To a close approximation, everyone wants to make art, but very few want to pay anyone to make it. So the people who make it either are people who don't have to worry about money (because they are independently wealthy) or they're the lucky few who get paid.
"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."
To me that statement is saying that one should first establish power, then achieve prosperity, then one would have time for leisure. This is true on a national level as well as a family level.
Unless I absolutely want to consume the art you make, why would I want to pay for it?
I actually pay a lot for art every week. Most people do. It’s called music and movies. So the translation is, “everyone wants to make some random art but no one wants to pay for random unsolicited art.”
Contemporary artists (people still alive) are notoriously bad at economics and consistently seem also unable to empathize with their potential pool of customers, most of this is because it is frustrating for them to convert their passion into predictable monetary respect. This is reflected in pricing, pricing discussions, and the sales process.
Adding that into art studies could do a lot for that economy and passion.
> "the people who make [art] either are people who don't have to worry about money (because they are independently wealthy) or they're the lucky few who get paid."
-- or they live with much less $ and financial security than they otherwise might.
Sure, it pays to be a rockstar, pro-athlete, e-sports champion, celebrity, or lottery winner. But the chances of actually being those things is so small that people can't count on them for their livelyhood.
So mere mortals have to focus their time and energy into having a backup plan.
This is as old as history of art. To me art is "anything you don't have to do". People start doing art when their basic needs are met and then start doing things they don't have to do to survive.
Looking in history you can see a lot of rich kid artists doing great art. For instance Gustav Klimt was extremely wealthy. He literally painted with gold! His art is great but without his family's wealth nobody would discover his talent.
Klimt's student Egon Schiele came from a pretty modest background and fell victim to the Spanish Flu at the young age of 28, but many people would still recognize him as the superior artist (even if Klimt remains slightly more well known).
I stopped trying to be a comedian professionally when I found out Second City main stage performers made about 35K per year. The most prestigious comedy job in Chicago paid less than my entry level office job.
I don't regret it but at the time it was fairly depressing. You don't have to love it enough to do it as a career, you have to love it enough to do it as a career while understanding you will very likely never be able to support yourself by doing it. That is a pretty tough reality.
A college professor for "Theater Appreciation" class stressed that "the only reason to become an actor, is if you feel you can't live your life doing anything else". It's such a saturated field, you need a super good reason to enter it as a career.
Buying and selling modern art in today's market seems to be more related to tax avoidance and money laundering schemes than anything else. If you think of the artist's job as creating the vehicle, then it should be pretty lucrative.
> "Consider that when the Mexican government passed a law in the early 2010s to require more information about buyers, and how much cash could be spent on a single piece of art, the market cratered, as sales dipped 70 percent in less than a year. Many believed that was because Mexican cartel rings had previously been the biggest buyers in the market."
It's a nice gig if you can get it, but competition for the gallery scene is pretty fierce. Plus a lot of the required skillset is "convincing assholes with way too much money that this ugly thing you caused to exist is worth a lot".
NFTs have somewhat democratized this, by providing a new avenue for assholes with too much crypto to pay absurd prices for art, with the bonus wrinkle of "artist gets a cut if someone uses their piece to launder ill-gotten gains" though there's already marketplaces that ignore that part of the smart contracts designed to make that happen. And a different sort of deliberate ugliness.
Sheesh. Ask me why I dropped band in favor of an software internship senior year of high school. The answer will abjectly fail to shock or surprise you.
Similar story here. Although once music as a profession was out, I continued to play in rock bands for a long time. No one in my peer group "made" it, but the ones that stayed in it the longest, and had the best gear, the best studio recordings, were the ones that had well-to-do parents.
I would switch carpenters for tailors :) That actually how it happened with regard to Jews - the first ones to come to America were tailors, which helped them become lawyers, since they got access to cheap suits, which are essential in this profession :)
Outside of race / gender, the article doesn't touch on whether this has got worse or better. I would put money on it having got much worse since the 20th century, with massively increased living costs (mostly housing) and decreased opportunities for the non-wealthy / non-connected.
Years ago I read about what the purpose behind all these liberal arts programs in universities were meant for and it started to click that the intent was in good faith and not out of elitism or anything like that. The intent was to democratize privilege - liberal arts was a set of fields dominated by the already wealthy or affluent that didn't have to have a vocation to survive.
How many lives have been lost because someone with the capacity to be a great doctor or civil engineer but instead became a mediocre artist? I've seen some very intelligent people waste their lives on mediocre arts careers when they could have made a more solid technical contribution.
There is a reason that the economy treats art like a luxury to be reserved for the wealthy - for most of those artists, it is a luxury and we only put up with it because they are wealthy.
> amazing art and literature is being lost because
Very little. 200 years ago people who had to work for living didn't have time or resources to pursue their art. Today there is 2 free days a week and more free time.
There is oversupply of art and literature. The real challenge is to find anything good from the sea of mediocrity.
I'd like to add that there is another aspect to this, sheer luck. There are brilliant authors, musicians, and artists that, for whatever reason, never get the traction they need to be successful. So much of success in creative endeavors depends on being at the right place at the right time, and in the right market.
As lamentable as it may be, if a larger proportion of the population was able to be artists there would still be a struggle to be recognized. In fact, it might even be harder for them.
It seems to me in north of Europe if you finance your art making by yourself you are perceived as kind of a hack. You need grant, not maybe because of the money but to validate you as being part of the scene. On the other hand many of the artists are still from rich families, because it is still a gamble.
There's multiple advantages for someone who is rich even with grants:
* Time to practice their craft for years+ without worry about daily necessities. This includes getting the best training and personal tutoring to reach their full potential (whatever it may be).
* Knowledge through connections of how to properly write a grant that is going to be accepted
* Possibly knowing the people making grant decisions personally (or through family). Nepotism exists everywhere.
* If grant comes from a non-goverment institution. Family ability to donate to institutions increases their chances of picking kids for jobs or grants. If you rely on donations would you pick a poor kid who will cost you money overall or a rich kid who will actually make you money in the long run?
“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.” - John Adams
When you don't need to make money off your artistic project, you're free to do what pleases you not what pleases others/businessmen/the platform algorithm.
Why the edit in the title with the added incorrect spelling? (Original title : Wealth Is a Strong Predictor of Whether an Individual Pursues a Creative Profession)
If you want to be even mildly successful in any art you have to be a good entrepreneur in addition to being a good artist, or be really lucky. Most people are good at one of those two things, if at all. Being both is tough.
I don't remember who said that, but the quote stuck in my mind. If you are musician performing in the underground crossing, there is a huge difference in your spirit if you are doing it just for kicks or if you have to bring home enough money to pay the rent and feed your family.
If we take the percentage of wealthy people that become artists as the baseline inclination of human nature, then we conclude that 90% of non-wealthy people are discouraged from becoming artists.
It'd be interesting to know how much of this happens in childhood vs. when they're choosing a career as young adults.
Let me come up with one of the exceptions, my ex girlfriend who is single-handedly working her way up creating and selling art, without money from family or anyone else, while first working and saving money on the side for years to kickstart her dream of becoming a fulltime artist: tramainedesenna.com
I am not saying that the data in the story is wrong, but my (tiny) sample of artist I know and some I have worked with in the US and Norway come from middle class or lower background and they do art because they need to, compelled by an ardent desire / obsession.
None have nest eggs or rich parentes that support them.
They usually have a hard time getting art into galleries.
Some run galleries as a collective, but few of those make
it into "high society"
A while ago I left my corporate developer / manager to pursue life
as an artist. Things to several circumstances not important here, I do not have a nest egg, I make my living off of small stipends when I can get them, and
a few other programs that the government provides. (Nice thing in Norway).
It is difficult, it is an enormous change in circumstances.
Some hurt. I am happier than before.
Perhaps I am hung up on that type of artist.
"Corporate" artists might folio the story exactly.
You do have some artists who started late after already having
a successful career. They have money and sometimes they have
a network of important people to get them into galleries.
Like Howard Schatz who is a great photographer now.
After having a long and distinguished career as an ophthalmologist.
Then you have artists like Hunter Biden who can sell paintings for $75K
mostly due to fame. (One curator estimates that some pieces might
fetch as much as 500K.
I personally believe that there’s a lot of bias in most research studies of populations (and some of that is from those being studied, where many middle or lower class people will just hang up if they don’t know you). My experience is that many artists are “starving artists” and not from super lux backgrounds. Additionally, just go visit RISD.
Edit: the scope of what is considered art is also quite narrowly defined in most studies.
In my peer group of musician friends, there were two archetypes that held out longest: people that were poor and had low wage, dirty and/or backbreaking jobs and those with well-off parents. There were lots more of the latter, because it's hard to justify playing in bands when you can barely feed yourself.
However, both groups had nothing to lose by pursuing their dream.
An oversimplified take on the distinction between art vs. design:
Design seems to be about getting users/ consumers to behave in a certain way, or utilize what you made for a specific end.
Art seems to be about the artist expressing something aesthetically via whatever medium, in order to get an audience (could even be 1 person, but usually hoping to appeal to a certain crowd) to consider said audiences internal responses to whatever the artwork may evoke or provoke.
There can be overlap, but the intended goals seem to be about "outward" behavior for design, versus inward responses and reactions in genuine and earnest attempts at art (be it high or low).
The money factor can sully all of it, of course, but removing money also doesn't guarantee a "purity" to either, per se. But the more incentive to monetize in massive ways, the more the art will feel less genuine in its core, even if it is able to garner attention and evoke reactions.
Again, very oversimplified. But as such, I think product design is far more about getting its users to behave and find use of the product in specific outward ways.
Greed knows no bound.
Today we are more productive than we have ever been because of technology advances over the last 200 years.
Yet, when a machine is invented that cuts labor by 50%, we don’t continue to pay two men a full salary and let them come in to work half as often… we lay one off.
I was talking to a Romanian who said to me “When we were communist, we had plenty of money but nothing to buy. Now we have to buy everything but have no money.” Apparently, there is nothing in the middle.
I don’t hold out much hope that AI, basic income, or anything as all can save us from ourselves.
I honestly don’t believe capitalists/ruling class will allow this. During the last decades productivity increases stopped going to the workers and I think this will continue.
TazeTSchnitzel|3 years ago
shard|3 years ago
"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."
To me that statement is saying that one should first establish power, then achieve prosperity, then one would have time for leisure. This is true on a national level as well as a family level.
ramraj07|3 years ago
I actually pay a lot for art every week. Most people do. It’s called music and movies. So the translation is, “everyone wants to make some random art but no one wants to pay for random unsolicited art.”
Which seems fine by me!
hardware2win|3 years ago
It sounds like research
yieldcrv|3 years ago
Adding that into art studies could do a lot for that economy and passion.
boredemployee|3 years ago
chrisweekly|3 years ago
-- or they live with much less $ and financial security than they otherwise might.
test6554|3 years ago
So mere mortals have to focus their time and energy into having a backup plan.
brazzy|3 years ago
pydry|3 years ago
Or theyre prioritizing rent, bills, medical care and retirement.
msoad|3 years ago
Looking in history you can see a lot of rich kid artists doing great art. For instance Gustav Klimt was extremely wealthy. He literally painted with gold! His art is great but without his family's wealth nobody would discover his talent.
peoplefromibiza|3 years ago
That's not entirely correct.
Many artists were dirty poor when they started and stayed poor their whole life or died poor after wasting all their earnings.
Notable examples: Amedeo Modigliani and Antonio Ligabue
FBISurveillance|3 years ago
patrec|3 years ago
amelius|3 years ago
AlwaysRock|3 years ago
I don't regret it but at the time it was fairly depressing. You don't have to love it enough to do it as a career, you have to love it enough to do it as a career while understanding you will very likely never be able to support yourself by doing it. That is a pretty tough reality.
yboris|3 years ago
photochemsyn|3 years ago
> "Consider that when the Mexican government passed a law in the early 2010s to require more information about buyers, and how much cash could be spent on a single piece of art, the market cratered, as sales dipped 70 percent in less than a year. Many believed that was because Mexican cartel rings had previously been the biggest buyers in the market."
https://www.artandobject.com/news/how-money-laundering-works...
egypturnash|3 years ago
NFTs have somewhat democratized this, by providing a new avenue for assholes with too much crypto to pay absurd prices for art, with the bonus wrinkle of "artist gets a cut if someone uses their piece to launder ill-gotten gains" though there's already marketplaces that ignore that part of the smart contracts designed to make that happen. And a different sort of deliberate ugliness.
spacemanmatt|3 years ago
Joeboy|3 years ago
lc9er|3 years ago
AzzieElbab|3 years ago
988747|3 years ago
Joeboy|3 years ago
hardware2win|3 years ago
devonkim|3 years ago
test6554|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
gadders|3 years ago
nicksiscoe|3 years ago
CalRobert|3 years ago
roenxi|3 years ago
There is a reason that the economy treats art like a luxury to be reserved for the wealthy - for most of those artists, it is a luxury and we only put up with it because they are wealthy.
umanwizard|3 years ago
nabla9|3 years ago
Very little. 200 years ago people who had to work for living didn't have time or resources to pursue their art. Today there is 2 free days a week and more free time.
There is oversupply of art and literature. The real challenge is to find anything good from the sea of mediocrity.
BitwiseFool|3 years ago
As lamentable as it may be, if a larger proportion of the population was able to be artists there would still be a struggle to be recognized. In fact, it might even be harder for them.
justinclift|3 years ago
mouzogu|3 years ago
if your parents are loaded you don't need to worry about finding a job that will earn you a living. simple.
ollifi|3 years ago
marcinzm|3 years ago
* Time to practice their craft for years+ without worry about daily necessities. This includes getting the best training and personal tutoring to reach their full potential (whatever it may be).
* Knowledge through connections of how to properly write a grant that is going to be accepted
* Possibly knowing the people making grant decisions personally (or through family). Nepotism exists everywhere.
* If grant comes from a non-goverment institution. Family ability to donate to institutions increases their chances of picking kids for jobs or grants. If you rely on donations would you pick a poor kid who will cost you money overall or a rich kid who will actually make you money in the long run?
bush-bby|3 years ago
user_named|3 years ago
toto444|3 years ago
quesera|3 years ago
Of course, creative work does pay well. It just has to be creative in serving a commercial goal.
The stereotypical HN reader is a creative worker.
guilamu|3 years ago
causi|3 years ago
wongarsu|3 years ago
SergeAx|3 years ago
tlb|3 years ago
It'd be interesting to know how much of this happens in childhood vs. when they're choosing a career as young adults.
j3th9n|3 years ago
madballster|3 years ago
ThinkBeat|3 years ago
None have nest eggs or rich parentes that support them.
They usually have a hard time getting art into galleries. Some run galleries as a collective, but few of those make it into "high society"
A while ago I left my corporate developer / manager to pursue life as an artist. Things to several circumstances not important here, I do not have a nest egg, I make my living off of small stipends when I can get them, and a few other programs that the government provides. (Nice thing in Norway). It is difficult, it is an enormous change in circumstances. Some hurt. I am happier than before.
Perhaps I am hung up on that type of artist. "Corporate" artists might folio the story exactly.
You do have some artists who started late after already having a successful career. They have money and sometimes they have a network of important people to get them into galleries.
Like Howard Schatz who is a great photographer now. After having a long and distinguished career as an ophthalmologist.
Then you have artists like Hunter Biden who can sell paintings for $75K mostly due to fame. (One curator estimates that some pieces might fetch as much as 500K.
BirAdam|3 years ago
Edit: the scope of what is considered art is also quite narrowly defined in most studies.
lc9er|3 years ago
However, both groups had nothing to lose by pursuing their dream.
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
JackFr|3 years ago
saos|3 years ago
deebosong|3 years ago
Design seems to be about getting users/ consumers to behave in a certain way, or utilize what you made for a specific end.
Art seems to be about the artist expressing something aesthetically via whatever medium, in order to get an audience (could even be 1 person, but usually hoping to appeal to a certain crowd) to consider said audiences internal responses to whatever the artwork may evoke or provoke.
There can be overlap, but the intended goals seem to be about "outward" behavior for design, versus inward responses and reactions in genuine and earnest attempts at art (be it high or low).
The money factor can sully all of it, of course, but removing money also doesn't guarantee a "purity" to either, per se. But the more incentive to monetize in massive ways, the more the art will feel less genuine in its core, even if it is able to garner attention and evoke reactions.
Again, very oversimplified. But as such, I think product design is far more about getting its users to behave and find use of the product in specific outward ways.
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
paulsutter|3 years ago
Let’s make it happen, the world is waiting for us to do it
It’s not just better AI, let’s also digitize production processes in preparation
vonwoodson|3 years ago
I was talking to a Romanian who said to me “When we were communist, we had plenty of money but nothing to buy. Now we have to buy everything but have no money.” Apparently, there is nothing in the middle.
I don’t hold out much hope that AI, basic income, or anything as all can save us from ourselves.
spaetzleesser|3 years ago
sk8terboi|3 years ago
[deleted]
lazyninja987|3 years ago
[deleted]