Laurie Penny « Daniel Agnew

Molly Crabapple has never struggled to get the internet’s attention. Born in New York, the visual artist has a saucy flair for the cruel and gorgeous, embracing a decadent world of burlesque, nudity and subversive politics. From decorating some of the world’s most glamorous nightclubs to founding a burlesque cabaret workshop, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, Crabapple’s art empire strikes against the bohemian maxim ‘I am an artist, therefore I despise wealth’.

On the contrary Crabapple is a roaring American success story. By mastering the internet she controls her own financial destiny and this alone will upset some purists, as artists have traditionally rejected materialism. Making money from art goes against the ruinous fantasies of bohemians who live for the moment. Poverty has traditionally defined an artist’s career, a garret lifestyle cliché of half-grooved eccentrics and drunken poets who believe art can only flourish where material comforts are absent. With the advent of crowdsourcing in the 21st century starving artists can now queue in Waitrose for lunch, if they are successful of course. Everyone has to be successful regardless of what century they reside in.

I wish I lived in a country where artists were supported by the government and didn’t need to think about matirials or rent, but I don’t

— mollycrabapple (@mollycrabapple) March 3, 2013

… in the US, anyone who says that artists shouldn’t be concerned with money is saying that art is a hobby for rich kids

— mollycrabapple (@mollycrabapple) March 3, 2013

Her latest project the Shell Game received $64, 799 from 701 backers on Kickstarter, which will fund nine massive paintings about the collapse of the banking system. It may even pay the rent, grocery bill and six bottles of absinthe too. Why should an artist have to starve for their craft? Everyone should welcome that an artist can now make a real living out of their creative gifts without starving or working for an insurance company. Uncompromising men and women are easy to admire but artists who subvert from within live to tell the tale.

“As any strawberry picker can tell you, hard work and nothing else is a fast road to nowhere.”

– Molly Crabapple

Through sheer force of personality and brilliant marketing, Crabapple has skillfully cultivated a subversive underground image. Arrestingly beautiful she could easily pop out of a traditional Western European fairytale and with her phosphorescent eyes and gothic baby doll aesthetic, the New Yorker looks like a painting. Luminous cheekbones bereft of intellect or character will only capture your attention for so long though. And while no one should doubt her unseen hours of dedication, her anti-establishment credentials are very suave; the kohl-eyed darling of Occupy Wall Street trended after her arrest by the NYPD in September 2011. You don’t need to be a social media node to realise that #freemollycrabapple will do wonders for your marketing potential.

Arguably some of her finest work came as a result of her collaboration with British writer Laurie Penny in ‘Discordia – Six Nights in Crisis Athens’. With Penny’s writing style evoking Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel, Crabapple’s bubblegum illustrations capture the anomic tragedy of modern day Greece and the essence of her internet wide appeal. This goth-lite artist is sexy, vivacious and has the anti-establishmentarian movement purring in admiration.

While it may have been romantic for artists to suffer in the inter-war era, the crowd sourcing phenomenon of the twenty-first century provides a new model. Why should the wealthy have the sole reserve over the arts? Anyone who purports not to care about money either has too much or doesn’t need it. Crabapple in this respect is a modern inspiration and should be applauded for her glamour inspired riches. Romantics may starve in dismay but aspiration and the arts no longer have to be mutually exclusive.

ARIADNE AND THE SCIENCE by Molly Crabapple & Warren Ellis: The Complete Illustrated Story (warrenellis.com)
ThePageBoy Reviews – ‘Discordia’ by Laurie Penny and Molly Crabapple (thepageboywrites.com)

Squatting is hot property in London after the Really Free School set up class in Guy Ritchie’s six million pound townhouse in Fitzroy Square. The Free School’s aims are somewhat unclear but their primary cause is to expose the marketisation of higher education. The squatters have organised a full programme of lectures, seminars, classes and film screenings to provide what they consider to be an alternative to formal education. Although from reading their online manifesto, I suspect their chief propagandist did not attend many English Literature tutorials with sentences such as “Freeskool iz not a zoo. We have unicorns to fly and kingdoms to destroy”.

Regardless of their lofty aspirations, the Free School’s subsequent eviction from Fitzroy Square to a nearby 200 year old pub in Rathbone Street has provoked a national debate about the virtue of squatting in a country with 870,000 empty buildings. In a lively discussion on Comment is Free, one Guardian reader expressed the view that “squats provide an alternative set up outside the mainstream where people are not bound by dull things like paying the rent, financial planning, justification and subordination”.

While nobody wants to pay rent or be subject to financial constraints, squatting does evoke the cuckoo conundrum as handsomely illustrated in this episode of BBC Springwatch. The nest of a reed warbler is taken over by a cuckoo chick and commands the warblers to feed him until he reaches a truly monstrous size. As a stunned observer of this ritual begging routine, I do wonder how evolution has allowed these lazy upstarts carte blanche to live rent free in a fiercely competitive and unfair world.

And while squatters can live a bohemian lifestyle in abandoned properties without paying any rent. The majority of ordinary citizens pay high rates and taxes for public services most squatters take for granted. Fairness is at the moral heart of the squatting debate and left-wing journalist Laurie Penny eloquently argues in their favour.

It is manifestly in the interests of those who own and hold all this disused property, including the millionaires who make up the Cabinet, to misrepresent Britain’s 15,000 squatters and occupiers as in the words of the Times — a “dangerous scourge”. Otherwise the hundreds of thousands of people paying 90% of their salary for poky rooms hours from their places of work might start getting ideas.

With affordable housing in short supply and millions of young people confined to paying huge portions of their wages for rented boxes in the sky. Britain’s housing crisis is likely to continue and squatters often divide local communities when they take up residence in nearby abandoned buildings. As when a group of anti-materialist hippies began squatting in an abandoned Walkabout pub in Islington last spring they eventually overcame suspicion and became a welcome addition to the local community.

In stark contrast this Australian documentary from 1983 about punk squatters in North London provoked a less welcoming response from residents. Squatters are always likely to divide opinion and as long as law abiding citizens passively acquiesce in a society that tolerates obscene bank bonuses and tax avoidance from multi-national corporations. Then it doesn’t matter whether squatters are middle class students rebelling against their “oppressive” parents, anarchist punks or free education activists taking over luxury buildings. If wealthy property owners are careless enough to leave houses vacant for years and do nothing about it, then it is hardly surprising if cuckoo’s fly in and expect to be taken care of by the wealthy.