"The Artists Manifesto"

Derek Barton

Creating art is the highest function of the human mind. "Art is the flower, life is the green leaf." Can this truly be refuted? Long after the wealthy of an age are forgotten, the names and works of its artists are remembered. It endures. It is a gift to eternity and to everyone. It is like the light we receive from the sun or the nourishment from the earth. Without it nothing is possible; it strengthens and sustains without discriminating; but also, like these resources, art is easy to take for granted, perhaps *because* it is so elemental, and because its nature is to stream forth. The essence of art is bounty. Plenitude of spirit and plenitude of form.

Its antithesis is the limitedness of money, the alienated labor and disinterested hoarding of resources, the annexation of nature's bounty we call capitalism.

Art is a natural resource. The artist offers up his work freely and selflessly. He is about as likely to demand payment for his bounty as the sun or the earth for theirs. Like the earth he will give of himself even as he withers, he will let himself be exploited and never cry foul; his only cry might be that of his untimely death. Is it any wonder then that artists, giving so much and asking so little, are underpaid and undervalued?

“Just let me make my art,” they say. “Just give me a few pennies here and there,” they say. “It's okay, I'll work two jobs,” they say. Either that or “I will bend my art to your corporate will,” they say. “I will use my talents to help you sell soulless products,” they say. “I will put my skill at the service of your talentless superstar,” they say.

There is an ecology here: like the earth, our society holds artists in base subservience, mining their riches, plucking out and processing their beautiful unities to serve the purposes of power. Like the dairy cow, they are given just enough to keep them on the edge of life, to keep their milk flowing (weak putrid milk that it is), their bodies and lives meaning nothing except as producers of the truth and bountiful spirit that is profanely transformed into wealth by those who take it. Then when the robbers are sated, the cattle are cast aside, empty pestilent husks that they are, of no use to anyone anymore.

Imagine if the very Earth revolted. If the cow refused to give its milk. If the grain declined to nourish, if the springs closed up their mouths, if the fruit rotted on the tree and fell to earth, if the sun closed its eye on us, the fish flooded their delicate meat with poison. Now imagine if the artists revolted. A world without art. TV shows without scripts, revealed as the mindless corporate mush they are. Recording artists without lyrics, music, lights, or dancers. Suddenly they are nothing. No new plays, no new movies. Let the film moguls write their own scripts, design their own sets. No new books to adapt into box-office hits. Let them discover how much money it takes to buy a drop of soul. Let them no longer afford it.

The artists have this problem: WE CAN'T STOP. Art is life and nourishment to us. Without it we wither spiritually as, with it, we wither bodily. Our economic system stymies us at every turn.

One lives in a system designed around doing things one hates, things that are meaningless. In exchange you get money, for without the money who would slump over a desk all day, feeling dead inside? You may then take this money and present it to someone else to do something that benefits you but that they also hate.

As artists our quandary is that our benefit to the world is also something we love. So we would do it without the money. And, very often, that is what we do. But there is one thing we CAN do. We can stop giving our souls away. We can demand fair payment for our work. We can demand livable lives and respect for the value of what we do. And we don't just want respect. We want money: living wages, our fair share. A cabinet maker would never give his work away in hopes one day someone might want to pay him for it? He demands respect for his craftmanship and his goods. When then do we as artists do this? Is it any wonder that our work is unvalued?

What could be more subversive than a wealthy and powerful artist?

In the meantime, here is what we do: Sell no art. Hide it. Show it only to other artists. A world without art is perhaps a world that can learn to appreciate it.

In Ayn Rand's “Atlas Shrugged”, industrialists of the world, stymied at every turn by a society resistant to progress, suddenly cease their efforts and watch as their world disintegrates around them. I believe it is the point for artists to cease their efforts, to finally capitulate in the face of the soulless economic processes that rob them of their every effort and hold as worthless the illumination they cast on the world. Art and selfless illumination mean nothing in a world that knows only greed, coercion, and exploitation. Art has no place in such a world. SO LET THEM LIVE WITHOUT IT!