This is like vanta black and the pinkest pink. Let me distill it for you:

Artists are commercialist whores, and those who claim they aren't simply failed to make money. When they weren't allowed into the club, they started pretending they never wanted to be in that club anyway. They are inherently narcissistic and engage in tons of petty bullshit as a result. This is the only reason art history is especially fun to study.

But at least they're not investment bankers.

Do you engage in any kind of art or do you simply "study" it? Your post is intensely full of generalizations and seems to be influenced by reading a fuck load of biographies, I'm guessing.

Investment bankers do their jobs within a set of constraints or parameters, and create just like those artists you accuse of being "commercialist whores." They are "painting" portfolios with investments instead of paint, and expect to be compensated for it. So how are they any different? One you are OK with, while the other represents the evils of capitalism? Both use "markets" for their personal financial enrichment.

If you think all artists are narcissists and commercialist whores, then you have a twisted definition of art, imo. But then again, if other threads on the subject over the years here are any indication, "artist" can mean anything you want it to.

Oooh...Really? I sincerely hope that you're playing 'devil's advocate' and perhaps doing a bit of cage rattling.

The question, "What is an artist?" is as fraught with bullshit as, "What is the meaning of life?" That said, there are more than a few artists who create with no expectation of financial recompense; Di Mode funded the bull himself and placed it there as a guerrilla-art piece. I have yet to meet an investment banker with the same sorts of motivations.

What would happen if those investment bankers chose investments that aid and assist the human condition? They use the tools that are available to them, yes? Di Mode wanted notoriety and fame as an artist making a social commentary, regardless of what that commentary was or which way it leaned. I speculate. It might have led to commissioned works, though, which translate to. . . financial enrichment. Is that fundamentally different than the investment banker?

Yeah, this is opening a can of worms. Devils advocate or cage rattling? Probably. I think I was reacting to the ipso facto definition presented. I don't agree with it, and made a feeble attempt at highlighting the contradiction. But if I really wanted to make an argument based on the current perception of what an artist is, then a financial consultant or investment banker could easily fall into that category under the assumption that "artist" means anything you want it to mean.

I was just taking a playful jab at investment bankers. Now my jab at artists is meant in earnest. They are, as a group, not very happy people. Many of them are good, even great, at pretending to be happy, but if you dig in often the ones who seem happiest are the most depressed.

Talking an artist out of suicide is, in itself, its own art. Though at this point some folks might have it down to a science...

I'm pretty sure you could say that about literally any profession in the world.

Doctors aren't happy. Lawyers aren't happy. Bankers aren't happy. Teachers aren't happy. Janitors aren't happy.

People, as a group, are not very happy people.

The funny thing is that among all of the above artists as a group are probably the happiest, or at least the most well-adjusted. Because in spite of everything else, they at least have an outlet.

I know a talented heart surgeon who just opened a restaurant, cus saving people's lives apparently just wasn't doing it for him.

Awright. If this is really in earnest than I'm fully convinced-
You know absolutely nothing about artists.

Again, believe what you will. You were just going to anyway.

Oddly enough, I have a client who was an investment banker who decided to toss it all in and become an artist. He used the same rolodex (yes it was that long ago) and started pitching his art in the same way that he'd pitch an investment. He charges vast sums for his work and is more than a little pissed-off that he's not taken seriously as an artist by the cognoscenti.

Di Mode had $350k of his own money to spend on said bull. What does that tell you?

He really really likes bulls?

I am whatever you believe I am.

Anyone who decides to be an artist with the idea that they'll be 'commercialist whores', or even expecting they'll make money at it, is doing it for the wrong reasons, and is likely to end up severely disappointed.

As will many of those who decide to be an artist for any other reason.

To quote the original Lt. Starbuck:

"Does a writer have to be insane to write the part of someone insane? I know he has to be insane to want to be a writer, but that isn't the point."

Yeah I don't know. It's like saying you can;t be a poet and a commercial success as a lyricist and not be satisfied that your talent puts food on the table.

I know a few artists who do what they want on their own time, and use their talent to create wonderful things and make money at it. I also know artists who do what they want on their own time and wait tables.

I think one lot may be more self fulfilled than the other.

I think as soon as you require certain professions be pure of heart or the work is tainted forever regardless of its quality is weird.

Doctors should be in the profession to save lives, why should they be paid? Teachers shouldn't go into the profession expecting to make money - that's the wrong intent.

You can both love a field and also want to be able to survive off it.

What happened to do what you love for a living so you'll never work a day in your life?

Hey nice work if you can get it.

But if you get it you're now doing it for the wrong reasons.

So, you're a critic?

Critics are fans. They mostly come in two varieties: for sale or deeply embittered. The ones who are for sale can't or won't write a bad review, and the ones who are deeply embittered feel rejected by the artists they'd hoped would be their peers and usually refuse to write good reviews.

There are an earnest few who genuinely want to talk about their opinions, or genuinely want to serve the consumer, but the profit model for art criticism makes it very difficult to be one of those.

As a fan, getting a job as a critic is much easier than getting a job making the thing you love. Once you take the critic path, it may be impossible to tread any other. The relationship between fan, critic, and artist is complicated and fraught with slights (both real and imagined) and failed ambitions. They can enter a perpetual circle of mutual promotion or mutual destruction, one just as easily as the other.

http://sensibleendowment.com/entry.php/8908
The argument happened already.

Fick fack fuck...I searched...I really did. 'fearless girl' showed nothing and neither did the domain name.

I think this is a reasonable 'follow-up' post (well, OK mostly because it echoes what I was saying before ;)).
Not that it matters that much, considering that even blatant reposts end up in plus mod territory these days.

Uh yeah. This is pretty much the argument I was trying to make in the previous thread on the subject.

The artist's intent was already completely lost on me. He said it represented “the strength and power of the American people”, but I always assumed it represented the strength and power of Wall Street. I thought it was commissioned by the NYSE as their self-advertising.

That seems to be the way it's used by media - the bull statue often is the illustration for a story about stock prices, or banks. I think the artist lost control of the meaning of his work a long time ago.

And that is a valid point. He did lose control, just as State Street Global Advisors seems to have lost control of their message (if anybody ever got it at all).

But, I'd argue that his motives were pure and the image came out of his Southern European symbolism—images of bulls as symbols of strength and courage are big in Sicily (and Italian-American mobsters). The girl followed the reverse course—from commercial icon to powerful feminist statement (no less manipulative but somehow far more inspiring.

For myself, I'm torn. I am a visual artist who earns his living by foisting my private view of the Universe on paying clients (and sometimes on an unsuspecting public...though rarely these days) and I love the juxtaposition of the two sculptures. Yes, it's populist and maybe even trite but the two together are very powerful statements about the modern USA. Di Modica's bull is out of control in 2017 and the brave innocence of the girl would seem to be the solution. After all, paranoia isn't working.

Here I thought the bull meant bull markets. As opposed to bear markets. The bull was installed in 1987, the height of bull markets in the reagan era. I remember commercials of a bull in a china shop walking gingerly. I'm surprised this hasn't been discussed, especially since it was placed so close to Wall Street.

I'm mildly embarrassed to say that I was under the same impression!

I assumed there was probably a bear statue nearby. Or if there wasn't, it was just because bear markets aren't cool.

Personally, I think we should add a set of broken tablets.

The lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen... *smash* Oy. Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!