Job or Hobby?

[Alexandra Tyng]

Originally Posted by Richard Bingham

I certainly don't think such categorizing based on the arbitrariness of the tax code has anything to do with the sort of deep, personal committment you speak of.

I hope no one thinks I actually agree with the IRS! I just put the fact up there as a discussion point. In truth I agree with Richard's (and others') sentiments as expressed above.

I'm currently trying to think of zingers I could toss out at my friends who make "hobbyist" sorts of comments. They're fun to think of, but I don't think they would like me too much if I said them. Maybe getting people into thought-provoking discussions is better:

"When will you get a REAL job?"
"What do you mean by a 'real' job?"
"You know, like working at Border's. . . or 7-11 even."
"Why are these real?"
"Because you get a regular paycheck."
"Are you saying that people who work on commission, like sales reps, don't have real jobs.?"
"Well, no. . ."
"I work on commission."
"Yes, but that's different!"
Why? Because I like my job?"
etc.

As you can see, the virtually futile task of trying to convince people that art is not a hobby intrigues me.

SB, the Robert Frost poem reminds me of a passage in the book The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. It's a sequel to My Name is Asher Lev. Both are about an artist who is the son of Hasidic Jews. The Rebbe asks Asher's young son a riddle:

"Which is better, to take the short road that is long, or to take the long road that is short?" (paraphrasing)

[Richard Bingham]

Perhaps the crux of the question is how distinctions of "worthiness" relate to art that's actively selling, compared to the concept of art as a hobby.

Like it or not, the pragmatic baseline of economic existence is that nothing that doesn't trade for actual currency has "real" value. Ergo, the job at 7-11 is "real", but making paintings on speculation and a spotty, unreliable pecuniary return is . . . well, not nearly as "real".

I don't want to descend into a pessimistic paranoia, but I truly worry how the "useful" active market for highly-skilled artwork has waned during the past 80+ years, and with it, the necessary "audience appreciation" that results in market demand. Only 25 years ago, all aspects of visual representation that could not be photographed depended upon the minds and eye/hand skills of artists from sign writers to cartoonists, animators, matte painters and ad illustrators to "fine" artists.

Electronics and the computer have cleared a path for the artistically inept, and making the processes formerly used to produce this work as obsolete as the horse and buggy, with a resulting loss of quality and tastefulness. Ever since, an explosion of computer-generated images bombards us with an unfathomable, continual stream of colors, forms, and images from the time we awaken 'til we close our eyes . . . and most of it is bad and getting worse.

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Hobbyist" is furthered by perceptions that to be an "artist" one must be a madman or an eccentric bohemian starving in a garrett, whose worth will only be recognized long after he or she is very dead. Compounding this are notions that the making of art results not from study, training, intense practice and hard work, but from infused knowledge ("talent"), and that serious bodies of work result spontaneously out of serendipity, and erratic spur-of- the -moment "inspirations".

Popular perception equates pursuing an art career with an indolent self-improvement at best ("relaxation"), and with misanthropic self-indulgence at the worst. Owing to misunderstanding of how a few elementary art-making processes are utilized in occupational therapy for the mentally disturbed, it's often concluded that the results of "art therapy" are equivalent to the output of dedicated professional artists.

When a pickled shark commands a price in six figures and the starving of a poor, hapless dog to death is proclaimed to be "art", who can blame the man in the street if he is confused?

[Jennifer Bogartz]

Originally Posted by Richard Bingham

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Hobbyist" is furthered by perceptions that to be an "artist" one must be a madman or an eccentric bohemian starving in a garrett, whose worth will only be recognized long after he or she is very dead. Compounding this are notions that the making of art results not from study, training, intense practice and hard work, but from infused knowledge ("talent"), and that serious bodies of work result spontaneously out of serendipity, and erratic spur-of- the -moment "inspirations".

Popular perception equates pursuing an art career with an indolent self-improvement at best ("relaxation"), and with misanthropic self-indulgence at the worst. Owing to misunderstanding of how a few elementary art-making processes are utilized in occupational therapy for the mentally disturbed, it's often concluded that the results of "art therapy" are equivalent to the output of dedicated professional artists.

When a pickled shark commands a price in six figures and the starving of a poor, hapless dog to death is proclaimed to be "art", who can blame the man in the street if he is confused?

When people don't understand the hard work that goes into learning the skills necessary to make a successful piece of work they assume that you are gifted. They think that it's magic, that you are commanded by a higher power to produce an image and your hand makes it so. Most people will never know how much hard work goes into making a bad painting and how many bad paintings are made in the process of learning to make successful paintings.