fine online. offline, i am not
so sure. i think about the hugo boss prize, and can't help but wish that
they named it something else. it's an effort to not think about cologne
or cheezy supermodels, and think about the work of Matthew Barney or
Laurie Anderson….
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lolly wrote:
the tradition of partonage is an ancient one, and i think it would be
naive to think that the Medici's were necessarily better patrons than
Microsoft. courting some petulant monarch or filling our grant
proposals, artists have long had to hock their talent. i think artists
have always had to struggle, unless they were well bourgois, like jeff
koons, with institutional and public relations.
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alex o. wrote:
Every (professional) Artist has a patron and evey patron has intrests,
even independently wealthy artists have themselves. Dostoyevsky once
said people don't just want bread, they want to believe that it was
givin to them by god to show special favor, Ok not an exact quote.
Anyway artists are very much like that, they are always creating myths
around their careers, how you answer the question "So how do you make a
living?" is crucial to an artist self image; at once so independent and
so reliant on others hospitallity for cash.
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Shu Lea Cheang wrote:
- ideas on the role of sponsors/corporations
The web is a much structured space, with domain names indicating high
and low, 5th avenue or bowery. segregated and unequal.
As we engage in exploring and setting critiria..(in my case, handcoding
and crawling in the spiral), we have seen the emergence of webmafia
who's set out to rule and claim. Interrupted hyperlinks.
read in on various discussion in the Rhizome forums– the concept of
creating an (ideal) virtual artist, the discussion on digi-degrade,the
authoring of a web artist, the selling of digidata, and ultimately the
upload of the barbarians (the multi-culti-cuties transplanted), here we
go again!!
In considering the corporate support, YES! Co-optation is the name of
the game. but when you don't have a product to sell, when your subject
matter gets a bit tricky, bring in sunflower avatars!! Here, the
museums, the institutions can play significant roles in institutionalize
artists and legitimize the medium as a time based form. Corporates
support institutions with white walls where their names can be placed.
The institutions have the public and board to answer.. and artists–
artists just want to have fun!!
Fun in the sense of being granted to explore and experiment the web
medium- we sell concept..an organic web..entangled web. and yes, you can
sell baby fluid on our site, flash push and banner it.
