The creative/art paradox.

[Robertcw]

If you are an artist, a creative, open person, you probably can't afford to own art.

If you can afford to own art, you probably aren't a creative.

The 'invisible hand' of the 'market' ensures no one is happy. By forcing creatives to monetize their love of art in exchange for survival and by encouraging people who aren't artists to take part in the buying of art to try and become more creative (when they may not really get anything out of it).

If the artist tries to do what they love for a living, they probably become a starving artist if they don't they probably become a wage slave. Basically, society treats artists badly -- except for musicians who happen to have sex appeal (usually this is also deliberately created in order for the artist to achieve monetary and commercial success, thereby undermining the art to begin with).

This is the 'art paradox.' How to be creative and survive among a world of non-creatives.

[WhateverMayBeWillBe]

As someone who is a musician and was trying to get something going before the pandemic, band breakup and vocal injury, I can say this is true to an extent. It depends if the artist is dependent on their art and if they are struggling with any vices (drugs, mental illness) and/or debt/poverty. A lot of artists do struggle with illnesses and substances but I think making a profit is the least of their worries when it comes to that. As a musician though and analyzing the artistic landscape for years, I'd say the biggest problem for people in my field is how to make a living when the entire infrastructure is slowly being destroyed since Napster and everything that has followed (the pandemic has completely obliterated the artistic communities I belong to). The biggest problem with being a musician is there's no money in record sales anymore so you need to make money from performances & merch and endorsements BUT if you are new artist or relatively unknown you pretty much have to hussle to make anything happen. HONESTLY - it sucks, because there's no guarantees so even if you create something of substance you might make little to nothing from it (you need tangible products to sell and music is now free to stream, so builders, painters, sculptors and so on can sell their creations for whatever the market allows them). I don't know too much about all the other creative and artistic fields but I know they all have they're own struggles, if I had any advice for an up & coming artist it would be to make sure you have some other means of making an income until/unless you can make your artistic craft/skills profitable and even then those sales might not be sustainable on it's own.

[hellionthesagereborn]

Our entire system is designed for non creative people (who are the majority). I don't think its anyones fault per say, but it is something I think society needs to try and rectify (schools for instance are designed to create factory workers and middle managment positions, this is its original purpose, great for old school economy but not so good now and terrible for creatives who have a lot higher percentage chance to alter the society for the better if they have an option available to use their creativity (though also a much higher failure rate as well (high risk high reward)).

[Ez-Bri-Z]

Iunno. I make pretty good money, not retire early money, but enough to live comfortably and I have quite a few creative outlets.

[karaspara]

100 💯 fact

[sensible27]

Yeah, but the food also comes from someone's work no? If you create something and are able to convince people to see value in it.. it becomes decently valuable I guess..

[NikolaiIvanov]

This is untrue, I do consider myself a professional but I'm a decent taxidermist and know a fair bit of leather working, every skull I preserve and skin could fetch me about €80 per head.

[shalt]

These days, every smart artist just spends a couple bills, and make it into an NFT, you can still physically keep your work and make buttfucks of capital

[FilmGuy93]

They needed to do a study to figure that out?

[COMMODOREII]

You can either have a gift or not.