Qué triste, injusto, incomprensible. El artista debería poder vivir de su producción artística y contar con el tiempo necesario para trabajar, su trabajo verdadero: el arte. Cuando hubo el mecenazgo, alguien le pagaba su "sueldo" por trabajar su arte y así debería ser y debería haber sido. Pero hasta eso fue injusto. Porque entonces el mecenas con el cuento de que era el que pagaba cohartaba la libertad del artista.
Así nos encontramos con Miguel Ángel "protegido" por los Médici.
Él amaba la escultura pero sus mecenas le encargaron pintar los frescos de la Capilla Sixtina, obra que demoró 4 años en estar lista. Cuatro años dedicados a pintar no lo que quería sino lo que le asignaban y si quería dedicarse a esculpir no podía. ¿Acaso un artista se beneficia con un mecenazgo así?
Solo un artista puede entender a otro artista, la gente del común no va a entender su trabajo, su necesidad de crear. Es fuerte la situación del artista. El de ayer y el de hoy... Ojalá haya una realidad diferente para el mañana.
How sad, unfair, incomprehensible. The artist should be able to live off his artistic production and have the time necessary to work, his true work: art. When there was patronage, someone paid him his "salary" to work on his art and that's how it should be and should have been. But even that was unfair. Because then the patron with the story that he was the one who paid restricted the artist's freedom.
Thus we find Michelangelo "protected" by the Medici.
He loved sculpture but his patrons commissioned him to paint the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, a work that took 4 years to complete. Four years dedicated to painting not what he wanted but what he was assigned and if he wanted to dedicate himself to sculpting he couldn't. Does an artist benefit from such patronage?
Only an artist can understand another artist, ordinary people will not understand their work, their need to create. The artist's situation is strong. The one of yesterday and the one of today... I hope there is a different reality for tomorrow.
I hope too, that tomorrow will be different, but I am anxious that I will not sell any artworks at my next exhibition which opens in about a week. I'll get to feel the same sense of shame - only hanging 15 works instead of 1 :)