CAREERS IN VIAUSL AND PERFORMING ARTS

Why do people tend to look down on those who pursue careers in visual and performing arts?
It’s generally assumed that this is because people in arts careers traditionally don’t make a lot of money, but I think a lot of this is actually an element of jealousy. I say this because opera singers actually make pretty decent livings, so I’ve had the following conversation a lot…

Acquaintance: An opera singer! Where do you sing? [implication of tone is that the only acceptable answer is the Met]

David: Oh all over! I just finished a couple years at the Met, but now I’m freelance, so this season also the Bolshoi, Canadian Opera Company, San Francisco Opera, a bunch of places.

Acquaintance: Freelance? That sounds hard. No stability, right, but I guess that’s the life of an artist.

David: Yeah, sometimes! But opera singers are lucky, we book a few years out, so I know where I’ll be working for the next few years!

Acquaintance: Good for you! Probably helps with day job planning, too.

David: I don’t have a day job, there’s no time! But yeah it helps with life planning.

Acquaintance: How do you make it work, then?

David: …I show up, I do my job well, and then they pay me very well.

Acquaintance: To sing opera? Really?

David: …

I used to think these people were trying to understand, but with time I’ve come to see that there’s no way to end this conversation with these people feeling good. They wait, throughout the conversation, for a parameter on which they can denigrate an artist’s job, and failing that, they don’t seem happy for me, they seem frustrated. It’s as though they’re cheated of the scorn they’d hoped to have justified.

I sort of get it. The way society portrays this is that there’s a trade off: I get to have a “fun” job, in exchange for which I should have less security and be living in a cardboard box. If that’s really a given artist’s situation, they’re able to respect him and look down on him at once, but if the artist doesn’t have these particular problems (trust me, we have others), then there’s just a lot of jealousy manifest.

ART IS A CAREER?

“Art shouldn’t be a career” but it is dude, the greatest, most important pieces of art in history were most often not made by amateurs, they were made by people who spent decades specializing themselves, developing their artistic language, you may be mad that they make money off of their art and that makes them “petit bourgeoisie” but within capitalism it is the only option we have to sustain ourselves while dedicating all that time to pushing those skills further and further, and it’s bizarre because you never see them use this rhetoric against any other discipline that requires decades of work, focus and specialization; maybe because they deem the other long term disciplines like medicine, engineering, architecture, etc, as “actually useful”, and it’s ironic because they end up right where they started using capitalist rhetoric to dismiss any human activities that are not immediately exploitable for material benefit.

So is it possible today to make art a profession? Not that art has ever guaranteed lavish earnings and fame (at least, not in life) to its protagonists. Yet today the illusion of having a network and a potentially reachable audience all over the world thanks to the Internet and digital technologies would lead us to believe that the process of monetizing art is much simpler.

But the most serious question one should ask is: what can I do decently and above all why should anyone invest their money in my work and not in a professional who has invested years and years of study and training in himself? What do I have that is innovative or intriguing that hasn't already been done millions of times and that could be of interest to a collector or art lover? If you have a credible answer then have your work evaluated by experts, try to get in touch with galleries and professionals in the sector, prepare a curriculum vitae that makes sense, prepare a catalog that you can show or a well-designed web page, participate in collective and personal exhibitions, create an "artistic experience" find a common thread for your theme, a linguistic code that distinguishes you without being excessively "outside" and above all study, try and study again, look around and find inspiration. Everything can be done, nothing is given without sacrifice, study and will.

NO AI ART

I’m pretty sure you must have seen AI(Artificial Intelligence) generated art all over social media, be it on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc… I mean people are going crazy for this thing, either they are just flaunting their pretty selves in AI-generated art, or they just want to know what they look like when AI makes art for them.

In midst of all this glamour of AI-generated art, something else is also trending across social media platforms that you may have seen or you may haven’t, and that is the “No AI Art🚫” movement across the digital art communities. Digital artists are protesting against AI-generated art and here’s why. You see, for an AI to be able to generate any form of art it needs a lot of data, in this case, images of some sort.

A lot of photos are fed into an AI data set to help it learn and produce the correct results. Now! You might say okay, how has that got to do with digital artists.

In hindsight, most of the images used to train these AIs are gotten from the internet which is most likely from traditional artists, digital artists, 3D artists, photographers, etc…

These artists are protesting hard to disrupt how the AI training model works and they even see it as disrespectful, as they are not given any consent to whether their work should be used to train these AIs.

Let me hear your thoughts in the comments section. Do you feel this protest is just a fear that AI might take their job or do you feel digital artists’ credibility is just undermined by these AIs systems?

ARTIST

ARTIST HAVE NO NATIONALITY
ARTIST HAVE ONLY ART
ARTIST HAVE NO LIMIT
ARTIST HAVE ONLY ART
ARTIST HAVE NO PREDJUDICE
ARTIST HAVE ONLY ART
ARTIST HAVE NO FLAG
ARTIST HAVE ONLY HEART.

GRAFFITI IN LONDON

MY ART IN MARCH 2022

These are my paintings of eime months ago. I was very upset, very lonely, and this is what comes out from me. ( I use recycled cardboards as support).

WE’RE UKRAINE

This video was shot in the beautiful swimming poolY-40, the deepest swimming pool in the world, which is located near between Padua and Venice. Ukrainian director Matt Evans wanted to celebrate his homeland with an intense and moving video to the tune of "1944", a song by Ukrainian Jamala who won the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm in 2016.
( video with english subtitles)

SOPHIA NARRETT

Painting with skeins of thread, embroidering erotic designs, weaving desires. Sophia Narrett manages to bring erotic scenes to life by creating a new form of frayed tapestry. Sophia is a young artist whose work is inspired by pop culture references: "Orange Is the New Black". Hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar. Scottish fashion designer Christopher Kane. "The bachelor." Her embroidered pieces are colorful, both literally and figuratively, manifestations of the world she lives.

Narrett's later pieces are reminiscent of 16th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, known for his detailed landscapes and wild images, of a more fantastic and sexual nature. Like Bosch, Narrett involves the viewer in images so complex, so detailed that looking at them and following the narration, especially the sequential ones, seems almost voyeuristic.

SCHIELE COULD BE FAMOUS WITHOUT KLIMT?

Can a talent come out and face the world alone or is the presence of someone necessary to act as an intermediary? Schiele was a boy pathologically linked to his sister Gerti, whom he had portrayed naked in various portraits. He is not happy in school because the masters are considered by him to be all rough men. Encouraged by Strauch, the Klosternburg painter Max Kahrer and the Augustinian canon Wolfang Paker, in 1906 Schiele applied for admission to the Vienna Academy. So if it hadn't been for them, we might never have known his works.

Strauch refines the technique of the young Egon noting in the nervous ease of his sign an affinity with Klimt, which Schiele does not yet know. Schiele is not a model student and is only 16 when he pits against his teacher Griepenkernl. It is in the veneration for Klimt that youth rebellion against the teacher and against academic dogmatism must be interpreted. These are the years in which Gustav Klimt is at the height of his career. But while Klimt colors his pictorial works with strange mosaics, for Schiele the painting represents the conflict between life and death. From this moment on his figures begin the phase of deformation. At this stage his design becomes harsh and suffering. The formal tension is entrusted to broken, broken and angular lines. Klimt's dream is shattered for Schiele. In Schiele we find suffering. The characters portrayed by him are no longer human beings but rigid mannequins forced into disjointed and unnatural poses. The bodies thus transformed are the artist's conscious attempt to use limbs, arms, hands and bodies to highlight inner emotions.

The decisive meeting for his entire artistic career took place in 1907 in the Café Museum in Vienna. Klimt's strong personality influences him tremendously. A further element brings the two men closer: the interest in depicting the naked body and both male and female sexuality. Gustav Klimt will also have great esteem for Schiele: he undertakes to help his friend, through the purchase of drawings, providing him with models, introducing him to some wealthy patrons, who assured him a certain financial peace of mind right from his beginnings on the Viennese art scene and ensuring that in 1908 Schiele could hold his first solo exhibition for the Wiener Werkstätte.

After a period spent in prison on an accusation of immoral conduct, as the painter used naked children as models for his works, disappointed by this bad experience, Schiele decides to return to Vienna. Thanks to his friend Klimt, he managed to obtain several commissions in a short time, returning to the fore on the Austrian art scene and participating in many international exhibitions. His works of the period are numerous, mostly self-portraits and portraits. The figures are usually naked, in unusual poses that tend to lead to caricature; the tormented figure recalls both death and eroticism.

So in the end I ask myself: if Egon Schiele hadn't had the help of all these people, and especially Klimt, would he have been able to show everyone his talent?

THE MASTER OF CHIAROSCURO: CARAVAGGIO

CARAVAGGIO- MADONNA DEI PELLEGRINI

CARAVAGGIO- LA CROCIFISSIONE DI SAN PAOLO

CARAVAGGIO- CENA DI EMMAUS

CARAVAGGIO- I GIOCATORI

CARAVAGGIO- LA DEPOSIZIONE DI GESÚ

CARAVAGGIO- SETTE OPERE DI MISERICORDIA

CARAVAGGIO- GIUDITTA TAGLIA LA TESTA DI OLOFERNE

CARAVAGGIO-LA BUONA VENTURA

CARAVAGGIO-BACCO

CARAVAGGIO- TESTA DI MEDUSA

CARAVAGGIO- RAGAZZO MORSO DA RAMARRO

CARAVAGGIO- VOCAZIONE DI SAN MATTEO

CARAVAGGIO- CONVERSIONE DI SAN PAOLO

CARAVAGGIO-DECOLLAZIONEDI SAN GIOVANNI BATTISTA

CARAVAGGIO- DAVIDE CON LA TESTA DI GOLIA

CARAVAGGIO-SAN GIOVANNI BATTISTA

CARAVAGGIO-SAN GIROLAMO SCRIVENTE

CARAVAGGIO-SALOMÈ CON LA TESTA DEL BATTISTA

CARAVAGGIO-FANCIULLO CON CANESTRA DI FRUTTA

CARAVAGGIO-CANESTRA DI FRUTTA

CARAVAGGIO- SAN GIROLAMO IN MEDITAZIONE