Why are artists poor?

Speaking as a Starving Artist, I've noticed that part of the problem lies in artists trying to achieve success by aping corporate methods, which rarely work for an individual artist. I did that for awhile, and it got me absolutely nowhere.<p>There's also this attitude (in the US, at least) that you're a failure if you're not instantly successful. Rare is the artist who takes the time to build a solid foundation of fans/patrons. You're going to eat a lot of ramen in those years, but the base you build will be solid enough to build a house on.<p>It also helps to be unflaky. The article mentions artists as being elitists at least once, and that's an unfortunate stereotype. It's a stereotype you have to fight against in the minds of your fans, and you've got to fight it in yourself sometimes, too.<p>I'm still poor--by standard American standards. However, I live in a 4-bedroom house with a bedroom all to myself as a studio. I have cable internet, A/C, two cars, and a couple different computers--one for working on and another which serves as a file server for the studio.<p>It's slow and it's grueling, but it's making me a better, healthier person. Making your own bread (for example) is not only cheaper, it's better for you. And the stupid impulse purchases I made when I had a Day Job are no more. I sold off many of the things which were cluttering up my house just because I bought them on a whim. My credit cards are used only in emergencies, and are always paid up ASAP.<p>I'm currently working on $650 worth of private commissions. Ten years ago, that meant that I'd be doing 12 projects at the same time. However, after taking the time to work up a rock-solid fanbase, I can happily say that the $650 is coming from only three different projects.<p>Now, if that sort of thing could be a little more regular...but that's the preconceived notions talking again.<p>It's a rollercoaster ride, but it sure beats all the years I spent answering the phones in my tech support Day Job. :)

Why are artists poor?<p>That's the wrong question.<p>In a state of nature, EVERYONE is poor.<p>Getting out of poverty means one thing: creating something that other people consider to have value, and then exchanging it for cash.<p>Heinlein had rules for writers: 1) you must write; 2) you must sell what you have written.<p>This is true for all artists. It's also true for all doctors, accountants, and software engineers.<p>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.<p>Period.

More 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?<p>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.)<p>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 ...<p>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 ...<p>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.

Short version: supply and demand.<p>The longer version is that artists still make things by hand. In 1500, handmade things were all there were. Now paintings have to compete with manufactured products, and they're so expensive that only a small number of people prefer them. (And if you subtract the people who buy art for reasons of fashion or prestige, you get close to zero.)

An alternative explanation for even highly visible/popular artists:<p>Said of Annie Leibovitz as she faces the loss of her personal collection: "Budget is not something that enters into her consciousness." <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.2f54f844fc040f6daba9c6b086caf08f.21&#38;show_article=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.2f54f844fc040f6d...</a>

Ugh:<p><i>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.</i><p>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.

Why are rich people so uncreative?

Are artists poor, or is it that "artists" are poor?

Because people don't value who makes art, they value who sells art.