As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto. This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art. Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art. More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.
My Art Manifesto
- Art is cross-art by nature
- Art is always autobiographical
- Art is sensuous
- Art is synesthetic
- Art is never completely original
- Art has value
My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects. This is the last of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto.
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When I lived in Dubai, a Filipino friend invited me to his first solo exhibition. His paintings were astounding, both in breadth (they were huge) and in theme (they were profound). His creative talent wasn't narrowed to painting, but extended to photography, sculpting and performance. At this exhibition, for instance, we all wondered where the hell he was. Two hours into it, and he still hadn't shown up. Then he arrived, wearing exactly what he wore in a sizable self portrait, including clown makeup, and pulling the same red wagon depicted in that photograph. He was like the Pied Piper, as he snaked through the crowd, picking up odd things on the floor, and us opening up, making way for him, and regathering behind him to follow along. It was a tour de force show.
I was equally astonished, however, at how much he low-balled the pricing of his pieces. It was par for the course for a lot of Filipinos in Dubai, that they hardly saw their true worth and hardly demanded it. They smiled at whatever pittance they received, because after all they were the happiest people in the world. But being dead bottom on the salary scale in an Arabian Business survey was emblematic, I thought, of how people and companies took advantage of their low salary expectations and how Filipinos themselves reinforced it with their acceptance and passivity.
On the face of it, my artist friend was the same. So a few days later, I got together with him, and asked him point black: If someone were to offer him 10 - 20 times more than the pricing he had set for any of his pieces, would he accept it? I was glad to hear his response: yes. I wanted to advocate for him and to serve as his talent agent, and his response suggested that we had something to work with. Had he said no, instead, there would have been little reason for us to go forward.
Art as the royal road to wealth
Consider the following documentary on very expensive paintings:
If this documentary doesn't take your breath away, then you may have little or no breath to begin with. Certainly each artist may dream of a multimillion dollar windfall for his or her art. For the vast lot of us, however, eking a living out of what we love most is a daily struggle or an impractical option altogether.
But how to determine art value?
A few years ago I spoke to a German friend, who at the time was pursuing her PhD in marketing and focusing on pricing as a specialty. I asked her how the value of art was determined. We chatted a bit, but mostly she just sent me a wealth of articles on the subject. Evidently art pricing wasn't something she had looked into, as she really wasn't able to advise me.
I gathered the following were pricing determinants:
- Talent and renown of the artist
- Promotion, sales and marketing efforts
- Historical, social and political context
- Art market trends for particular genres
- Whim, ego and wealth of the art aficionado-collector
Dr. Ron Art in perspective
It took a few years to clarify the concept, create the platform, and launch it in earnest. So when I spoke to the foregoing friends, this wide-ranging endeavor was still in its infancy. I wanted to create art and engage others, but I also wanted to promote, negotiate and sell it. (a) I've been posting stuff in methodic fashion, across Google+, Twitter and Facebook, and (b) writing articles like mad across several Blogger, Tumblr and Pinterest profiles. (c) Plus I am working on specific projects, at various stages of progress:
- Poetry in Multimedia. Searching for a multimedia publisher for `The Song Poems
- Shakespeare Talks! Staging `A Midsummer Night's Dream in the community
- Dramatis Personae. Writing my play `The Room, as advocacy against housemaid abuse
- Art Intersections. Planning my photography project `Real Beauty
- T'ai Chi Empower. Teaching students and coaching leaders on T'ai Chi
Art is simply not something to dish out for nothing.
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