I want to demonstrate what it looks like when you go all-in on funding what living artists actually want to make, instead of what the market wants them to make.
Discussion
Amazing.
Do you think patronage is increasing, or decreasing in our day and age?
I think the avenues available for patronage of new music is doing really, really well. Extremely obscure bands are able to find their niche fans and connect with them. For visual arts it’s much more difficult I think, because you really need to find a small handful of patrons that are willing to go into 4-5 figures and be a substantial long-term supporter. It’s much harder to share the experience of an original work of art with more than one person. You can sell art books I guess but it’s really not the same thing as selling CDs and vinyl to thousands of fans. There really needs to be hundreds of people doing what I’m doing, but following their own tastes, and I really don’t see that happening right now.
Actionable advice: learn why Bitcoin should become your unit of account and imagine saving up for an arts fund that is 100% Bitcoin that will be sustainable for decades into the future. I don’t see any other pathway for someone that wants to be an art patron long-term. Then you just have to make tons of mistakes for years, upgrading your eye, upgrading your ear, until you’re confident about what you like. I don’t think anyone can just go right out of the gate making great choices about who they’re supporting. It’s a constant learning process.
Do you think one of the reasons that individuals are no longer willing to be patrons is because the governement and arts foundations have taken responsibility for much of this? Or, maybe art has become financiallized and many individuals with the funds aren't looking to invest in the artists, and are rather looking for a return on their investment?
Seems like my message didn’t go through 😵💫 I don’t think people are thinking, Oh nice museums and non-profits are taking care of the arts for me! If they are I think that’s a mistake. I think art as investment or as a tax haven are distractions that encourage the standards of art to be destroyed in order to allow larger and larger amounts of money to qualify for such benefits, so that’s an incentive problem. Ultimately I just don’t think the collecting culture is ambitious enough and willing to stick its neck out and go for greatness despite the risks. There are a lot of risks, but there is also potential for raising the bar and rewriting art history such that the works that you sponsor could become the new benchmark for quality.
It does seem consistent with https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ in that the aspirations of great collectors fell off a cliff in the past 50 years. What I mean by that is that there used to be collectors who spent their entire lives chasing after the highest quality art they could find in the world, and their entire existence was built around this goal. The motivation to want to do that seems to be missing, not the money. Of course the right motivated people need to have the money, but they can opt-in now with Bitcoin and get to where they need to be financially.
And then you also have to find the living artists who are motivated by creating the highest quality art in the world! Some people are content just to make a living, others just to become famous. It seems to be a very small group that is truly chasing after greatness, both on the artist side and the collector/patron side. They recognize that there are artworks in museums that are higher quality than all the rest, and they insist on surpassing them if it’s the last thing they do.
Not what you’re looking for but Cuba does this. There are committees in each genre that choose which artists get funding based on what their peers and not the market wants.
This podcast about the Cuban punk band Los Frikis is amazing.
https://radiolab.org/episodes/los-frikis
I point it out, one because it’s a great story, but also because it is useful to look at radically different systems, even if you’d not want that system, when designing new ways of doing things.