Wealth as a predictor of whether an person pursues a creative profession (2019)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/wealth-strong-predictor-whether-individual-pursues-creative-profession-180972072/

by reij0 • 4 years ago

175 175 4 years ago

smithsonianmag.com

user_named• 4 years ago

Creative work doesn't pay well <-> Creative work doesn't pay well because people who are competing for the jobs don't need to make money off their job

toto444• 4 years ago

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.

quesera• 4 years ago

Creative work doesn't pay well ...

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.

msoad• 4 years ago

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.

amelius2• 4 years ago

But as soon as you've bootstrapped a career in art, you get paid for it, and you don't need inherited wealth.

nabla93• 4 years ago

That's less than 1% of artists.

Most of them work in other professions for living.

brazzy2• 4 years ago

The thing is, successfully doing that requires not only talent and hard work, but also luck. And even then the amount you get paid may not be enough to live on.

FBISurveillance• 4 years ago

Hmmmm, according to Wikipedia: "Klimt lived in poverty while attending the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule [...]" - did you mean someone else by any chance?

peoplefromibiza• 4 years ago

This is as old as history of art

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

patrec• 4 years ago

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).

TazeTSchnitzel• 4 years ago

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.

pydry• 4 years ago

very few want to pay anyone to make it

Or theyre prioritizing rent, bills, medical care and retirement.

brazzy2• 4 years ago

...or they are intensely passionate about making art, to the point where they're willing to live in poverty to pursue it.

boredemployee4• 4 years ago

I was lucky enough to make a living out of music for almost 10 years until the pandemic starts and then I lost everything

reidjs• 4 years ago

Is it too difficult to adapt to online platforms for your music? Does your music only work in person or is it too difficult to promote it online? Asking out of curiosity because I saw this happen to a lot of local comedians as well, but many just started using online tools to perform for their fans. Admittedly not for everyone so many had to get day jobs.

hardware2win2• 4 years ago

everyone wants to make art, but very few want to pay anyone to make it.

It sounds like research

BirAdam4• 4 years ago

No. Corporations invest very large sums of money in research. Militaries do the same.

ramraj07• 4 years ago

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.”

Which seems fine by me!

SMAAART• 4 years ago

Industrial Design and Graphic Design are also Arts, so we consume Art every day, most everything we use or buy start with Art.

hoseja• 4 years ago

I don't think the OP is making a value statement, just an observation. It's perfectly OK nobody wants to pay for other people's random art, nonetheless most people still have at least some drive to create art.

xcambar• 4 years ago

Unless I absolutely want to consume the art you make, why would I want to pay for it?

I understand that "if there's an act of buying, there's consumption" from your perspective, but I'd mostly disagree with that statement and actually, I think it's quite a narrow perspective.

For every act of buying, there's an act of selling. But in the reality I see, many artists sell to produce rather than they produce to sell. So the act of selling is quite flawed from, say, a company selling its products, and the same is true for the act of buying: many don't buy to own or consume, but to support or for a naively genuine sense of beauty.

You may very well boil it down to "money give, money take" but the symbolic here is far stronger than the capitalist perspective of art as a market.

Also, I'm not ignoring the attraction of the market for artists and buyers alike, it's just not the whole story.

TheOtherHobbes• 4 years ago

Because the art industry isn't just "music and movies." It's an interrelated creativity hub.

If you take away visual and experimental arts you also lose good music and movies. And good graphic design. And good architecture. And more.

If you think this is exaggeration, consider that not a few household name musicians - Eno and a long list of others - went to art school, not music school.

Wowfunhappy• 4 years ago

I haven't dug into the data, but I would assume working in the music or film industries would count as a "creative profession" (unless you work exclusively on the business side). While there can be a lot of money in those industries for the people who "make it", it's difficult to break in, precisely because there are fewer positions than people who want that type of work.

notacoward• 4 years ago

I actually pay a lot for art every week. Most people do. It’s called music and movies.

How much of what you pay goes to the artists? If most of it goes to rentiers, then the artists themselves need other means of support so they can keep making art.

arrosenberg• 4 years ago

You are no different than people who hate paying for basic research because it doesn't directly put a new shiny in their pocket. Art is a societal process, not an individual act.

shard• 4 years ago

John Adams wrote:

"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.

V-25• 4 years ago

Sounds somewhat related to the "tough times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, weak men create tough times" adage. (Men and women, of course!)

DecayingOrganic• 4 years ago

This advice of "make money first, then you can have time for your real passion" definitely reminded me of this blog post I read: https://siliconvict.com/articles/1-choose-money-first

bitxbitxbitcoin• 4 years ago

Curious that that coincides with three generations. “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.”

gmadsen• 4 years ago

shouldn't a society ideally all of those at once? maybe the allocation percentages change in line with generation changes in the quote, but politics and war will always be needed, at a minimum to prevent historical mistakes

chrisweekly• 4 years ago

"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.

yieldcrv• 4 years ago

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.

test65542• 4 years ago

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.

CalRobert• 4 years ago

I wonder how much amazing art and literature is being lost because the people who yearn to make it are stuck doing pointless jobs instead.

roenxi• 4 years ago

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.

boredemployee4• 4 years ago

But that's way less harmful to society and to the "mediocre artist" than the opposite.

goodpoint• 4 years ago

First, for each mediocre artist that would have been a good doctor there's 10000 bad doctors, software engineers and waiters that are there only for the money.

Second, the job market was never designed to encourage people to express their potential at best. The incentives are not aligned.

Additionally, throughout history almost all early *scientists* where wealthy people that did research out of passion. If it was for market forces we would be still in the middle ages.

There's plenty of people with good skills and advanced degrees in mathematics, physics, philosophy and whatnot that end up working in completely different fields only out of need.

If anything, this is a big argument for basic income.

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

it is a luxury and we only put up with it because they are wealthy.

You're right, but let's see this in a different way.

Let's not devalue Art too much. What you speak of is a more general problem, that the race is not to the swift... Humanity faces myriad problems, all solvable by smart, motivated young people. Yet we fail because we do not motivate, reward and support them to become all they can be. We turn their "solid technical contributions" around and make them the very thing that keeps us stuck in bureaucracy and systemised hopelessness. Without the spark of "art", the imagination that Einstein and Feynman spoke of, teche is no more valuable than wanky modern art [1].

Our interregnum then becomes one of disappointment and frustration for most, who cannot exercise their power as creative, rational and compassionate beings. Ironically, the thing that often signals a new direction and seeds revolutionary progress is Art. It's proper place is in the hands of the poor and disenfranchised. In the hands of the trustafarians it's just more stuckness for the status quo.

Creativity is not a product. It's an attitude, as applicable to computer science as to sculpture, oil painting, or music.

[1] see C.P Snow's "Two Cultures" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

pontsprit• 4 years ago

Art; aesthetics give context to human culture that would otherwise be colorless. Carpenters, architects, nurses, doctors, engineers may form the bedrock of society but art, music, literature, film tell the stories of our times, our dreams and nightmares.

HWR_143• 4 years ago

Just looking at what people convinced to give up their mediocre art careers and do other work have done, I'm pretty sure it's been a huge net negative for humanity. Let the mediocre painters paint!

justinclift• 4 years ago

Not just art and literature, but every other field and endeavour too.

nabla93• 4 years ago

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.

bool3max• 4 years ago

I'm not sure that there can be an "oversupply" of any form of art.

umanwizard• 4 years ago

Most jobs people do are not pointless. Any customer service job positively impacts more people than 99% of art.

kubb• 4 years ago

I'd wager that more jobs are pointless than we might initially think. And that most of the profit is made by people who don't positively impact anyone.

BitwiseFool2• 4 years ago

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.

mouzogu• 4 years ago

seems obvious to me.

if your parents are loaded you don't need to worry about finding a job that will earn you a living. simple.

tlb• 4 years ago

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.

spacemanmatt2• 4 years ago

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.

Joeboy3• 4 years ago

Couldn't handle all the cocaine and groupies?

spacemanmatt2• 4 years ago

Tales from I was a Trumpet Strumpet

But for real, yeah, my family wasn't a fallback plan. I very much intended to live more comfortably than that.

lc9er2• 4 years ago

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.

Joeboy3• 4 years ago

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.

hardware2win2• 4 years ago

On the other hand - internet

Joeboy3• 4 years ago

But afaict all the internet options for pursuing a creative career involve putting in a lot of hours for little or no money, which is hard (or seems like a bad idea) if you're not on a financially solid footing. I don't think the internet is really a leveller here.

paulsutter• 4 years ago

When better AI boosts productivity, basic income will give so many people more choices

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• 4 years ago

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.

SketchySeaBeast2• 4 years ago

At this point I now realize why Star Trek had a whole mid-twentieth century war to shake up society - without anything to destabilize things the wealth will continue to concentrate in those with the greatest ability to take advantage of technological changes. The information age has shuffled the people who rise to the top a bit, but that's really it.

spaetzleesser• 4 years ago

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.

causi• 4 years ago

The more I learn about the the lives of artists and aspiring artists the more I'm glad I don't have an artistic bone in my body. It seems rough.

wongarsu• 4 years ago

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.

AzzieElbab2• 4 years ago

Among immigrants we keep telling ourselves variations of a joke about how first generation are carpenters, second - lawyers, and third - artists

988747• 4 years ago

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 :)

AzzieElbab2• 4 years ago

Good point. I wish my pile of code would be just as useful to my kids

saos• 4 years ago

Where does product design categorise in creative profession?...

deebosong• 4 years ago

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.

j3th9n• 4 years ago

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

JackFr• 4 years ago

In other news, water is wet.

ThinkBeat• 4 years ago

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.

BirAdam4• 4 years ago

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.

lc9er2• 4 years ago

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.

ollifi• 4 years ago

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.

marcinzm• 4 years ago

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?

gadders• 4 years ago

I wonder if wealth is also a predictor of whether a person decides to create a start-up? Easier to take big risks if you have family to fall back on.

nicksiscoe• 4 years ago

100% it is - wealth is a predictor of “risk-taking” in general (in quotations because the relative risk is actually fairly small when you’re wealthy)

guilamu• 4 years ago

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)

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

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."

https://www.artandobject.com/news/how-money-laundering-works...

egypturnash2• 4 years ago

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.

AlwaysRock2• 4 years ago

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.

yboris• 4 years ago

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.

AlwaysRock2• 4 years ago

100%. I used to think I loved it. I did. I just didnt love it so much that I was willing to be broke my entire life. I had other options. I took one which lead me to a career I enjoy a lot.

I know folks from when I was performing a lot who are still doing it and doing it at a high level. Almost every single one of them didnt have other options. I mean they COULD have done something else but they would jump off a building before going into an office 5 days a week.

devonkim3• 4 years ago

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.

test65542• 4 years ago

The problem comes when someone graduates with a liberal arts degree. Employers assume they were eating paste and finger painting for 4-5 years.

AnimalMuppet• 4 years ago

Yeah. Liberal arts were distinguished from the "trades" (which today probably includes engineering). Liberal arts were for people who didn't have to work for a living. If you get that degree, but you need a job when you get out, then maybe that wasn't the right degree choice...

devonkim3• 4 years ago

Well this part of the whole liberal fantasies of decently well-meaning intent but absolutely the opposite results. In fact, because the people that came up with the agenda were wealthy themselves they had trouble imagining the full breadth of support people would need following their expensive programs. These folks had so little idea of what generational poverty actually looked like it seemed patronizing even at times, which is in itself a form of racism (read: white / upper caste savior complexes). While I think it's valuable and actually essential for a liberal democracy to have well educated voters we've forgotten that money is power and therefore without a well capitalized voting bloc it's going to devolve into umm.... what we have now.

madballster• 4 years ago

Could go a long way to explain the “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” figure of speech.

bush-bby• 4 years ago

“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

SergeAx• 4 years ago

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.

Wealth as a predictor of whether an person pursues a creative profession (2019)

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