As stated by Andy Warhol, “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” Art and money are two completely different aspects of life that intersect in so many ways. Many artists produce artwork as a career and depend on producing commercially successful work. As stated by Warhol, making money is actually ‘art’. However, the bigger question is whether this ‘art’ can contain social or political value. The answer to this question is yes! How many times have you watched a film or watched a play that you simply disagree with? How many times have you watched a film in which you felt disturbed or offended by (“Birds with Skymirrors”… Taxi Driver... Breakfast at Tiffany’s…)? Well, these emotions were triggered because the film or play had a deeper social or political message that you probably disagreed with.
Artists can obviously produce commercially successful work that also has important social or political value. I mean, we spent the entire semester discussing different forms of artwork and our opinions towards them. This alone should be enough to show that the works we have studied have important social and political value. For instance, Taxi Driver was a pretty commercially successful work of art. The Domestic Total Gross made from Taxi Driver: $27,300,000 and the Domestic Lifetime Gross: $28,262,574 (BoxOfficeMojo).
Not only was Taxi Driver able to be commercially successful, but also Scorsese incorporated many social and political messages in his artwork. For example, Scorsese addresses issues such as political corruption and alienation. He uses Palantine to represent how politically corrupt the world is. Palantine uses the phrase “We are the people” throughout the film; yet, his cliché statement demonstrates how empty-headed he really is. Additionally, alienation is show in various scenes throughout the film as Travis demonstrates how much of a lonely place New York City can be. Scorsese demonstrates that artists can definitely produce commercially successful work that can also have important social or political messages.
Another side of this topic that should be examined is whether or not accepting money for a commission means that an artist has comprised his or her art. Although making money is ‘art’, it does not necessarily need to be created by selling out. The process of accepting donations and money with the requirement of needing to comply to another person’s wishes requires the artist to give up his or her true intentions. Basically, in this process, the artist is buying into someone else’s beliefs and wishes. “Selling out” can occur in different industries of art. In the case of film, directors may compromise the content of the media they are producing for money. In the music industry, an artist who usually uses foul language may give up the vulgarity only to avoid offending a mainstream audience.
Ultimately, money plays a huge role on the type of art that artists produce. Artists can definitely produce commercially successful works that contain significant social or political value. This is illustrated in Scorsese’s film, Taxi Driver. With this being said, many times, artists “sell out” by compromising their morality and principles only for the purpose of gaining money and a commercial audience. However, “selling out” isn’t always necessary to become commercially successful. It is the process of an artist giving up his wishes and accepting money in exchange for making his or her artwork geared towards a conventional and commercial audience.
