How would you suggest that artists get paid? Someone bought this painting from an artists, just as artists want you to do right now, so they can pay their bills. At what point would the painting be seized, from the buyer?
What is the difference between art and products when money becomes the sole focus of creating art?
Should an artist just be creating art for the buyers?
Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel. The School of Athens was commissioned by Pope Julius II. You'll find that a massive number of famous art pieces were commissioned, and I don't think you'll find any serious people who think less of them because of it.
Art and the freedom of art have often been used to critise society.
Now if art becomes a product, where is the critical function of art? Critical art is part of healthy and diverse society, without we're one step closer to an orwellian utopia.
You're tapping into a single category of art -- art that is critical of society -- as if that's the only purpose of art.
The purpose of and the person who commissioned the piece of art is just part of the context and history of the piece. It says nothing of its impact and importance.
My main point is that the commoditization of art should not be detrimental to its critical purposes.
Artists should not be forced to create art that makes money happy.
Someone valuing art doesn't have to change the meaning or devalue the artistic merits of the art. Conversely, not allowing art to be private/bought doesn't increase the meaning or artistic merits of the art.
> What is the difference between art and products when money becomes the sole focus of creating art?
This doesn't have to happen. Artists often have works of love, and works of survival. And, is art still valid if it has more meaning, unintentionally or not, to the buyer than the artist? In the end, it's all personal interpretation. I think there's also value in an artist commissioning work, being able to help someone achieve what they can't by themselves.
In the end, artists need to eat, and, I believe, live a life that could fit some reasonable definition of "comfortable". If you remove the monetary aspect, doesn't this require that the state/society sponsor artists, almost certainly without merit or qualification, since anyone can produce meaningful art? If anyone can be an artists, at any time, wouldn't this have to extend to the whole population?
I think this is an interesting idea, but I think it would require a monumental shift in society, with either an "artist class" of citizens, who were treated better than the general public, something like UBI, to guarantee everyone can make their art for free, and most definitely tyranny, to remove the freedom from the artists, in doing what they wish with their art.
Every member of a society should have the right and freedom to intellectually critise that society. So an artist class might just be as successful as an journalist class (that we already have since journalists do enjoy certain rights that other classes don't).
What is important, IMHO, is that we don't lose sight of the fact that art also has a critical role to play in society.