| "Time and again" - such a quaintly elegant turn of phrase! 1) Art critiques inform us time and again that artists boldly insist, or are characterised as insisting, that they do not work for the sake of being approved of. Approved of by whom, is a question that comes to mind. Good point, that - given the painfully small numbers of people in the Netherlands who buy art, how many artists would benefit even if these patrons communicated any specific requirements? Far be it from me to sound derogatory, I am only too well aware of the difficulty of converting a body of thought into comprehensible language, so even if I like to amuse myself with the linguistic hiccups ensuing from this attitude, I wouldn't dream of sounding off about the underlying good intention. Nevertheless it appears to be the culturally correct thing, to be highly commendable to proclaim for all the world to hear that what you make has nothing to do with what the public are asking for. Crikey, that should be enough to plunge the SME 2) into a right old funk - after all, their dealings are always with people who don't know how to go about achieving what they want, whereas these daft artists are purposely not doing what they think they could do. All of this in a microscopic, totally insolvent and heavily subsidised market. If that ain't self-confidence …! | Translater's notes 1) I'm quietly pleased that the Dutch equivalent - "om de haverklap", or "every other beat of the oats", is at least equally glorious. 2) The Small and Medium Sized Enterprises sector. |
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But I digress. I can think of another sector which resembles that of the
artists, a sector which stubbornly refrains from doing what the customer
would like it to do. Of course I'm talking about bicycle shops. Bike shops
sell bicycles, dress guards and collapsible footrests. All mummies and
daddies, the child welfare people, the Consumer Association, the Royal Dutch
Touring Club, Greenpeace, Jimmy Savile, you name it, are keen to ensure that
not a single child's foot should ever be trapped between the spokes of the
back wheel (for that's what the footrests are for). Nevertheless children's
feet are trapped time and again, to the point where official statistics are
available on the subject. Bicycle shops have the edge over artists in one
respect only: they don't toot their own horn quite so insistently, they're
more modest, we haven't heard a peep out of them ever since the government
declared them eligible for the lower value-added tax bracket. It's probably
the relief of coming under the 6% rather than the 17.5% regime: that should
put paid to the need for innovative thinking for the next five years or so!
Utopian Epilogue Wouldn't it be good, would it be possible, would it in fact ever have been achieved, not to have to belie one's own nature and yet manage to please other people as well, or perhaps at the same time, or alternately. After all, this is the only angle from which life continues to be liveable. I mean, is one still in a position to want anything when one is having an arterial haemorrhage, or does the waywardness thing continue to apply even then? This is something, I would stress, which can easily be interpreted as rabble rousing, and I would therefore like to know by way of follow-up how many artists have passed their First Aid exam. I admit to the possibility of acting out of self-interest, but we could always discuss that at a later stage. |