About a week ago, I invited a handful of creative types, econ types, or both, to participate in a blog series I’ll be featuring here on Art and Avarice called, “Spreading the Wealth for Artists.” I’m writing this in coordination with a book release from Professor and Economist David Breuhan entitled, Spread the Wealth: More Haves, Fewer Have Nots, which is going to be released November 1st.

I asked a variety of questions relating to how artists can earn a living in their craft, and why do they often fail to do so? A subset of labor economics, this inquiry into cultural economics is particularly fascinating to me because the incentives for artists are quite unlike other fields, where the primary motivators are intrinsically linked to financial success. In the arts, financial success can ironically mean failure as an artist! Let that sink in while you read Hubert Sawyer III’s (@HubertGAM and blogger at Frying in Vein) take.

Question: Why Are Artists Poor? (a great question, I think, and the title of a book by economist Hans Abbing)

a. Why are so many people who pursue “art” for a living poor, or simply unable to lead a stable financial life?

b. What do you think is the greatest roadblock to artists being able to make a steady living in their craft? Do they trap themselves into thinking financial success=selling out?

Hubert’s Response:

A. I think it has been an age-old exercise for artists to try to keep their influences pure – as money tends to put a cloudy haze on one’s perspective, at least in contemporary times. The moment you realize you are creating art for money, the question become “Is the art earnest?” As most artists are a passionate bunch, they would rather not deal with that existential question, so they would rather starve that pollute their artistry.

Some artists are fortunate enough to have financiers, who allow them to create without worrying about when their next meal is coming or if they can afford to buy more material to create. This is an outlier group though, so you have legions of artists who are forced to make a hard choice of doing what they love for little or no money or get a job to keep a roof over their heads.

B.  I think the greatest roadblock is the perception that the arts is not an industry where people can really make money while they are earning a living.  With so many posthumous success stories, how can one believe they could make a living creating art? Even in the music arena, where it was a lot easier to sell wares, you hear the success stories of pop stars selling millions of albums, not many of those in more modest situations that still are able to live comfortably with less sales.  It would help if artists were given more stories of ambitious, hard-working individuals who made it their business to build sustainable careers.

I don’t think there are as many artists who worry about “selling out” as there are cynical artists who do not mentally commit to being career artists.  It is not all their fault though.  Mass media does not share much about the arts, so how could they think differently?

Question: Property rights are a hallmark of a free society. How do property rights affect an artist’s ability to make a living? How can we balance the freedoms of globalization and technology and protecting artist interests online?

a. Is “crowd-sourcing” killing the individual artist?

b. How has creative commons changed art, music, and social media?

Hubert’s response:

A. Heck no, crowd-sourcing isn’t killing the individual artist!  If anything, crowd-sourcing has galvanized individuals as crowd-sourcing makes it easier for one to get engaged. Now this has decreased the cost of entry, so the quality of the art has diminished somewhat. Crowd-sourcing has its pros and cons, but I feel that it is good. It just means new jobs need to be commissioned to control/curate the content being made, so we can pull out the genius when it’s createdand it does not get lost in the white noise.

B. Creative Commons forced the status quo to consider what art really is.  We now have a community of folks that believe that sharing is good and it is better to build something great than capitalize on something that hasn’t reached its full potential.  The open source movement has been successful because of similar ideology.

On the question of property rights and the arts, that presents a slippery slope.  Talk about instability, there is no reason anyone should really feel that they deserve to make money off of material that is normally judged with subjective methods.  This question is what ties this entire discussion together, because while we want to encourage artists to make a go at being financially-stable, we also need to make it clear that it is quite possible that they may never be.  How do you do that without resetting the status quo?

It is a delicate situation.  You want to encourage content creation, but you cannot ensure a financial reward.  I think this is where crowd-sourcing and community-driven initiatives help, but there needs to be some semblance of leadership to keep things going in the right direction.  Build communities for artists to foster and sustain creation and let the communities champion those that really deserve to see commercial gain.

Tags: Contemporary Art, Economics, Hubert Sawyer III

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 1:57 am and is filed under Capitalism, Communism, Economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.