ARTOUT is an experimental art service that allows those (with the financial means) to spend time with an artist. To get into their minds and hear first hand what they believe and how they represent it through their work. A novel idea, but not an insane one. Like it or not, we are in the thick of capitalism, which means that any and everything we as consumers can conjure up to ‘need’ have and will be addressed and cured. But it’s not just the collectors and lovers of art that will benefit from such a service. Artists too, being sales people in their own right, can also gain perspective in the mysteries of art through the lens of those who adore it. For the artist, art is and outlet for the recreation of the mindful feelings, observances, ideas, and commentaries of society and life. Given the opportunity to see these reflections from another the point of view, that of those who buy it.
The law of the capitalist market with its emphasis on the ever-narrowing specialization of labor and maximization of profits invites artists to reinvent themselves over and over in order to escape the market-imposed limits to their identity. This limited identity confines artists to seek satisfying the ruling class’ demand for the special commodity fetish known as ‘Art’ and reproduce institutionally-defined ideology of culture. In both cases the producer and the consumer of ‘Art’ are limited in their freedom by the traditional modes of material exchange.
We, at ARTOUT, believe that art is an open concept and artistic praxis is the process of becoming that corresponds to the totality of individual temporality. Artistic creativity results from the dialectical relation between the acceptance of the market as the underlying principle of social reality, and the need to escape its imperatives of obedience and consensus; its locus is the individuality of the artist. The artist plays the “messenger” and the “message”, the self-medium that finds its legitimacy through the charismatic negation of conventionality and in the process renegotiates his identity.
We believe that the individuality of the artist is far more significant than the material end-product of his/her labor. As Dimitry Prigov used to say "Artist is more important than his art. Man is more important than the artist." We are extending the limits of the traditional market-model to recognize the artist as the self-defined commodity whose value resides in the immateriality of artist's “creative becoming”. Spending time in the company of the artist is a creative act; it reveals power relations within the existing artist-patron paradigm and leads to the mutual liberation of both artists and art-patrons from the condition of simple material production and accumulation to the next level of the direct creative exchange and immediate human solidarity.
ARTOUT is the first to create such an open forum of exchange between the art producer and the art consumer and help the artists to retake the economic territory that is rightfully their. This is the territory of instant utopia and today we are here to claim it.
By Olivia Wadsworth
