Artball the Art of Winning The Unfair Artgame
I have been reading about Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game: the democratization of information causing a flattening of hierarchies, and “the ruthless drive for efficiency that capitalism demands.
Albert Ellis in The Myth of Self Esteem says, “Self-esteem results in each of us praising ourselves when what we do is approved by others.” So self esteem is a system of slavery. “I must do well and win the approval of others or else I am no good.”
Evidence based analysis asks, is the any evidence that I am no good? These are global conditional ratings. We are rating ourselves on one condition, like, for example, how much we are financially worth, the ruthless drive for efficiency that capitalism demands.
Ellis says to throw this all in the garbage and rate our strategies for satisfaction instead. I highly prefer to have money in the bank but I don’t have to. As an artist I was conditioned in art school to make large heroic works to win critical approval and achieve success financially. Then I found out after graduation that I must win the approval of the approved art gallery in order to have three solo shows, of these expensive to produce works, in order to meet the Canada Council conditions for funding to be able to afford paint and time to research and have a career.
Its Artball the Art of Winning The Unfair Artgame brought to you by me and my friends on the internet. So I dumped the art gallery system of evaluation based on sales metrics by ‘art-stars’ usually uber-rich family and friends playing the investment game, and opted for personal satisfaction instead.
The purpose of life is satisfaction. I started there.
So what are my art-satisfactions? Like any other satisfaction they are fluid, not written in stone. I find it satisfying for example to have folks view my art, I’m inherently an exhibitionist by temperament and training. Religious narcissistic family and friends call this showing off, and because I’m good at it (practice practice practice) they lose in the attention competition. So if I must have others approval or else I’m no good, according to them I am roundly fucked.
If I am dependent on esteem, self or otherwise, I can and will lose it on occasion, and then I’m fucked. Anxiety and depression set in. If I have a strategy for satisfaction, it can, and is, fluid. Today I find x satisfying. It doesn’t have to be anything even if I highly prefer it, like having a sex goddess wife and a million dollars. Or after a stroke, walking and talking. I do everything I can to deal with the loss of a wife, a bank account, mobility and speech, then ignore all those musts and shoulds conditions for happiness, and explore other choices for satisfaction available to me. Such as a million people saw my work on the internet, on just one platform. I find this very satisfying for I was an orphaned introvert with bullied social anxiety struggles. It’s as thrilling as climbing Everest to a mountaineer.
Compared to a wealthy capitalist buying my painting to stick over his couch, never to be seen again…Well, the metrics of dollars pale in comparison in the quality of my satisfactions. The fact that the art gallerist paid for his Lexus with his commission on my art-slave work pales even further. Gate keepers are too self-interested to be interested in anything else or interesting.
