THE EXPLOITATION OF THE ARTIST.

Over time my experiences and observations lead me to notice that there is a big business going on out there in cyberspace baiting budding artists to join up, pay the fee or whatever, and get their work published for sale on the world wide web.  One of my comments during any general discussion about art is that nowadays everyone is an artist, the statistics I jest, are eight people out of five are artists.  Of course, this is a wry joke on my part.  Picasso is quoted as saying that every child is born an artist, most people grow out of it.  I think he was very right.  Picasso had an amazing intellect from what I read about him.  I also rightly or wrongly blame him for opening up the flood gates to every wannabe artist with little if any skill, so inadvertently Picasso made it possible for many adults to rediscover their childhood.  I’m not being malicious here as I probably fit into this category myself, my inner critic says.

Either way, the internet is full of personal websites that belong to accomplished artists and some lesser ones to be very sure, who knows how many millions of personal artist’s websites are active right now.  For sure this vast number of budding artists has spawned a new industry that exploits these hopeful souls by baiting them into thinking they will make money selling their shit… oh, excuse my Freudian slip, their original works on line and becoming a farm-moose artist.

Now here once again we see where my wry and impish sense of humour manifests itself.  We all know what the saying “chasing a wild goose” means.  Now to me, a moose is a weird looking animal, ungainly and funny looking with that camel like droopy mouth. Now imagine a moose on a farm chasing the proverbial wild goose, and there you have it a perfect combination of wordplay and rhyme coupled with a comical scenario.  So then when I say he’s a farm-moose artist, you now know that I mean he’s chasing the unattainable dream of wanting to become a famous artist, and perhaps looking foolish and comical as a moose on a farm would, chasing the wild goose.  Wow, now that was a long-winded explanation eh? Let me catch my breath, but yes it was necessary.  

So, all the farm-moose artists out there now sign up to these websites and other companies that use their art on their products, basically provide these artists with the service of exposing them on the internet, or as the new age youcanologists would say, “put it out to the universe”. Yes, there are smart benevolent wolves out there quick to identify an opportunity for making money from people's hopes and dreams of making it big, and damn I wish I was one of them.  They start up these website industries baiting in all the hopefuls and sit back raking in the money flow from related fees, services, upgrades, special privileges and whatever else.  The vast majority of these hopefuls however, will never sell a single turd… aww damned, done it again, excuse moi.  They will never sell a single piece of… careful, a piece of their work!  

But always there will be some that will sell at least one painting or other work of art at least once and may never sell again.  However, for the owners of these sites, these few and scattered sales amount to a substantial number that will earn them their cut. What's wrong with that you might ask?  Nothing really, better than everyone staying home doing nothing and watching television.  But the fact remains that like bleating sheep, the artists are all gathered in one place for the purpose of harvesting all that can be harvested from them as previously described.

Even sadder is the fact that on a lot of these shared sites you will come across some accomplished artists whose work is displayed alongside the scribbles of a child that signed up into the same website. Most of these sites or at least the ones I’ve come across have categories listed for the viewers to click onto so as to see only the art that interests them.  Alas, no one from the website administration checks this, so you click on oil paintings and you get some meaningless scribble produced on a phone or the product of some art program in someone’s tablet or an ocean of Manga.  There is so much of this shit uploaded on some websites that the discerning viewer can easily be put off and click away.  The internet is beyond a doubt the best thing that ever happened for opening up the world to homebound artists and professional artists alike, unfortunately, there is so much unadulterated crap mixed in with the good work of these artists, that this can get a little tiring.  I blame the producers and administrators of these art sites for this.  They want as many signees as possible, but the work of monitoring the categories is no doubt an intensive one, so they don’t bother.  

But would we be right in thinking that the thousands of artists out there are being exploited?  In some cases probably yes, and for sure one cannot call these people that offer these "rainbow" services scam merchants because, in reality, they are not scamming anyone.  It's just that what they promise is very most likely to never come to pass. Still, it is better for the unknown artist to get any and as much exposure by increasing one's presence on the internet any way possible.  One never knows who might see the work, and what opportunities this exposure might attract.