Post #8558 by aquarj on Tue, Sep 17, 2002 8:14 PM

I do things just for the bucks all the time. In fact that's the reason my butt is planted in the desk chair it's in at this very minute! Normal honest profit is good. Why do people act apologetic or pretend they don't do things for money, or even worse, scorn others who do so?

I'll be disappointed when I see Shag produce something of low quality, but to me, things like the business card holder are nice looking products. Shag has the wonderful luxury of an enthusiastic market for almost anything he produces, which means that to some degree he can pick his projects based on what he's interested in doing. Only to some degree though - his older stuff and record covers and commercial illustrations show that he's very capable with other styles. This particular style happens to be a hit.

But the expectation for him to be an "artist" or follow some particular vision like "tikiness" completely originates from fans or resellers, not from Shag. He obviously likes tikis, but obviously isn't JUST tiki. And just because he's had success as a painter doesn't mean he seeks to re-define himself as a fine artist. In fact, I think it's more admirable that he HASN'T gone highbrow, but instead maintains a commercial artist perspective and makes his stuff accessible in many forms.

There was a whole generation of artists who painted for pulp paperback covers, but who were pretty much dismissed or ignored by the art community because of the subject matter and commercial nature of their works. Many great paintings were literally thrown in the trash because they were considered worthless once the book was printed. This is what bugs me about the art snobs - they're incapable of just using their eyes to appreciate art. What do they use instead? A lot of artificial concepts about what an "artist" should be, what kinds of subject matter or media qualify as showing artistic merit, what influences are acceptable, and a bunch of other BS like that. In the extreme it's like a weird formula - the more an artist thinks about value and commercial appeal during creation, the less value the art snobs think the work has.

Just as weird is the misguided self-esteem booster encouragement that a lot of art teachers give to pretentious no-talents, where basically anything is art as long as it "comes from the heart" or something like that. OK, this is getting long, off-topic, and I'm sounding like Dan Clowes. I'll stop.

-Randy