Bar Harbor, Maine, USA
www.gregmasonburns.com
A Conversation about the Market
I want to be creative, but society has its own rules. There are no rules for creativity, and yet here we are. Where? Here, today, when art is no longer supported except through behemoth organizations sucking up money from the artist direct. Sure, you’ll go out and buy your prints from Target and destroy the artist even more. But they’re cheaper and look more professionally done. You need to be competitive. Competition is good. And bad, because the artist has no competition. He or she is unique, without comparison. That's foolish, think outside the box. There is no box. Not even an amoeba. The artist is the box, forever changing form and shape, pushing boundaries that only exist because we need a word to describe what we’re supposedly pushing. Then why the expression? It’s a corporate thing, meant to give permission to exceed established efficiency boundaries. And art doesn’t have efficiency boundaries? If no, why are you so poor? Because my world isn’t your world. You can never conquer the creative world, only diminish it, lessen its importance in society, the society you create, always pointing to what you call progress, upward, always making it hard on the artist. Sounds phallic, hehe. It is a fallacy. Art sold for millions never goes to the artist, the creator. Give me an example. A dangling light. A light? That shows the way. A light that shows the way is a fallacy in of itself because it only shows what it can shine upon and everything else remains darkened by the soft edges of the light and its limits and how far it can go and how far it cannot go. Auction houses are the light, but creativity is the darkness. Too deep for me, just like the price of your painting. Another car payment? That and a family cruise to Aspen. A cruise that can’t be taken. And yet I’ll pay for it just the same. Here’s a quarter, what can you make me for a quarter? I’ll take your quarter and take a picture. And you’ll send it to me by email? So you can reproduce it on the Internet and make more money than it cost you? Sure, that’s what I’m talking about. No need to give me your card, I’ll remember your email by memory. Now that’s why I only gave you a quarter. And it’s why your idea that art will always exist on a quarter is a fallacy. If art is darkness, it will always exist. Someday the light will go out forever. Art will conquer? Not if you only have one word for darkness. Maybe I’ll create another one. Ah, maybe.
