Comment by techbio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by techbio | Hacker News Reader

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Finding money to support the disenfranchised.

Edit: My original answer was unclear and too brief for someone.

A clearer answer is that outsider artists, as generally identified by profound social marginalization, typically resulting from mental illnesses, are statistically almost never able to support themselves on art-making.

Programs exist for the mentally ill, yet it would be a hard case to make that these are sufficient for creating quality of life such that everyone suffering in that category, and who would rather be making art as a primary occupation, can support themselves and live independently (provided that is a goal) on art making income.

But like many causes, money for this cause is harder to come by than it could be in the wealthiest nation in the world.

Extracting money, not currently available, from the least creative of workers to support creative work and fulfilling lives for "outsider artists" and all others on the margins of the modern economy seems to me a kind of fair play.

This is a bad thing for art?

This is not achieved by the rare "outsider art" sale. I'm not sure why you have a problem with my original post, or if you even read it.

I can't understand most of it, to be honest. My perspective is art can sometimes take centuries to make sense from the creator to the person that it's right for, so it doesn't make sense to expect a functioning, mechanized economy to provide for it.

That's the point of art. To tell an idea to someone who needs it. If you tax it and expect it to work like everything else does, it can't do that.

> That's the point of art. To tell an idea to someone who needs it.

Maybe for some people, but art for me has always been about expressing myself. I've never created anything for someone else's enjoyment. If someone happens to enjoy it, okay then, but it's my feelings on the canvas, not my interpretation of what you need to see on the canvas.

I understand that sentiment. I also understand the other.

Your trouble understanding may be that my phrase in the original post "a stipend for materials" really isn't saying what I meant to say, which in fact is simply "a stipend."

But it's too late for me to edit now.

My trouble stems from your judgement of art you don't seem actively involved in creating, therefore, art you don't understand. I assume you aren't involved in creating it because you are very negative about it. That said, if you want to create it, being able to find resources to create it can continuously be a challenging problem, and this is especially difficult if that's what your survival depends on.

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