Jacob Matham, After Hendrick Goltzius:
Hendrick Goltzius, a famous Protégé (1617)

" … this series comes to you due to the steadfast patronage of The Muse …"

I am a kept man. Though this arrangement should seem shameful to both my patron and her Protégé, we've worked our way into acceptance of the way our lives have become. I was The Muse's Patron for a time, encouraging her to steal what was once my consulting company if she wanted to become a consultant. She succeeded in satisfying my injunction and ultimately succeeded me in managing that firm, much to the betterment of us and that firm. When the firm went bust in the not-so-great 2008 Recession, we were both thrown out of our profession. We were a month away from losing everything when The Muse was offered and accepted a job. As I mentioned earlier, her employer had no notion of how The Muse would engage when fulfilling that position, and she remained a surprisingly resourceful contributor until after that hiring boss retired. She became the money earner and I became her Protégé, not that I was in training, mind you. Protégé is the proper term for anyone receiving patronage. Most of the greatest artists throughout history have received patronage and were also "kept," much to the benefit of succeeding generations of art appreciators.

Our economic notions lean heavily toward the Self-made Man theory of vitality, that success demands no less than economic viability. In other words, if it doesn't make money, it's worthless. Everything's supposed to have a price and that price adequately describes its worth. Under this notion, the portrait sold at auction for fifteen million bucks is "better" than one picked up for a fiver at some small consignment shop. We know intuitively that this valuation method is phony, but one of the purposes of convictions has always been to cloud intuition, to prevent it from fully satisfying its mission. If we hold a belief, it can simplify judgment and provide flat-Earth answers to even the otherwise most spherical questions. The Starving Artist Archetype serves two masters. It might mean undiscovered genius or it might translate to delusional loser. The eventually most successful artists were both genius and delusional through the first part of their careers.

If there's no market for an artist's work, it seems tragic if that causes that artist to stop creating, for even if there are no takers for that painting or that novel, I believe this world is made better by the very act of creating. Further, the revenue reason might not sit anywhere close to the highest motivation an artist might employ. For every story insisting that an artist only succeeded in creating to avoid starvation, there must be dozens of stories, likely unpublished, of noble artists starving while creating, with no respite in sight. Abraham Maslow, the infamous creator of that hierarchy of needs, delineated what an upper-middle-class Stanford professor might need rather than what an actual starving artist might require. Transcendence does not always depend upon a secure income. The best in life was never necessarily the product of leisure.

I required considerable time before I felt deep-down comfortable with our little arrangement, for I am a product of the same economic notions as almost everyone else. I felt the freeloader at first, regardless of how The Muse insisted that she could not possibly perform her work without my assistance. I was her, our, artist in residence. I might produce an artful supper as well as write a fresh song or produce another series. There might not be any ending to the returns The Muse might make from her investment if we thought of her patronage as an investment, which we don’t and it isn't. We have no clear model to follow. It's been literal ages since a run-of-the-mill lord routinely supported some Protégé. Chaucer was kept by my 18th great-grandfather. In those days, it was considered Noblesse Oblige, the rightful obligation of the wealthy to act with generosity and nobility toward the less fortunate. Mozart sometimes struggled to find a patron for his work. Nobody successfully argues that his patrons wasted their treasure upon their Protégé.

This world remains in balance almost despite what most of us manage. We work hard and still seem to come up short. We quit in disgust and then disgust ourselves with our lack of productive contribution. Patronage is not an investment. Nor was it ever something that should have needed the promise of a tax break if contributed. We each hold somewhat similar obligations here to be more than mere consumers, but creators, too. As a part of that covenant, we hold sacred responsibilities to support those capable of creating in our absence. We inhabit what might well be an Eden here, whether or not it stands near the end of anybody's Oregon Trail. We're enjoined to challenge the conventional, to perhaps even risk being seen as a "Kept" individual even if the ends don't always seem to justify the means. This story and, indeed, this series comes to you due to the steadfast patronage of The Muse and her continuing Protégé, me.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz