Friday, August 14, 2009

From Max Huber to Voluntary Art

I checked into Grain Edit this morning to see what was new, was side-tracked from there to looking into the Max Huber issue of IDEA Magazine along with the Huber monograph published by Phaidon, and ended up with an article on something called "voluntary art." Interesting term. It seems almost redundant. I don't think of "voluntary breathing," I just breathe.

The same with art. I can think of nothing "involuntary" about my art (except, maybe, the need to create stuff) and nothing can keep me from doing it. Including lack of funds. So there you go, I've been a Voluntary Artist all along and never realized it.

The issue of public funding of art through the "government’s coercively gath­ered funds" is something I haven't given much thought to until I saw this article .

2 comments:

Laura said...

Wow, that article reflects a strange viewpoint. The paranoid Libertarian propaganda aside, the man is most moved by the fiscal privilege of the artists. Those of us who hope for some pittance of the government's so-called coercively seized funds to assist us in the pursuit of our work don't have the luxury of securing private funding based on our celebrity status. The funny thing is that the government has been slicing away at funding for artists for years. It's only through a very vocal grass-roots art community that we continue to receive the little we do. It's sad to me that someone is so focused on promoting their twisted views about taxation that he indicts the entire art world based on its inability to fund itself in an economy that values its output so little.

AnitaNH said...

Well said! Thanks for commenting, Laura. Your Artist Statement on http://www.hechoensomerville.com/ is a perfect description of the art of collage, by the way.