Why are artists poor?
telegraph.co.uk
Why are artists poor?
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Why are artists poor?
#2Because people don't value who makes art, they value who sells art.
Re: Why are artists poor?
#3Why are rich people so uncreative?
Re: Why are artists poor?
#4Ugh:
The job of all artists is now self-promotion. In an age in which the old cultural gatekeepers are being swept away, the most pressing challenge of creative artists is to build their own brands. And it’s the Internet which provides creative talent with easy-to-use and cheap tools for their self-promotion.
In a sense this is true, but you could replace every instance of "self-promotion" with "creation" and you'd have a conclusion that is just as correct without all the craven cynicism. If you want you can interpret every tweet, webcomic update, or flickr photo as a marketing effort. Or you can choose to see the internet as a canvas and these as the brushstrokes.
Re: Why are artists poor?
#5An alternative explanation for even highly visible/popular artists:
Said of Annie Leibovitz as she faces the loss of her personal collection: "Budget is not something that enters into her consciousness." http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.2f54f844fc040f6d...
Re: Why are artists poor?
#6Why are rich people so uncreative?
Quite arguably, rich people are often the most creative (or at least high income earners are judged by their benefactors as being the most creatively useful in society). Entrepreneurs need to be incredibly creative in innovating and meeting market demands. Sure, we may channel it differently but that doesn't make it any less creative and even arguably more so.
Re: Why are artists poor?
#7More to the point, where does this bizarre cult of the "artist", creating works of genius in complete majestic isolation from the governing realities of life in the real world, spring from? Whence the poet starving in his garret?
There's a similarly odd attitude to learning in some sectors of academia; from one perspective, education is a worldly enabler -- and from another, it is an end in and of itself and any hint of application to base commerce is positively contemptible. (MBAs versus classical philosophers, so to speak.)
The idea that art is disconnected from commerce doesn't apply across the board. Coco Chanel or Karl Largerfeld create(d) costumes that are certainly revered as works of art -- but they weren't expected to hold base commerce in disdain: in fact, their art was their business and their business was very lucrative indeed. Their sector (haut couture) was somehow exempt from the usual rules ...
I hypothesize that we're dealing with a cultural relic of the age of aristocracy. To the nobility who expected to inherit wealth, having to work for a living was a symptom of poverty: therefore it must be denied at all costs, which meant that anything they engaged in must remain impeccably untainted by money-grubbing. Anyone in such a culture with ambitions to better themselves had better play by the rules ... and so the more elevated the culture, the greater the distance between cultural activity and commerce. An exception could be made for couture -- aristocrats have employed tailors for millennia, and the more expensive and extravagant the tailoring the better -- but couture wasn't traditionally a career that aristocrats might enter. Academia or literature, on the other hand ...
And the aristocrats? Their descendants are still with us to this day, in the form of the hyper-rich -- and major patrons of the arts fall in this category.
Re: Why are artists poor?
#8Why are artists poor?
That's the wrong question.
In a state of nature, EVERYONE is poor.
Getting out of poverty means one thing: creating something that other people consider to have value, and then exchanging it for cash.
Heinlein had rules for writers: 1) you must write; 2) you must sell what you have written.
This is true for all artists. It's also true for all doctors, accountants, and software engineers.
If an individual artist is poor, he or she either isn't creating anything of value, or isn't finding the market and selling the work.
Period.
Re: Why are artists poor?
#9Why are rich people so uncreative?
Quite arguably, rich people are often the most creative (or at least high income earners are judged by their benefactors as being the most creatively useful in society). Entrepreneurs need to be incredibly creative in innovating and meeting market demands. Sure, we may channel it differently but that doesn't make it any less creative and even arguably more so.
This would be more convincing if we all started out on a level playing field -- as opposed to, say, getting into Harvard because of daddy's connections, failing upwards to the limits of temporal power, then abolishing the inheritance tax that (horrors!) might hold our buddies back.
Hint: America isn't classless -- it has a hereditary aristocracy. They just don't put titles like "Lord" or "Baroness" in front of their names.
Re: Why are artists poor?
#10Ugh: The job of all artists is now self-promotion. In an age in which the old cultural gatekeepers are being swept away, the most pressing challenge of creative artists is to build their own brands. And it’s the Internet which provides creative talent with easy-to-use and cheap tools for their self-promotion. In a sense this is true, but you could replace every instance of "self-promotion" with "creation" and you'd h…
Yes, however with the increasing noise on the Internet it's much harder to eschew self-promotion in favor of pure artistic ideals (whatever those may be) because there are no longer just a small number of gatekeepers to convince. Increasingly you must go viral, though there is clearly more room for smaller successes given the lower overhead.