Oh brother and sisters. Im so sick of articles like this one. theatlantic/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/ First lets put this in context. Richard Florida, pop sociologists and millionaire author of The Creative Class, who brought you the term creative entrepreneur is a co-editor of The Atlantic magazine. The author of this article William Deresiewicz, according to his wikipedia page, is a literary critic and author of- Excellent Sheep: Thinking for Yourself, Inventing Your Life, and Other Things the Ivy League Wont Teach You. His argument is basically this. Artists in the past never thought of themselves as a solitary genius, a term he uses over and over disparagingly. Deresiewicz thinks that they were better off thinking in terms of being a guild worker or a playwright or a craftsperson since these terms connected them to the practical real world ( you can just smell the word entrepreneur cooking cant you) As art was institutionalized, so, inevitably, was the artist. The genius became the professional. This step in the demise of the artist was followed by the art market that offered a sense of protection and mediation for the artist as solitary genius. Happily, according to Deresiewicz, thats all over and done with. Now he suggests the solitary genius has been forced or has chosen (depending on your point of view) to be the new independent entrepreneur. And here is the kicker. Deresiewicz suggests that the system that is forcing those that teach art to the dregs of adjunct faculty, all that downsizing and austerity, all that scraping together a living by being an artist and working part-time at IKEA is a necessity and more importantly it also is an opportunity. Ya, sure it is. The implications here are political and they are damaging. And worse of all the idea of being a genius (lets just call it talented, or specially unique) as something to look down on and something to be replaced by a business entrepreneurialism is, i believe, anti-intellectual. Its saying that thinking isnt enough, you have to do something practical with that thinking, something that the masses are going to want. You are not an artist anymore. You are a entrepreneur.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 14:18:31 +0000