Who makes a profit on art, and who gains from it honestly?

The factories, which produce materials, are necessary to artists.
The firms, which sell materials, are necessary to artists.
Their workers, clerks, sales personnel, agents, etc…
The firms or private business owners who provide the equipment or decorate the work of artists.
The carpenters who make frames, wooden structural supports, etc…

The producers of glass, paper, pencils, paints, tools, etc…
Their workers, clerks, sales personnel, retailers, etc…
The real estate agencies which collect rent for studios, lofts, living quarters or for the holes where artists live.
Their employers, clerks, etc…

All those producing and selling either wholesale or retail everyday items to artists.

All those producing and selling either wholesale or retail footwear and clothing to artists.

All those who create and sell either wholesale or retail cultural requisites to artists.

All those who produce and sell, wholesale or retail drugs, sanitary supplies, and alcohol, contraceptives, cigarettes and sporting goods to artists.

All those collecting taxes on artists’ incomes.
Municipal clerks and other administrative personnel.
The banks with their higher and lower–ranking staff members.

Small craftsmen: tinsmiths, doctors, frame–makers, shoemakers, and gravediggers.

Professional mosaic craftsmen who execute someone else’s mosaics.

Professional casters who cast someone else’s sculpture.
Modelers and experts in plaster, wax, marble and bronze.

Goldsmiths.
Signet makers.
Zincographers.
Professional executors of high–circulation prints: Lithograph, etching aquatint, silkscreen, woodcuts etc…
Medallists.
Stonecutters.
The galleries.
Sales galleries and their staff.
Non–profit galleries.
Gallery owners, gallery administration, gallery curators and their personal secretaries and friends.
The subsidized gallery council.
The voluntary gallery council, which collects money, because it is not paid.

Purchasing commissions, its members and consultants.
Extremely well trained conference experts having both good and bad intentions concerning art.

Managers, retailers, dealers and all other small–time or big–time art profiteers

The organizers of public or partially public auctions.
The collectors.
Those shrewd profit makers, who profit from finer or capital works outside of public collections.
“Anonymous” benefactors.
The well–known and respected benefactors.
The low, higher and highest–ranking personnel of cultural institutions and the organizers of art, cultural and educational programs. The staff members involved in the organization of an exhibition.

All administrative employers.
The clerk, who orders, issues and account for the necessary materials for an exhibit.
The account office.
The janitor.
The secretaries of other persons related with institutions, which provide funds for cultural programs.
The all technical personnel.
Professional and non–professional managers.
The designer of the catalogue, of invitations and posters.
The messenger.

The fire inspector.
The critic, writer or other individual responsible for writing the preface to the catalogue.
The copyreader who checks the preface, of the artist’s texts, or those about the author, included in catalogue.
( )
The typist.
The photographer who shot pictures from the catalogue.
The catalogue publisher.
The catalogue editor.
The printing firm responsible for printing the catalogue and invitations.
The workers, who set the print, bind the catalogue and the invitations.
The proofreader.
The administrative personnel of the printing firm.

Those who fix tax rates and collect taxes on catalogue publications.
Those who sign and issue certificates deeming that the catalogue be tax–free.
Postal fees for mailing invitations and catalogues.
Telephone expenses connected with arrangements made for the exhibit.
The electric companies, which charge for electric energy, spent during the time of the exhibit.
The gallery guard and catalogue, postcard and ticket salesmen.
The cleaning women.
The housepainters.
The individual giving the introductory address at the grand opening of the exhibit.

Outside information service.
The ad department of the daily paper.
The journalist who is giving a long or short report on the exhibition.
The expert critic giving the exhibit a short review in the daily paper.

The competent editor of the cultural section of the daily paper.
The technical editor of the cultural and all other sections.
The critic or commentator offering a more detailed review of the exhibit.

The publicist, who has nothing to do with art but writes about artists, their works and problems in the art world.

The author, who scribbles out his lyric images on art for daily, weekly or monthly newspapers, putting them up for sale and thus making public his ignorance or extremely pro knowledge of some particular branches of art.

And all others, who, regardless of their professional fields, either attack or defend the exhibit and the artist through the daily and weekly press.

The cartoonists.
The makers of trickery, epigrams and sophistries related to art and artists,
The television station, its personnel, workers and “artists”.
The cameraman who films either the opening of the exhibit or a film report on it.
The worker responsible for the camera lighting.

The lower–ranking associate of the television’s cultural programme covering the story.
His technicians and assistants.
The editor of the television station’s cultural section.
The director, stage designer and remaining amateurs.
The commentator or speaker who reads news on the television.

The organizers and television hosts for cultural shows.
The organizer and host of television interview made with the artist.

Those who write, direct or film either brief or long TV films and plays about the lives of either living or dead artists.
Those who make films about artists as tourist ads.
Those who film full–length romanticized biographies of artists.

Radio stations, their personnel, workers and other associates.
The advertisement page.
News reports and information spots.
The gossip column.
Radio program writers, who write about artists and those reading or reciting this material.
The speaker and radio program host.
The organizers of various interviews and shows dealing with either cultures or art.
Writers of radio necrology announcements concern the artist or some artistic movement.
All associates and other radio staff members.
Publishing houses, their staffs, workers and consultants.

Bulletins and the editors of these bulletins on art.

Weekly art magazine and the staff, which writes for the magazine, as well as those staff members responsible for the distribution of the magazine.

Monthly, quarterly or bimonthly magazines dealing with culture and art.

Monographers, biographers and editors of collected essays dealing with a particular artist and his works of art.

Those recording anecdotes from the artist’s life.
Those who assist the artist in writing his autobiography.
Those who verbally retell anecdotes and jokes from the artist’s life, in this way earning: cigarettes, coffee, beer or brandy or cognac or vine or food, etc…

The critics of all fields age and trends.
The bookstores that sell the books, magazine, reproductions and original prints created by artist and by the non–artist.
Antique shops, antique dealers, private sellers, agents and retailers.

The collectors.
Second–hand stores and second–hand dealers.
The commission stores.
Those selling their knowledge and familiarity with the artist’s earlier works
Experts familiar with later works.
Experts for pre–historic art, primitive art, modern art, etc…
Experts for a particular century of a particular epoch.

The organizers of one particular artist’s one man show.
The organizers of group exhibits, cultural manifestations, presentations, etc…
The organizers of exhibit which take place between cities or republics.
The organizers of international exhibits.
The organizers of mammoth exhibits: from ancient times through to the present day.
All their commissioners, secretaries, associates, assistants, consultants proofreaders, publishers, administrative and technical personnel, workers, and so forth…
The juries, consultants, experts and café hostesses.
The conservators: restorers, technicians, etc…
Institute directors, museum directors, museum curators, clerks and other staff members.
The insurance companies and their personnel.
The night guards of museums, of the galleries or collections of this, and that type of compilation or legacy.
The organizers of symposium, meetings and art festivals.
The organizers of seminars and brief or crash courses in art.
The organizers of organized profit making on art.
The organizers ideological, administrative and technical personnel.
Tourist organizations, agencies and their personnel.
Airline companies, bus lines, railroads, etc…
Hotel chains, cafes, waiters, restaurants, boarding houses, etc…

Professional guides working for galleries, museums, ruins and smaller collections.
Professional guides with knowledge of one or more foreign languages.
The Fans.

Teenyboppers.
Young female students.
Models.
Married women.
Wives.
Mistresses,
Girlfriends.
Widows.
Children.
Old friends and acquaintances.
Relatives and all other closer or further removed heirs.
Lawyers.

Housewives and mothers who occasionally preach nonsense through the press in support of and against art. Shrewd overseers and the trustees of legacies, inheritances and collections.

The overseers of art funds left to be distributed as awards, gifts and scholarships to rich students, careerists and other assorted thieves.

The organizers of funds and scholarships had given as one–month, one–year, or hundred–year scholarships to lackeys, bootlickers, and wealthier children and to solid epigones.

Organizers granting scholarships for study abroad which are usually granted to the children of higher government officials, to the children of masked and hidden bourgeoisie in socialism.

The organizers of various associations and the required technical and administrative personnel.

And all other lower, higher and highest-ranking bureaucrats squeezing money out of artists with a smile, proud of their “holy mission” in art and in culture.
The poster makers, graphic editors and designers who slyly steal from the artist by reproducing a work of art on wrapping.

Industrial designers of all kinds.
Anti–designers.

Producers and sellers of: handbills, posters and portfolios with signatures or for cheaper without them.

The producer and sellers of “record as art work”, full of hope and loaded down with dreams of large sums of money.

Those who earn or hope to earn from additional publications (reprint), the DADA movement, Fluxus and so forth, though they didn’t even dream of doing this when it was truly necessary for the artist.

Souvenir producers and their sales people.
Producers of postcards, greeting cards and reproductions of art works.
Those who print calendars with reproductions of works of art and junk art.
The acclaimed and unclaimed copyist of art pieces.
The secret forges of works of art.
Wall decorators.

Façade makers.
Tapestry makers.
Tradesmen dealing in candy, sweets, stockings, tobacco and all other products, reproducing a work of art on its wrapping, thus necessarily make an earning on it.

All those using a work of art on stamps, labels, flags, picture books, wallpapers and kitchen or bathroom tiles.

The directors of publishing houses who occasionally dispense with their influence in order to make a profit from small trade on “works of art”.

Those supporting helpless and senile artists in order to get hold of their inheritance, thus making a gangster–like profit from it.

Exclusive distributors and profiteers on videotapes, documentary and historical photographs, signatures and authors’ napkins.

Those exploiting anonymous artists.
Those abusing occasional by–passers.
Those who are glad to do “this or that”.
Impostors make a living by imitating artists.

Serious and self–confident epigones that imitate artists without feeling the least bit guilty, thereby faring better and earning more than the artists did themselves.

Counterfeiters of art history, who make money on these fakes.

Those favoring a particular style in art due to their own greed and lust for profit.

Those pointing out one artist, or a number of them, or a particular idea, a theme or thesis or a problem, in order that they might draw attention to themselves and their ideas, thus earning something from it sooner or later.

Art dilettantes and other indoctrinated, calumniated theoreticians joined in secret partnership, in order to simplify the hunt for profit in art.

Ladies studying art and artists.
The ladies from good families that engage in all kinds of business with artists for the sake of “Art”.
Those who support “Street Art” or “Protest Art” and thus thrust, sell, advertise and place these ideas on exhibit in the most elitist galleries.

The critics, theoreticians and other quack engaged in everyday politics so that they might attain a position in the art world and thus ensure themselves a profit from it.

Camouflaged ideologists, demagogues and reactionaries in institutions, schools of higher learning, universities and academies, who have a greater interest in power and influence in the art world, than in EDUCATION and CULTURE, which doesn’t offer any kind of profit.

And all those who shade their decadent, dated, reactionary, chauvinist and bourgeois models of art and culture with verbal liberalism, in order that they might attain positions outside of the art world, outside of culture, thus being both above and beyond art and culture.

The psychologists and sociologists who extract nebulous conclusions about art and then start to sell this bluff as a great contribution to the better understanding of art.

Philosophers writing about art, yet never really understanding, and all the other cheap politicians who have, in this “mysterious” way. Through relatives, friends and connections seized at the sinecure, brainwashing artists and make enough money for two life times through this nonsensical business.

Dragoljub Raša Todosijević
Beograd, 21. 4 1975 – 2018

The author wrote this text in order to profit from the good and bad in art!