(link)
We should be exceedingly skeptical of comparing artistry and servanthood. Art isn't service. Fraser's existential question “What do I, as an artist, provide?” comes to mind. Or Bourdieu:
"cultural producers tend to feel solidarity with the occupants of the economically and culturally dominated positions within the field of class relations. Such alliances, based on homologies of position combined with profound differences in condition, are not exempt from misunderstandings and even bad faith."
That said, the PR does fine corralling why such affinities might exist. And Flaubert's novel and parrot are made for metaphor. The parrot dead and our heavenly afterlife: an art career. Anyway, write what you know. The professionalization of art is pain, our lives are increasingly disembodied and neuroticized. Paintings of laptops make sense, they are our story.
