The Case For "Free" Art! :P

Reading my title just makes me feel like yelling "Merdeka!" and "Unlock the gates, let Art go!" Okay okay, bad joke :P

The inspiration for this post came when Eugene (whom I was tremendously surprised to meet as part of the organising team for Reel Revolutions [http://revolution.youth.sg -- sorry, couldn't resist a little advertising :P]) and I were talking (arguing? :P) about the Price of Art. Our initial stand, much simplified, was:

Me -- Art should be free!
Eugene -- Art should be priced at its actual value!

Interrupted, we agreed to Take This Battle To The Blogs. :P Therefore, my task in this post is to lay out my argument clearly (and, we hope, succinctly -- which I was never that good at) so that Eugene can then reply on his blog and we can have a good ol' vigorous online discussion. Doesn't that warm the cockles of your YouTubed heart! :D (I wonder why cockles. I mean it just makes the heart sound like a muddy bay somewhere with fishermen digging up shellfish...)

Note: I am attempting this at close to 1am. Besides being possibly unfinished due to my Internet curfew, I may also be rather incoherent and insufficiently cognitive. I will probably make several changes to my stand before this discussion is done. :P

To begin with: I argue that Art should be free for audiences, so that it may permeate into the population with greater efficacy. Art is not generally considered a necessity, so the majority of the population will not willingly spend money on it. My argument is that if art were free and sufficiently distributed, more people would be interested to view it and participate in it, and subsequently art would have a greater impact on people's lives.

In addition, I ask that Art be free for the Artists, at least resource-wise. (I know, to loads of practical people out there I am asking for the sky/the impossible/the moon to fall on its face.) This is to encourage more people to take up the PRODUCING of art, and in the process unearth more artists where they might otherwise have been missed. How many stories have we heard of artists who nearly didn't get into a career in art but for a chance opportunity to experience art that they would otherwise not have? More art producers also means more people will see the relevance and value of art to everyday life. Of course, this is not to say that Art does not have a price. It demands the artist's time, attention, effort, patience, talent. Should it be allowed to demand a disproportionate amount of his or her resources as well?

Leaving the obvious argument of "where the resources would come from" for another time, I here concede that Art cannot be free all the time, because it would then have no value and artists would not be able to make a living from their work. Some art has to be priced, displayed, sold, possessed, in order that the value of GOOD art may be retained and given a social premium, in order that aspiring artists will aim for higher standards rather than putting a dot on a piece of paper and then being complacent about it.

This, however, leads to my counterargument, which is that Art which is sold is usually dead. Take a painting: a painter conceives an idea, he or she works it onto a piece of material using other shapeable materials, it is put up for auction, sold. If it is sold to a museum it is displayed for the public (entry for a fee), circulated, maybe resold. However it is in public display only for a few years -- museums have hundreds of art works and they cannot display them all at a given time. Sooner or later the piece is taken down, forgotten. Sooner or later it works its way to a private collection somewhere, where it adorns someone's private lounge, available to only a few select friends. A painting thus dead is unable to spark off an idea to a new creator, a new artist, unless he or she happens to see it during those few years in the public museums or the select few with access to the private collection.

Free art, however, moves much quicker amongst large groups of people, particularly in today's Internet-connected world. Say the painter decided to put a high-resolution photograph of the painting up for free display on a website. In the first place, millions more can access the painting than if it was displayed at a museum (even a museum that had free entry), even possibly across borders of space and barriers of language. Secondly, anyone who wishes to recommend the painting to a friend can do so easily, without having to encounter the gatekeepers of expense and space (by sending them the link). Think about all those mp3s that spread like wildfire on the Internet while CD sales and concert tickets could barely compete. Thirdly, although the painting may remain in the public imagination for a very limited period of time still (possibly shorter than if it were in a museum), it is still available on the Internet somewhere. Say 30 years down the road, a young student artist is looking for inspiration, and it so happens that stumbling upon this particular painting will spark off an idea that will lead him to create a masterpiece unsurpassed by anyone before him. In the museum and in the private collection, this meeting of inspiration and creator would be much less likely. In the realm of Free Art and the Internet, it could happen. When art is free, ideas circulate much faster, spawning new ideas at unbelievable rates and generating a much more active thinking community. (This also forms part of my argument that over-restrictive copyright laws strangle creativity rather than nurture it, but that's another argument for another day :P)

Oh bah, I didn't make my 1am deadline :S Reposting this at a more convenient time! :)