Why wait until I’m dead?
Hear me; now! I have rent to pay.
Money, or rather the lack of money, presses upon me, today. I’m trying to save enough to begin purchasing the property in New York. Must all artists suffer? And is their suffering almost exclusively in the form of poverty? I’m not sure of the answers to these questions but I know that Vincent VanGogh was a miserable financial failure. He produced works that (in his time) were not marketable at any price. Today, these same canvases are some of the most expensive works of art in the world.
Picasso seems to have done well for himself. He brashly marketed his work and his persona. During his life he was able to afford whatever he needed or desired, through the sale of his art. Picasso was one of the few exceptions to the ‘rule’ that real artists are poor.
This, of course, leads to a conversation about whether a successful artist is an artist or a hack or, worse, a prostitute. Was Picasso a hack? Did he make ‘things’ just to sell them or did he produce images from within his psyche that we may call ‘art’?
In turn we arrive at the Surrealist movement. I’m reminded of my work called ‘Surreal Marmalade.’ It is a quart jar of copper pennies bearing this label:
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