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The blogosphere discovers an artist Here is an interesting story. A friend of Jackie D (to whom thanks for the link) called Amy Alkon has discovered an artist. He is now homeless, but something tells me he is not going to be homeless for long.
His name is Gary Musselman, and here is one of his drawings:
Amy put that at the top of her posting, surely knowing that this would appeal to the blogosphere, although I rather prefer “Wichita” myself. Scroll down to see that.
These are the kind of drawings now sufficiently out of date in artistic style to appeal to large numbers of the general public, especially the sort who are internet-connected, but to be disapproved of by the regular art critics, who will not, I predict, approve. “Derivative”, “emotionally empty”, etc. Their real objection will be that their verdicts aren’t going to count. Not this time.
Jackie D has already equipped Gary Musselman with his own blog, and the story is now gathering pace.
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Extremely intriguing. How much?
Verity, if you go to the blog that Brian links to, there’s an email address for sending offers and enquiries through (we have someone local to him who can make sure that Gary gets them). So far he’s received $200 per piece commissions; the “Progress” piece is a one-off and lots of people seem to want to buy it, so I’m thinking perhaps Gary should auction it on eBay.
Jackie – Many thanks. eBay auction for the Progress piece is a good idea, although it wasn’t one of the ones I thought was intriguing.
I’ll send him an email. Thank you.
PS – Your friend’s description of his work as “jazz on paper” is brilliant.
But Brian, Amy is hardly a creature of the blogosphere.
Dunno if the critics would be as sniffy as you say, Outsider Art is pretty hip these days. Good luck to that guy.
This is the most patronizing nonsense I’ve ever seen. Does the artist not have a mouth, a brain, a self? Can he not sell his own works for a fair price? Can he not set up a website, a “free” email account by himself? Why not? Public libraries with free internet access are full of people like him. Is he mentally deficient? It seems obvious he doesn’t want to make money. He’d rather be a victim. Plus, I don’t like his art.
I don’t have a problem with what they’re doing. Libertarianism certainly doesn’t preclude voluntary private charity such as all those people offering their expertise and time gratis.
What I am appalled by is her story of the “businessman” who bought two pieces from the artist for $20. A quote:
“I think you can appreciate that his drawings are beautiful, intricate, and worth more than 10 bucks. Surely, the buyer would ultimately do the right thing, and toss in some extra cash.”
Why, no Amy. They aren’t worth more than 10 bucks – they’re worth exactly what the buyer and seller agree they’re worth! The man didn’t hold up a gun to the artist’s head and demand that price, did he? No, in fact the man even asked the artist what price he was willing to sell at. They both voluntarily arrived at a price of $10 each. It’s called Econ 101, for Christ’s sake.
But somehow, because neither the artist, nor the businessman, agreed on a price that Amy thought was “fair” the businessman is a “homeless-gouger” and deserves both public and Internet beratement for his horrible, horrible act of…uh…shopping.
Granted, you might make the case that the businessman should have paid more than that as an act of charity. Still, I noticed that she didn’t verbally abuse the other customers in the coffee shop who apparently didn’t give the homeless guy charity either – at least Mr. “Gouger” put a twenty into the guy’s hand. Plus she had been going into the shop and seeing the homeless man for quite a while, and never mentions giving the artist a dime during that time either. So, you know, there’s a bit of mote and beam there.
She thinks that this guy needs charity? Great, though – as Robert said – a bit paternalistic. She thinks his art is worth more than $10 a pop? Fine. But she’s trying to link morality (charity) with free-market transactions to create “fairness”, and they just don’t work like that. As innumerable attempts worldwide have shown us, “fair” pricing schemes are a really bad idea.
I would have thought someone who describes themselves as “fiscally conservative” would have known that.
Does nothing for me. But I always hated Kandinsky, which seems the obvious influence.
Evidently other people like it, so good on them.
Agree with Cliff S. The correct price is the price the buyer and the seller agree upon.
Re the art, this certainly isn’t something you’d want to collect! – but one would be interesting hanging on a wall. I don’t like the Progress one, but I liked one of the six thumbnails. I have sent off an enquiry.
Does he have anything with an Islamic flavour? – a cartoon would do…
Arguments about the worth of the item being it’s most recent transfer fee are daft. He was selling in such an imperfect market as to make that measure meaningless. If he stuck it on ebay we’d get a better idea of the value.
The art is dull but fairly well executed. The woman sounded like a nice person until she talked about ‘artisanally roasted ristretto’, so actually I hope she is hung for boasting about how her coffee is roasted, and drawn for using the word ‘artisanally’ instead of ‘artisan’ and then quartered for using the whole pathetic episode as an excuse for linking to her goddamn coffee roaster’s wife’s blog.
The businessman might have been a git, but we don’t exactly get an unbiased account of him, so who knows.
I’m reminded of two 18th century gentleman marvelling at an idiot savant…
J –
Please explain to me how you then determine the “true” price of an item if using the actual sale price (excuse me, “transaction fee”) of the item in an imperfect market (which is all of them) is “daft”.
Don’t forget to illustrate how eBay is somehow a more perfect market than the artist’s Starbuck’s clientele. Is it your assertion that more eyeballs=more perfect? Is the true price of a hamburger and fries closer to McDonalds price than my local diner’s? Is the real price of a candybar the one at my grocery store or at the concession stand at the theater? Or the wholesaler’s price? Or the price at a busy airport newsstand? Do we need to count noses in each of these markets to see how close their candy bar price is to its “true” worth?
And since there is no such thing as an infinitely large market, I guess by your lights we’ll never be able to determine the item’s one true value.
I think the real worth of an item does, in fact, change as the market conditions (market size, buyers and sellers dispositions) change. Why shouldn’t it? Or is the true value of Betamax tape player I bought 20 years ago closer to what I paid for it then, instead of what I could get for it in the much smaller (and thus more imperfect) market of current Betamax users? If I demand roughly the old price on the unit when I put it out at my garage sale this weekend, whose fault is it if no one in that small imperfect garage sale market buys it – mine (for expecting too high a price) or the potential buyers (for not being willing to pay the “true worth” of the player)?
You get the idea.
Looks awfully like someone making art from a Turing code to me …
Markets can temporarily undervalue things, that is, reach a local optimum that’s nowhere near the global optimum. Ms Alkon was acting as a sort of entrepreneur to detect a market mistake (undervalued artist) and invest to profit by it (in achieving her goal of an injustice put right, and an artist set on the path to greatness). There’s nothing un-libertarian about this. Nor about having contempt for the guy who was paying $10.
Ethical principle: everyone is best off when everyone is operating up to their best capacity. I can stack shelves at Tesco – I have done – but the market does sightly better when I program computers. Ergo, boosting someone with great potential past barriers to entry is an ethical good. Getting things cheap because someone is trapped beneath their true potential, when you could instead have removed the trap, is an ethical bad.
I still don’t get it. How is this poor, blithering idiot artist “trapped” by anything but his own stupidity and incompetence? And isn’t his “true potential” defined by his ability to market his art as well as paint it? A prediction: a year from today he’ll be back on the street, destitute and clueless.