gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

Of course, the really cool thing is, that your success in this is much bigger than just *your* success. Thanks for this one.

Is it time for the middlemen to wonder where their next meal is coming from... while the artists and writers finally get a shot at becoming fat and happy?

Could produce some interesting art...

I'd argue that there's a difference between the image (what I can download), and actual original work done on paper. With visual art, there's a greater intrinsic value to the original work; that's why it's so much more expensive than reproductions.

There's real scarcity with an original -- you can't duplicate it. Writing, oddly enough, works just the opposite way; there's little intrinsic value to an original manuscript (except for famous authors after they die), and it's taken for granted that most people will read copies.

If you're a believer in 'information wants to be free', then you could call the distribution of writing false scarcity -- because the marginal costs of printing one more book are small. On the other hand, the marginal costs of creating a new illustration are a lot greater.

Right on, Hugh! You are right, I've seen it happen first hand thanks to you. I never understood the *art scene* anyway. Always seemed awfully political and having precious little to do with art to me. Rock on.

Interesting discussion. It's created a bigger market opportunity than the art itself. That's the critical point in my eyes/ears. Art as marketing the product as marketing the art.

I typed in "LOVE" on google and up popped one of your beautiful pieces. I then proceeded to put it at the top of my Xanga, and it is presently expressing my most current of attitudes there. If it's not okay with you I'll take it down, but after reading this post I figured it's like "posting it on my wall."

=Julia=
<3

Salute to you Hugh,
You have got wider and better audience for your art.
You have got your marketing ideas working for you, your clients and for their clients. Everyboday is happy. And in the process your are experiencing the fine things like yatch, wine etc for free.
And your are getting laid too.
Everyone is happy and long live the middle men!
PS: I really like your complaint on *farmer* getting a cut in your art work money! Indirectly through the govt taxes and passed on as subsidy to him.
Rock on!

-Balaji S.

How stupid of me! I read framers as farmers and theorized on it too and put a comment on it.
A good extra laugh for the gapingvoid fans!
I feel small!

-B

I hope you dont mind, I put this comment on my blog as a good point. http://blog.myspace.com/wowzer888

Hi Hugh,

I like this idea, and I've long encouraged people to do the same with my works... I've even made my novel free for download in PDF format. Here: http://homepage.mac.com/mistahcoughdrop/

Best,

MR/Paris, France

Sound point, and you've clearly made a success of what you're doing. But in today's consumerist society (RIP JK Galbraith) the web's big credibility gap is that it's not so easy to make a living wage out of it. (See my blog, 30 April, for the problems encountered when people try.)

Also, on the "death of the gallery" idea: there are a number of artists (Pollock, Yves Klein) who I dismissed as charlatans until I actually saw their work close up. There's something about being in proximity to the real thing, so you can almost get inside the brushwork, that makes it all fall into place...

What Tim said. I have a very nice Van Gogh reproduction on my wall. I've seen the real thing in Amsterdam. No comparison. It's much like the difference between a live performance and a recording. The gap gets even wider for three-dimensional art forms, like sculpture.

I'm not saying that the gallery scene is the way to go, but posting stuff on the Internet isn't the whole answer either.

[quote]
And you don’t mind paying the big bucks, do you? No, because I’m a celebrity, and you’re in my thrall. You’ve read the right magazines, you’ve seen me partying with the rock stars, you know how hot I am. It’s all about me and my friends, you and your kind don’t really matter. You’re just lucky you can afford to by a small table at the party me and my people get paid to attend. Maybe we'll even let you talk to us.
[/quote]

Rubbish! (To your point about celebrity being 20th century).

This is the attention economy we're entering. People are *exactly* paying the big bucks (eg. for Stormhoek) because they've read the right blogs, and know you're a "rock star" and Stormhoek are your friends, and that they, the consumtariat, are just lucky they can pay to buy a bottle and get a little of the reflected lustre (not to mention a reproduction drawing on the label.)

Letting people download your pictures without payment is part of the strategy for marketing yourself as a 21st century celebrity netocrat.

the intrinsic value inherent to the original work is itself a part of the 'antiquated' 20th century art market (goes back further than that, though) that Hugh is critiquing here. see Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Beuys, etc.

if you had to see an original Yves Klein to know he wasn't a charlatan... no, i'm not going to finish that sentence, because i'm not sure what i want to say. all i know is that he had me at "Artist Leaps Into the Void" - nevermind the 20g of gold leaf of it all. his importance had less to do with his physical art works, and more to do with his philosophies.

there's no comparison between the impasto of an original Rembrandt oil painting and a photograph. but i would argue that's more to do with the quality of the process of reproduction, than just reproduction per se.

sometimes people pay the big bucks because they know they're buying Quality.

Silverfoot, I'm not arguing that a gallery is not a nice place to see a work of art, it is. But I will argue if using "The Gallery Scene" as the main way to market your art is a good idea.

Two points:
Is the relevance of this marketing method dependent upon the ease with which an artist's work can be duplicated? As a sculptor, I've often wished to make my work available directly via the internet, but ran up against difficulties in both procedure and implementation. I would love to enable interested people to download the patterns I use to fabricate my stuff so they can create their own versions, in whatever material they choose--- but the material (steel) is so important to the overall "feel" of the sculpture that any other medium would probably yield something really lame.
Secondly, there is another aspect to having that very limited audience of just 200 people at the gallery show: direct, human interaction. The internet will never supplant one-on-one contact between two living, breathing, sentient beings---especially in the context of something so arcane and esoteric as art.