Exploitation.

I think the word exploitation seems to be what everyone is wrestling with, which is an issue of semantics, and is also why the question in the first place is difficult to answer. "What artists utilize exploitation," is a subjective question, with no concrete or certain terms. My point that I was trying to make in class was simply to "break" the word, pushing it to its extreme limits to try to better understand the question. The line between polemic referentiality or exploitation and constructive appropriation is a very murky channel to wade through. I think that it is impossible to do art without getting some enjoyment out of what you do, and it is impossible to receive no reward for it unless done completely anonymously. If nothing else, I think you can argue that we are exploiting the idea of "culture," selling one-of-a-kind culture goods to the rich so they have something that they feel comments on their relevancy and trendiness-(this being my answer to the question "what about abstract or conceptual work?")

I just think we all need to call a spade a spade here. We're artists. We're all taking a lot of time, energy, and money, to better perfect our craft that serves little or no need in the world. What we do (although important in many ways) doesn't help to clothe, feed, or shelter anyone. Can it do that? Of course. Does it? Better question, does any of our work do that?

I don't know about your work, but I paint and collage and do non-edible, non-sheltering works on paper or canvas. I don't think this is a bad thing and I don't lose any sleep over it. We're creating commodity goods and it makes us and other people feel better about themselves to a certain extent (even though we are exploiting those good feelings out of them, haha). Anyone who wants to make the world a better place and doesn't want to receive notoriety, fame, fortune, success, or accolade at it should probably drop out of this school immediately and begin volunteering somewhere, like a soup kitchen maybe, I don't know, instead of creating images that beg to be looked at by people (exploiting their time, acute vision, depth perception, cones AND rods). But for me, I think art can be used for good and I can benefit from it too and I don't think there's anything wrong in it. I'd argue that the best artist, in theory, would exploit or sell-out in any way possible to reach the top. That's what the best artist would do. Not the best human. Most of us, myself included, have a maybe misguided sense of morality and justice that keeps us from "might is right" and taking from whatever and whoever we want because at the end of the day we have to live with ourselves.

However, to not acknowledge that the simple act of image creation isn't a basically "me" activity, is to create a whole "us versus them" mentality, that we're some kind of high priests of art and would never sink so low as to use our work for corrupt things such as money, or fame-only "they" do that, and I'm sure we all have our ever-growing lists of bad "they"s. Also, I'm sure Jeff Koons is on most of them.

Good job Jeff.