surface and symbol

"All art is quite useless," said Oscar Wilde.

really he wrote it, but all the same.

so to make use of art is to rob art of its grand purposelessness.

"Our revenue does come from ads," she told me. "And so, we're looking for someone with more sales experience."

i nodded. i understand. something has to get sold, somehow. whether that something is worth paying for is another question. on my drive home i pondered the arrangement of publisher and advertiser and consumer. a magazine takes your money. it sends you a flimsy little stack of glossy nonsense, and then it turns around and sells your attention to advertisors. is that fair? yeah, okay, it makes you money. maybe a few of those ads make me laugh or smile or think. it seems so backwards a way of creating. a quote from the publishers of JPG magazine:

...the result of these economics is that you, as a subscriber, are the least important person in the equation. The only part of you that's valuable is is your eyeballs, and only when you're looking at ads.

blah to that.
but one way or another you have to sell out, right? we all have to eat.

ideas:

• create something worth paying for; charge as much as you need to
• marry a millionaire(i.e. find a generous patron); never worry about money again

hm. perhaps those are the two sides of the coin. sell your product or sell your soul. interesting.

of course it's more complicated than that. all i know is i don't want to have to sell things. especially not a thing so abstract as somebody's attention.

Leonardo da Vinci painted his mona lisa in his spare time. the rest of the time he had one of those millionaire patrons pay him to invent things. so the solution to keeping your useless art useless and keeping yourself fed must be the sex and cash theory. that or living with your parents.

edit: this is what i'm talking about... woah.