Tribute to Bulgakow

Moving to L.A. to make a living as a photographer, musician or painter is not a commitment to art. It´s the proof a strategic and structured commercialization of artistic approaches. Making a living on art requires investments from people who concider your work worth of their monetary attention. The term investment pretty much states it by defintion: it´s a transformation of monetary capital into goods of various nature. Then again goods are definied by a limited quantity, which adds to their value. Well, so someone is obviously interpreting you as production capital. This seems like a very weird interpretation of an artist.

While moving to a specific city or country for networking and synnergy purposes seems like a good argumentation, realilty usually demasks other motives. Ever since the 40s european artist have been moving to the US to make a living with their art (Eva Hesse, Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeoise..), just as have US artist who moved to various cities (Patty Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe..). This implies the transformation of a passion to a profession and by this work.

Concidering the approach of art for arts sake, that by definition makes an artist, this leads the whole case obsolete. What about people like Bulgakow who wrote their entire life without even the slightest chance of getting published? Not for money, not for fame or recognition or other ego-inflation, for pure intrinsic motivation of creating something of value for your own spirit. Persistence and stamina gain special attention in this scenario. The master and margarita is one of my favourite books ever, an emotional counterpart to Goethes Faust that also donated the famouse phrase for Ciorans poem „der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland“, based on Bulgakows Prof. Voland. I cant prove this but it´s way too matching to be incidental. Writing on it for 26 years he did not live to see it published. I hope one day you will be able to read it in the original russian version as there are just no words that include this amount of spirituality and emotion in western languages.

Tribute to Bulgakow, a true artist.