Christian Hasucha Thieves of Artistic Property Powerful factors continue to influence artistic output: commercial success, trends, and pretentious grandstanding. 1) Today, even colleagues call an artist who subscribes to an inspirational, incorruptible understanding of freedom a "romantic weirdo". Stubbornly singular, non-linear puttering around is no longer seen as a mark of artistic credibility. Athough often contoversial, qualitative assessment has become directly linked to market success. Public acclaim or sales are unavowed, but nevertheless real criteria. 2) Burgeoning avenues of artistic expression have given gallery owners, curators and theorists an enormous amount of influence. In the current environment of artistic chaos, the ability to summarize or define is enough to guarantee the interest of ones'colleagues in the field. Art is no longer read in its native form of expression, but rather translated through the news media into prepared tidbits. These homogenizing transformations are responsible, now as ever, for promulgating new trends. Commercial success or failure quickly become the decisive factors in qualitative evaluation. Most contemporary artists accept this mechanism without benefiting from it. Techniques are mastered with varying degrees of perfection in assimilating whatever is successful. They stake out the parameters of their work according to its "current utility". A trend is amplified, and artistic output flattens out. Further exploration of "personal" artistic development becomes a peripherical activity. 3) In response to this general sense of aimlessness, a vanguard network of organizers, art historians, and critics was born to make its influence felts on panels and in publications. Unlike the times when art criticism was descriptive, explanatory, or interpretative, theorists today can and want to develop theories and see them substantiated in the work of kindred artists. Thus, they intervene in the general pool of artistic production in an exclusionary and summary manner. Today, artists who do not take responsibility for all aspects towards realization of their projects, remain helplessly beholden to the paralyzing mechanisms of the art business. In extreme cases, they can reflexively dodge the system. They have disenfranchised themselves and follow the expectations and positions of producers and theorists. This hidden means of working on commission no longer has anything in common with individual development and artistic ownership. Pretending these mechanisms don't exist and that artistic activity occurs in a relation-free vacuum, has not worked for a long time now. If the utopia of "independant" art is coopted, compatibility with foreign interests becomes drawn into consideration, and the ability for assessment is corrupted. Everyone now devotes themselves to their own particular inclinations.