The Struggling Artist at 86

He's 86. Fifty years ago in 1958, when he was a young 26, prudent retirement planning was getting a good stable job with a pension. Forth years ago in 1968, when he was 36, prudent retirement planning was holding a stable job with a pension. 1978, he was 46 and prudence was still a pension. Even thirty years ago in 1988, it was the same for someone at 56. Now twenty years ago, when he was 66, new employees were typically being put in 401k plans rather than pensions, but in 1998 he was 66 and retirement age.

The world changed in ways that were not consistent with conventional retirement wisdom. Or to put it another way, people looked at the piles of money sitting in pensions and figured out a way to get their hands on it because that was their full time job. For what it's worth, there are people who spend all day everyday thinking about your retirement savings becoming their money because skating to where the conventional retirement wisdom for retirement is going is still a job people have.

For what it's worth, a lot of people who had retirement savings saw that money shrink by 40-60% in 2008-2009. There's no coming back from that even with ten years of 7% net growth, you're still behind inflation without drawing any of the capital and profits...and you're not going to get ten years of 7% net growth without extraordinary good luck.

I love this example.

Kinkade is considered an 'outsider artist', which is a category an artist falls in when they are successful but not cool or young, like a celebrity.

The "artist's story" being discussed in most of these comments is more like a brand. If an artist is a brand, parent's comment is supported. If an artist is a commodity of skill and intellect, parent's comment is a farce. The same goes for if an artist is a celebrity. More and more every day, successful artists must be feasible celebrities.

The overlap of artist and celebrity marks something of an end to commercial Art's intellectual integrity, which is maintained only through symbolic links such as the insistence that artists have an MFA. This requirement came about following conceptualism. For example, Rothko, who the article's subject was shown beside in the 1950s, was a middle-aged philosopher with no art school experience and a miserable origin story, which did not matter then. Note a commitment to intellect did, which was not assumed when one partook in the dealings of Madison Ave.

Contemporary art critics would like you to confuse conceptualism with abstract expressionism. Don't do it. The artist in the article exemplifies the difference.

Conceptualism is popularly defined by an incomprehensible history and a host of needless exaggerations around what an art object is. A more likely history is that conceptualism is an opportunist side effect of abstract expressionism, which was a highly intellectual and honest project. Conceptualism asks what can be art?, which simultaneously allowed artists to become their art. This uncoincidentally occurred alongside an explosion of popular obsession with celebrity. To have a good artist story is to have a story worthy of celebrity fame, which is another topic entirely. The point here is that conceptualism is not, despite popular manipulation, a legitimate or interesting art movement. It is a flash-pan quasi-philosophical excuse for quasi-intellectualism in art. Conceptualism makes the celebrity nonsense quasi-reasonable, so it was adopted as the origin story for the current contemporary Art world as a whole, which depends on notions of celebrity to compete in such a commercial society.

Note Warhol stands out for having actively subsumed Madison Ave. with his intellect, not in place of it.

There are multiple definitions of "value" and not all are financial.

Thanks for this link. I didn’t know who he was. I found his story inspirational. He says some chefs are artists. This may be true but there is a fundamental difference between a chef and a fine artist such as a painter. Chef’s product is useful. He has customers. There are well-defined standards for excellence such as the Michelin stars. But what an artist produces by definition is useless. Must be useless. Otherwise it will be denigrated as “not art but illustration,” or “decoration” or “commercial.” So the problem is to find a value system for something which is useless.

You don't seem to have heard of any value except monetary. (OK, maybe that's not fair/likely, but you sure talk like it.) I guess it's (just?) a confusion in the word 'value'.

The way you are talking of the value of art in money terms is.. well... People who love art don't talk like that. Do you speak of love, life, health etc in similar terms?

Oh anyway. It's pretty amazing to me to hear such views in person. I mean, scary, horrific, chilling. It only happened to me once in my life before this thread.

I think...you have been brainwashed to think that all value is (or can be put) in terms of money. Is it possible to be happy while thinking like that? ..There are a thousand things I could say to that, not sure where to start. (Unfortunately I've learnt quickly in my brief time here that discussion on HN with those of different views is very counterproductive. It has been so far anyway.)