Reciprocity

Hardly know where to start with where my lookings findings and doings have taken me since my last post.

There’s just so stuff – from actions, conversations. thinking, reading – swimming about in my brain, still being processed- which is still foggy from seasonal intertia and too many cherry liqueurs – documenting it seems a gargantuan task.

So maybe I’ll just start and see where I get to.

Firstly, the Generosity Advent Calendar. From 1-25th December I emailed a daily quote/thought/image on gift/generosity to a mailing list of people who signed up for the project. I had 23ish participants, one who opted out midway. I decided not to document the content of the Advent Calendar elsewhere – here, for example, to keep the integrity, the excusivity, the committment of the project- you sign up, you take part – and also I’ve become much more interested in undocumented, ephemeral projects. (via my reading on artists like Ben Kinmont and others in ‘What We Want is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art”)

The content was unplanned – I decided to try to to seek new thoughts and knowledge each day so that it was a living project and not some dead, planned out list of quotes, autosent. And it did feel like a dialogue, a performance of sorts. I was keenly aware of presence of my recipients. The project led to some interesting and spontaneous responses and exchanges. Sophie Cullinan, another a-n blogger who I met here on artists talking, sent me a daily image in return for my email. We now plan to collaborate on putting our content together in a zine. My offer of a free zine from my personal collection to participants as a thanks for taking part in the project met with some reciprocal offers. A small and lovely painting arrived through the post from one artist and another artist has promised me a copy of her first zine which she is working on now. My final email, sent out on 25th December, was

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Simone Weil
Many thanks for your kind attention, and have a great holiday!

I got this response from one participant

‘The reason I’m writing now, although I’ve thought of writing to you before, is that of all 10 gifts I’ve received via this project, your final gift – that of thanks, is the only one which has elicited a reply from me! Being told that I have given you something affects me more, pleases me more than receiving gifts from you’

This I think is so interesting – as it communicates on obligation, reciprocity and bestowal which are intrinsic to any practice of gift. All of the above communications and exchanges have felt valuable and meaningful, especially as people took the time to connect over the busy festive period.

Partly as a result of this I have begun to perceive this project less as ‘research’ – which implies a one-sided seeking out of information – and more as an open ended process of building up a series of conversations and relationships. Maybe this is ‘the work’.

Last night I read an article published in last Thursday’s Scotsman entitled ‘Artists forced to survive on £100 a week’ reporting on findings by the Scottish Artists Union (SAU) that three -quarters of visual artists in Scotland are earning less than £5,000 a year. The article compares this income to the severance pay of £60,000 given to Creative Scotland’s chief executive Andrew Dixon after his recent resignation.

The piece also reported the SAU’s demand for a minimum-pay rate for artists enforced via all publicly funded bodies and organisations to re-dress this situtation. http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/scotland/arti…

There were 64 comments in response to the piece, the majority of which were hostile towards artists.

A few samples:

“That lot need to get a job. If they want to have art as a hobby, they should not expect the rest of us to subsidize them”

“I know one or two artists from working class backgrounds who do indeed work elsewhere to support themselves – painting and decorating, webdesign and son on. Maybe it’s the posher ones who just want hand outs?”

” I must ask the question. What is arts contribution to the society that is meant to pay for it?..Contrary to artist beliefs, it is just entertainment. Be it visual or performing. Its a means of the privileged to show off their ostentation. People don’t have the money any more so the demand isn’t there… I’d rather see a policeman or road worker or at least something practical…In times of “austerity” ” there is no cash to pay for concepts, visual or otherwise. Not whilst we can’t afford to pay the engineer to fix the road so we can get to work.”

Reading through the comments, I felt shocked, and almost winded by the virtriol directed towards artists. As a Scot (based in England for the past decade) I feel ashamed by the attitudes of my fellow country folk. In Scotland theres is a long heritage of innovation and excellence in the arts which has and does enrich our lives in untold ways, brings in huge revenues, and is rightly a source of national pride. Yet the prevailing attitude towards artists seems to be one of disdain, and indignation at the idea of artists asking for a living wage.

I’m trying to figure out why this is, and how it might fit with Hans Abbing’s theories on art and economics as found in his book “Why Are artists Poor”. Abbing describes the arts as being held in high esteem because they belong to the ‘gift sphere’ rather than the economic sphere. So is the controversy caused by the fact that, as Abbing suggests, the economy is denied (though veiled) in the arts, that money is seen to sully and denigrate the artist’s relationship with art, and that artists musn’t be seen to be interested in money in any way? (“I thought artists did it for love rather than money”)

When articles like this appear, which report on artists pay in an incendiary manner, and seem designed to provoke (The choice of histrionic headline, the forefegrounding the (maximum) wage of featured artist Janie Nicoll of $15k a year) it does not make for a good quality of debate about art and money. But it does do is reveal a worrying misunderstanding about what actually artists do. Also a conflation of artistic value with market value (“If the work is of merit it will sell’) and a belief that the arts shouldn’t be publicly subsidized.

I feel for Janie, who I know as an extremely hardworking artist with a committed and socially engaged practice, who is also involved in campaigning for better conditions for artists. She does not deserve to be the target of anger and ignorance.

I’m also perturbed by how we as artists can counter these attitudes and dismantle the myths – so that one day (soon ??) it might not be seen as an affront to expect to be paid a living wage, but as a reasonable request, as with any other profession.

I have a few copies left of Issue 1 of ‘Reciprocity’, a zine series which documents my lookings and findings into generosity, alongside this blog. Issue 1 is a 44 page publication, and is a collation of material from my first month of research.

You can read more about the content of issue 1 here http://jeanmcewan.com/2012/11/05/reciprocity-1/

In the spirit of the season I would like to give these away.

If you would like a copy, please email me at [email protected] with your postal address.

Season’s Greetings!

Generosity Advent e-calendar: A daily email about gift and generosity

I’d like to invite you to join my Generosity Advent e-calendar and get a daily quote, thought or question on the subject of generosity via email from the 1st – 25th December.

This is part of a research project I’m doing on the subject of gift, generosity and sincerity and is my way of sharing my reading and thinking on the project so far.

To join, email [email protected] with ‘Generosity Advent Calendar’ in the subject heading. You can subscribe or unsubscribe at any point during December. Your email address will not be passed on or added to any other mailing lists.

Season’s Greetings!

Talking in the pub after work last night with X, another artist, about Hans Abbing’s book “Why Are Artists Poor” (which I am currently reading) kickstarted some interesting discussions about art and money.

I’ve just finished Chapter 2 which is called “Denial of The Economy: Why Are Gifts to The Arts Praised, While Market Incomes Remain Suspect?”.

In this chapter, Abbing posits that the arts adhere to the values of the gift sphere, which has a high status, and reject the values of the economic sphere, which has a low status: “giving has a higher status than buying and selling…works of art often symbolize the superiority of the values of the gift sphere and the inferiority of the market sphere’.

However, Abbing goes states that the market is not absent in the arts, but merely denied and veiled. The profit motive exists, (and accounts for half the art world’s income) but because of the high status of the gift sphere, the arts must not be seen to be openly embracing the market because it is seen to devalue and debase art.

“It is often commercial to be a-commercial. Expressing anti-market values can add to one’s success in the market. Artists, dealers, or editors who exhibit a lack of concern for money may well enhance their market value.. Artists behave a-commercially because they are artists. In the course of the history of the artistic profession this type of behaviour became part of the artist’s ‘character’. Artists have learned to ‘play games’ in two spheres. That is how they earn a living”

So we got talking about how we negotiate this complex and contrary double system, how we approach money in terms of own experiences and practices. We both agreed with Abbing’s assessment of high value/low value of gift and market economy in relation to judgements we make about our own and other artists’ practices. For example, being involved in DIY and self-funded projects both in artist and curatorial roles is something that we are both proud of and esteem highly. We share a disapproval of artists who ‘sell’ themselves or their work too openly; one of our regular rants is about artists whose work we have shown (via curatorial projects we have worked on together) who were ‘pushy’ about promoting themselves and seemed motivated by self-interest. We tend to abhor and avoid these people, whereas we are attracted to working with artists who show a more reciprocal and generous approach – e.g. giving time, showing interest and support. Although money wasn’t a direct factor in these experiences, the mismatch of values (generosity versus self interest) are the same as gift sphere versus the market sphere. Self-promotion equals selling yourself equals totally not cool.

We then went on to talk about earning a living and how we describe our jobs to other people in the art world. (both of us have part time jobs in hospitality). X described a recent discover recently via a blog site about a number of painters who he thought of as successful (in terms of gallery shows and reputation) still having full time or part time jobs. He talked about his surprise but then of feeling encouraged by this in terms of his own employment situation. We talked about how information like this – i.e. the realities of how we as artists make a living as often veiled or hidden. Particularly if jobs are in lower status areas of employment like ours as opposed to jobs within the arts sector – teaching, admin, management etc. We talked about how we describe our employment roles in various situations. I for example would cheerfully declare my catering job to other artists who I felt shared my value system, (see above) but might be more circumspect when talking to an arts organisation/commissioner/curator. I may mask or not mention my role in case I was taken less seriously. Why?? The sub text being, you’re not a proper artists if you’re doing this kind of work?

Artists and money: Double standards, judgements, hierarchies.

A whole can of worms here, and this one only just opened.

There will be more.

‘Why Are Artists Poor?’ can be downloaded free from here:http://www.google.co.uk/url?url=http://www.oapen.org/download%3Ftype%3Ddocument%26docid%3D340245&rct=j&sa=U&ei=MOOwUKXKHIb24QSu8YGIDA&ved=0CCwQFjAF&q=hans+abbing+why+are+artists+poor&usg=AFQjCNFIUq_p2objbStbm0b7J9eN4Nn-Iw