Even under capitalism, there is PLENTY of demand for artists: Graphic designers, interior design, manufacturing beautiful items, architecture, civil engineering, sound engineers. Almost EVERYTHING requires art to some degree yet you have to be like the best of the best to get paid for an artistic career and even then your work is seen as frivolous. As if simply being an artist for a living is compensation enough.
Meanwhile, some dipshit on Wall Street does fuck all to improve the world and is showered with both money and praise just for waking up and doing over-glorified gambling.
I'm not an artist, but props to those who are, they are unironically incredibly important to making life somewhat bearable yet are criminally taken for granted.
Pardon the rant.
why does the starving artist trope exist when there is so much demand for artistic skills?
Because passion is a lever that capitalists can use to exploit you harder.
Oh yeah, also, middlemen. Creative industries are all structured to fuck over the actual creators as much as possible. See the recent episode of Trashfuture with Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin.
Agreed.
That recent Hexbear thread that started with a "dae le artists are like le spoiled aristocrats" take and then continued into "most of the le art produced is le furry anyway" take was so :reddit-logo: I almost had to check which site I was on. :disgost:
most of the le art produced is le furry anyway
that also ignores that the furry community is responsible for a LOT of artists being able to make rent
furries are so much nicer to work with than regular commissioners like 90% of the time too. i can't understand the hate they get when all the ones ive talked to have been so nice
Now you've got me curious, what kind of shit do regular commissioners do?
just sfw character art. not explicitly furry but i do it sometimes if someone wants it
I mean how do they behave that makes them worse than furry commissioners
oh sorry. this is anecdotally my experience so take with a grain of salt:
some people r just really demanding with how long you take and also like how you draw certain things. i've just never experienced that with furry requests. also seems more likely furry requests will pay the whole thing in advance instead of just the min deposit :shrug-outta-hecks:
That take was a combination of dusty old "dae le furries bad" and blaming artists for the work they produce for people paying them for it. That's as :grillman: as blaming restaurant staff for bringing meals to the table that the customers asked for.
Demand doesn’t necessarily mean much. If you believe that art is fundamentally useless compared to writing 500,000 lines of code to trade stocks automatically, then you’re not going to invest in the artist. Schools have been reducing art and music classes (as well as other “less important” classes) in favor of STEM.
Another example of the perception of a job’s value is janitors. Janitors are essential to society to function yet they are treated as bumbling idiots who can’t achieve anything and get paid accordingly. Or fast food workers - it’s a multi billion dollar industry but is seen as a job for dumb kids to stay busy or adults who failed in life.
As someone mentioned above, even in inherently creative industries such as entertainment artists are treated as trash because many are fueled by passion and you can take advantage of that. Exposure as compensation rather than money.
I'm just happy I can (marginally) improve my coworkers morale with cool whiteboard art
That's true. But artists generally have specialisations and if what you're good at isn't marketable or fashionable then you're shit outta luck.
Lots of demand for Bahaus/minimalist product designers. Not so much for people who write poetry in 12 century french romantic style.
Are there people, even within capitalism, that praise wall street? Ew
nothing but to say but good take, totally agree
I’m not an artist, but props to those who are, they are unironically incredibly important to making life somewhat bearable yet are criminally taken for granted.
Thanks, comrade.
Art in general is also HIGHLY COMPETITIVE. Everyone and their dog wants to be an artist, photographer, musician, you name it. It can be very difficult to rise above the crowd even when you're legitimately talented.
Plus, with a lot of gig work with clients, just getting paid can be a major pain in the ass :yea:
Even under capitalism, there is PLENTY of demand for artists: Graphic designers, interior design, manufacturing beautiful items, architecture, civil engineering, sound engineers. Almost EVERYTHING requires art to some degree yet you have to be like the best of the best to get paid for an artistic career and even then your work is seen as frivolous. As if simply being an artist for a living is compensation enough.
I think your definition of art is reductive. I mean what is art anyways? What#s a "best artist"?
Not that I don't agree with your broader point here
Lenin quote about defanging and canonization, something something the idealization of suffering as a tool of normalizing conditions that make art, and therefore cultural reproduction, the sole territory of the bourgeoisie .
When I graduated high school, I wanted to be in theater. After some time and a few jobs, a director who was paying me $5/hour (not including all my unpaid overtime) said something to the effect of, "there are 50,000 theater jobs in America, and 200,000 people trying to get them". All art jobs are like that, which gives the people with the money the leverage they need to pay you as little as humanly possible for your work, and all of the cultural conditioning around art (that it's "frivolous" or whatever) is an outgrowth of that fact.
I quit theater and now I work for the city in a chronically short-staffed department (after trying a few different things in between). My job is boring but overall things are a lot better lmao.
