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THE BATTLE FOR MODeRN 1923


  chunks of flommus 

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maybe choke on your caviar while reading

I at­tend­ed a packed read­ing (I’m talk­ing 300+ peo­ple) about a year and a half ago. The au­thor was very well-known, a mag­nif­i­cent non­fic­tion­ist who has, de­served­ly, won sev­er­al big awards. He also hap­pens to be the heir to a mam­moth for­tune. Mega-mil­lions. In oth­er words he’s a man who has nev­er had to work one job, much less two. He has sev­er­al chil­dren; I know, be­cause they were at the read­ing with him, all lined up. I heard some­one say they were all trav­el­ing with him, plus two nan­nies, on his world­wide tour … None of this takes away from his bril­liance. Yet, when an au­di­ence mem­ber – young, wide-eyed, clear­ly not clued in – rose to ask him how he’d man­aged to spend 10 years writ­ing his cur­rent mas­ter­piece – What had he done to sus­tain him­self and his fam­i­ly dur­ing that time? – he told her in a se­ri­ous tone that it had been tough but he’d writ­ten a num­ber of mag­a­zine ar­ti­cles to get by.”
Ann Bauer, ‘Spon­sored’ By My Hus­band, Salon
 

Now you might say that he re­fused to touch that mon­ey but there’s no way that tour­ing car­a­van is be­ing fi­nanced by book sales un­less the dude is JK Rowl­ing so in the end the point is still the same.

This piece I’m ref­er­enc­ing above was writ­ten to in­spire writ­ers so they don’t be­come dis­suad­ed when they see oth­ers get­ting fur­ther with less strug­gle and in a short­er time. Es­pe­cial­ly when they as­sume it’s due to their own shortcomings.

And it’s nice to know that un­even re­sults are of­ten di­rect­ly tied to play­ing field advantage.

This is true of the vi­su­al arts as well.

I had read re­cent­ly that if you could peek be­hind the cur­tain of many ‘in­stant­ly’ suc­cess­ful artists, you’d find a net­work of con­nec­tions push­ing them or that they had the lux­u­ry of fi­nan­cial back­ing in the form of in­her­i­tance, trust fund, fam­i­ly mon­ey, etc. in the first place.

And of­ten both.

None of that (as the piece men­tions) de­tract from the bril­liance of the work, but it is some­thing to keep in mind if you’re one of those that spends the bet­ter part of a decade work­ing for a liv­ing with­out the lux­u­ry of fol­low­ing your muse.

This is ac­tu­al­ly sor­ta re­lat­ed to a side is­sue that’s been a bee in my fan­ci­ful bon­net for some time: When slum­ming twen­tysome­things that think they know what it’s like to be ‘poor’ when re­al­ly they were mere­ly broke for a few years start­ing out.

Poor is when you have no re­sources to call on. Broke is when you can’t af­ford to do what­ev­er you want when­ev­er you want. And there is an ocean of difference.

Now mind you, I agree that it’s not in­cum­bent on wealthy artists to have to dis­close their fund­ing. And us­ing a well-heeled back­ground as a spring­board to con­tribute to the arts is far bet­ter than giv­ing the world an­oth­er fi­nance pro­fes­sion­al. But I *do* think it’s ab­solute­ly in­cum­bent upon them to be self-aware enough to not pull that ‘boot­straps’ shit in front of people.

The point is that for some very vis­i­bly suc­cess­ful peo­ple, it’s much less of a hustle.

And for peo­ple like my­self that didn’t get bankrolled to fol­low their pas­sion and who had to work every shit job known to man be­fore bare­ly eek­ing their way into an in­dus­try (re­mem­ber I’ve got like 20 years years in pub­lish­ing) full of peo­ple that get com­fort­ably hoist­ed into po­si­tions peo­ple that have to work jobs for mon­ey sim­ply can’t af­ford to take … well.

Also, not a lot of work­ing class kids in the count­less un­paid in­tern­ships I’ve been around. Cu­ri­ous, that.

Also, here’s an­oth­er old post but worth re­vis­it­ing: 7 Scary Things Pulling An All-Nighter Does To Your Body.

Don’t I know it. Es­pe­cial­ly num­ber 6. Sor­ry, pops.

 

—ja­son malmberg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2019 Ja­son Malm­berg. Foto by mehallo.

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Der Tung
Posted
Mon 18 Nov 2019

    FLOMM is   an educational MODERN ART movement   •  art history resource
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