Karl Beveridge
Van Gogh's Ear, 2025
Karl Beveridge,Van Gogh’s Ear, 2025
The title of the exhibition, Not/For the Money, speaks to the paradox of artistic labour. Artists supposedly work for the love of the job: ‘Not for the money.’ But they also need to earn a living: ‘For the money.’ What is the compromise?
On one side you have 30 pieces of silver. Payment for entertaining the wealthy. On the other, Van Gogh’s ear. Van Gogh is every artist’s hope and fear. The archetypal starving artist, relatively unknown in life, becomes celebrated after death. If not money, then fame?
A second paradox. “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”. In art, reality is a representation, not a truth. The ‘Walking Art Patron’, the controller of money. The collector of debt. The absurdity or truth of the taped banana. Is there a choice?
An alternative ‘For the money’? Collectives, Artist-run. An artists’ union: CARFAC. Carole marching with the Independent Artists' Union (IAU) banner.
Notes:
• The ear (reproduced in the image) was grown from the living cells of Lieuwe Van Gogh, the great, great grandson of Theo Van Gogh (Vincent’s brother), in 2014, by the artist Diemut Strebe
• Geishas in a Landscape, 1870’s, by Torakiyo Sato, a Japanese print that appears in Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889
• Comedian (taped banana) by Maurizio Cattelan, 2019, sold for $6.2 million
On one side you have 30 pieces of silver. Payment for entertaining the wealthy. On the other, Van Gogh’s ear. Van Gogh is every artist’s hope and fear. The archetypal starving artist, relatively unknown in life, becomes celebrated after death. If not money, then fame?
A second paradox. “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”. In art, reality is a representation, not a truth. The ‘Walking Art Patron’, the controller of money. The collector of debt. The absurdity or truth of the taped banana. Is there a choice?
An alternative ‘For the money’? Collectives, Artist-run. An artists’ union: CARFAC. Carole marching with the Independent Artists' Union (IAU) banner.
Notes:
• The ear (reproduced in the image) was grown from the living cells of Lieuwe Van Gogh, the great, great grandson of Theo Van Gogh (Vincent’s brother), in 2014, by the artist Diemut Strebe
• Geishas in a Landscape, 1870’s, by Torakiyo Sato, a Japanese print that appears in Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889
• Comedian (taped banana) by Maurizio Cattelan, 2019, sold for $6.2 million
Karl Beveridge lives and works in Toronto. He has collaborated with Carole Condé (1940–2024) on staged photographic work for over forty years. Through this work, they have collaborated with a wide breadth of trade unions and community organizations. Their collaborative work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally in both the trade union movement and art galleries and museums. Recently, their work has been included in the following exhibitions: Really Useful Knowledge, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Noorderlicht Photofestival, Groningen, Holland; Toronto: Tributes and Tributaries, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Public Exposures, jointly held at A Space Gallery, Trinity Square Video, YYZ Artists Outlet, Prefix ICA, and Urban Space, Toronto; and Bienal do Mercusol, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
