31/10/2023
WRITING ABOUT WRITING
Getting paid for good art is never wrong
by Joel Pablo Salud
There are “talented ruins,” as the esteemed author, James Baldwin, once put it, and there are ruined talents, as I put it. The former collapses due to a false sense of humility; the latter, on the other hand, is the result of a strong sense of what is utterly false. Succinctly, what this points to is our assessment of our value as artists, at once thin and worrisome, and the value of our art.
So much so that the artist—writer, dancer, musician, playwright, actor, painter, poet—begins to cheapen his or her aesthetic feats by agreeing to be paid a pittance, or what a native English speaker would call “nickels and dimes,” if not the more offensive pro bono packages, shoutouts, or freebies often extended to artists through social media.
These shoutouts offer the artists “exposure,” or what is, by presumption, more important than food on the table.
This is contemptuous coming from small- or big-time businesses, and even more upsetting when proposed by family or friends. “Rude” and “scornful” are far better adjectives when describing such indecent proposals. It is not only an attack on the dignity of the artist, it is failure to recognize the cost that went into the creation of good and great art.
In my little research for this piece, I stumbled on this piece of news on Pinterest: “Tonight, the group W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy), will release the results of the artists survey they conducted with Artists Space, a gallery in Soho. The survey found that 58% of the nearly 1,000 artists interviewed (including visual and performing artists) received no compensation at all for exhibiting or presenting their work at nonprofits in New York.”
Before I proceed, allow me to offer a bit of a caveat: Not all art is good art. Some are worth only the mediocre and average responses from which they spring. Other works of art should never have seen the light of day. Mediocrity is not acceptable in the world of artistic creation.
What we wish to deal with here is art that is worth its performance in gold or the legal tender, those accepted as a commendable performance.
Artists who insist they get a king’s ransom for art that can hardly fly, much less breathe, is not an artist but a con artist. A true work of art worth someone’s hard-earned cash must have wings. These works must be able to satisfy the demands of a critically merciless standard, aesthetic elements that refuse to put up with the poor standards that govern some artworks, performances, or pieces of literature.
And while art appreciation, some say, is highly relative, even extremely personal in some cases, there are certain principles and elements that define a good form of expression, more so how well this is done. Think the rules of grammar or syntax in the world of letters, for example. In this already unforgiving world, there are such laws as absolutes. And learn them the would-be artist must, before he gains the right to break them.
Good art involves painstaking work and discipline and some level of stubbornness. In fact, those who wish to be authentic and distinguished in what they do should give no room for lethargy. A ballet dancer, a theater actor, even a novelist, for instance, must put in the required manhours to train for the work ahead.
According to the Jade Harrison School of Dance, “Most professionals will dance for around 10 hours a day and will be in classes, training or performing 5-6 days a week.”
For actors, training proves irresistible. “To become a professional actor,” says theactorsplace.org, “you need to show agents and casting directors that you're serious enough for them to invest in, such as by taking 2 years of acting classes and getting 20-30 credits from independent films, student films, and plays. The process of learning to act better is endless.”
For writers, MightyAuthor.com offers a polite peek into the manhours spent by authors worth their salt: “Full-time writers tend to write for at least 3 or 4 hours a day and then spend more time editing and working on the business side. Writers who also have other jobs often struggle to find time and may only write for an hour or two a day. Ideally, new writers should spend at least an hour most days.”
Hard life it is, yes, but the payoff is good. Imagine getting paid for something you love doing, however small this may be at times. And, at the end of the day, that’s basically what art is: You expressing yourself, you telling the world you exist. You getting a vision of the murky and the beautiful, and sharing it with the world. And believe me, getting paid to do that, as against doing what you hate, is a dream come true.
This is why it pays to heed the advice of one of the country’s foremost pens—the bravura author of the Speculative, Dean Francis Alfar:
“Young guns, remember this: there is value in what you create, in your artwork, in your writing, in your performance.
“Do not fall into the trap of giving away your efforts - whether tactile or ephemeral - for free. The danger with the notions of “paying your dues” or “doing it for exposure” is that you may convince yourself that what you do is of little or no worth; that it is just best given for nothing.
Art and words have value […]
“Do not undervalue yourself. Do not permit anyone to undervalue what you do. Whether you design or write or sing or dance or paint or compose, if someone else or a company benefits from your work, you must charge for it.”
Lest we forget, the value of one’s art stands solely, and in great measure, on the vision that the artist has and wishes to convey. But that vision can be costly, as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke points out in his book, “Letters to a Young Poet”:
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.”
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Joel Pablo Salud is an editor, columnist, and social critic. He is the author of several books of political nonfiction and a collection of short fiction. He sits currently as the chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN Philippines. He is also one of the authors of San Anselmo Press, whose book “In the Line of Fire: Lectures” has been recently chosen as finalist for the National Book Awards. His series “Writing About Writing” appears every Wednesday at San Anselmo Publications’ page.
