This week’s contribution is by blogger and international economist Vicki Boykis (@vboykis), whose self-descriptive tagline reads: “Snark. Economics. Post-Soviet. Jewesque.” She was kind enough to add her thoughts to this series.

1. Why Are Artists Poor? (a great question, 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?

There are several answers to this question, from my experience as a part-time freelance writer with a steady daytime economist gig.

The first is that writers and other artists are not in demand. That is, literature, writing, analysis, etc. is important as part of humanity, but it is not as an essential need as healthcare, food, water, transportation, etc. So, from an economic perspective, the elasticity for art is very high.

The second is that there is an oversaturation of supply of artists in the marketplace. Many people (myself included) feel a pull to create. Not as many feel the pull to astrophysics or, say, dentistry, which is why artists often have trouble leading 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?

The greatest roadblock is the inherent nature of the artist, which lies in inspiration. How many allegorical stories have we heard of the artist not being able to create unless he was inspired? In fact, I just read an interview today with Alasdair Gray (who I’ve never heard of, by the way,) who said that he did his best writing when he was in the end of a miserable first marriage.He says, ” I was writing various chapters of Lanark throughout that time and what I can remember is that near the end of the marriage, I could only relax by describing the horrible state of the city of Unthank and the institution under it. Because what I suffered…”and went on to write a remarkable series. Often, us artists think that we can only paint after a surrealist dream or sing after listening to Susan Boyle or write after having a delicious jar of Nutella and thinking we want to describe the creamy hazely goodness for an audience.

Steady living involves something else entirely: having your nose to the grindstone. So, often, this involves writing copy or affiliate marketing articles or constantly pimping out your writing on Twitter, which creates the selling out feeling that many artists sneer at, equated with a steady living. You don’t need to “be in the mood” to add up an Excel sheet. You do to write the Inferno. In fact, that’s why the patronage system was so awesome. You could pretty much just sit around in your 12th cenutry boxers, go to Ye Olde Starbuckes at noon and crank out The Sun Rising whenever you felt like it. So yes, artists do trick themselves into this model these days, and if anyone is coincidentally intersted in patronaging a plucky economist, please contact me asap.

2. A recent article “Chinese Graduates Increasingly Drawn to the Arts” highlights a significant shift in Chinese culture and art.

a. Based on what you’ve read, what is your opinion of the recent surge of contemporary art in China? What has allowed this to happen?

The less a society is merely trying to survive, the more arts, which are, as I wrote above not necessities, evolving. Something I think about is China as that island in Lost. I pretty much have no idea what goes on in that show, but my husband watches it on Hulu in the same room I have my computer, which means I’m doomed to watching it. I remember seeing some sort of doctor in it, and he was pretty much hot stuff the first couple episodes because everyone kept coming down with some kind of plague or having babies or what have you. No one needs artists in the basic stages of society, which is what China was going through as it struggled to recover from the Great Leap Forward and into an industrial society. Now that things are going much better, its economy is growing exponentially, there is more focus on the more refined aspects of culture, expressed in art.

3. 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?

If you’re talking about things like taking ideas from social media, I would say yes and no. Perfect example of how it has? Saving Face, a chick-lit novel written in real-time and with help from Facebook and Twitter by Dahlia Lithwick. She basically wrote a chapter a day and asked for input on legal terminology, mom terminology, and writing from Facebook fans and on Twitter. I helped out, along with hundreds of other people. Did her novel turn out great? Yeah. But she couldn’t have done it if she didn’t have the legal background on her own and writing talent to boot. So I’d say there are two sides to the coin.

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

TONS. Just speaking from my own experience, it allows me to remix things on my website that I would never have been able to before. For example, I make a comic out of creative commons pictures based on current events. I would never have been able to desecrate great photographs in the same way before. At the same time, many great works are still not remixed. So, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in earlier contributions to the series: read Take 1 and Take 2 as well!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 2:39 am and is filed under Creative Careers, Creativity, Economics, Technology, Work/Life Balance. 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.