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Individuals and institutions do fund artists already, e.g. grants, patreon, commissions, donations, a plethora of residence programs - I'm all for having as muc

Individuals and institutions do fund artists already, e.g. grants, patreon, commissions, donations, a plethora of residence programs - I'm all for having as much of all this as possible, and there is certainly not as much of it as there could be. However, I think all of these have some element of the artists needing to have proven themselves or having a good portfolio - and I think that is more than fair and true of all professions. Nobody who values their time and money wants to hire an untrained, inexperienced contractor who is about to do their first job. They are free to go to school, they may choose to get loans, it may turn out they suck at plumbing and then they are back at square one. None of that is society's fault. For every successful artist there are thousands upon thousands of people whose art is unmarketable or unvalued by the market, and you simply cannot bend the market to your say-so. That's not how any of this works.

llamataboot 7y ago
I agree overall that this article seems a bit incoherent. I also actually agree that, other than in times of the rich patrons, there's actually more ways to get funded as an artist now than 10 years ago. I'm not sure that marketability has ever been a good metric for deciding whether art is useful or not though. Useful art shows something about 'us' to the rest of 'us', and that may not be marketable at all. In that case, what would really help is a basic income. If you are passionate about art, you can pursue meaningful art that might show us some things about the human condition without needing to worry about whether it is marketable. If it becomes marketable so be it, there's your step up. If not, you are free to at least survive while trying to do whatever you are doing. -- I'd argue that the way art is funded is highly tilted towards what grantmakers think is "good art", which often isn't, but is the idea that the people that give them money to fund art has....
xj9 7y ago
> None of that is society's fault. if a society can only produce debt-ridden failures, that society has failed. if society does not provide adequate resources and training, you end up with angry stupid people. there's not really a reason why people need to get into debt to be able to be useful members of society. that's how things are done in the united states, but its a pretty ineffective system in a lot of ways.
- fnordsensei 7y ago
  To continue along this line of reasoning, a successful society should allow for people to try their hand at a few different things without catastrophic consequences. It stands to reason that people who are allowed to fail as well as recover are more likely to find a niche that allows them to thrive.
  - dheera 7y ago
    I agree with this. As an engineer I can say engineers very much have this. Free cloud computing credits, dirt cheap hardware to experiment on, plenty of free learning resources, and zero travel expenses for most projects. Artists (and to a great degree, fundamental scientists in traditional academic tenure paths) don't.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Time is the primary limitation on learning art, engineering, or even science not other resources. Kids have a lot of time growing up with few limits, especially with long summers, but it’s still finite. Adults just have more obvious opportunity costs. Kids are also competing with other kids for recognition and positive feedback, where adults are judged more harshly.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Is this evidence-based? I have believed this for a long time but it's from first principles (being able to experiment safely leads to more experiments) but I've noticed that European society is more conservative and prefers not to experiment despite having better welfare systems. I wonder now whether proportionality is key. Whether the people who will experiment are precisely those who would prefer to make a metric ton for themselves by experimenting and aren't worried about the downside. FWIW I have lived in Europe, America, and Asia. I like to think I'm fairly neutral.
    - watwut 7y ago
      It a bit depends also on "experiment in what?" and what are other cultural values that interact with it. VC startup/entrepreneur culture does not punish failure all that much and people experiment a lot of time. There are people who get money after failure and after another failure and again. If you fail, then unless you went into dept you can find job somewhere. The social system is only one factor in play.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Being an artist is nothing like being a contractor, and markets are the worst possible way to determine artistic value. Being an artist can involve doing things that hardly anyone likes, or no one at all likes, or no one at all likes for a few decades, or no one likes for most of the artist's working life - but then everyone likes. Or which everyone likes while the artist is still alive, and then no one likes. There's no objective test of a "good portfolio". Drawing skills are easy to assess, but art is about vision and breadth of imagination, not about mechanical mimicry. That kind of talent is much harder to spot, especially at 18.
- amelius 7y ago
  Also, those pieces of art that an artist considers a failure may become worth millions after the artist has been recognized.
- taneq 7y ago
  Historically the artistic value of a painting isn't realised until well after the artist is dead. Kind of makes it hard to recommend art as a career.
  - harimau777 7y ago
    Is that actually true though? My understanding is that most of the works of the Renaissance Masters were commissions so presumably someone valued them. It seems to me that the problem is that at some point the idea developed that making art that is meaningful to the masses is beneath an "artist" and that is the point at which "artist" ceased to be a viable career path.
    - 0815test 7y ago
      Well, making art has always been about making something impressive. It used to be that making stuff that was impressive and meaningful to the masses was relatively easy; whereas nowadays much of the worth of an artistic endeavor is not so easy to appreciate. (Can "the masses" appreciate a 4k demoscene intro? As in, understand what exactly makes it worthwhile?) It may be that such art is inherently harder to fund/support more generally, and even to assess (which leads to people falling back on their social networks - if you're a well-known demoscene coder, I'm more likely to think that your 4k intro may indeed demonstrate something novel and worthwhile - even and especially if I'm not a demoscene expert!)
dalbasal 7y ago
This article is not so much about artists failing in their careers, financially or otherwise. It seems to be more about failing in more of a "project failed to come to fruition" sense. It's claiming that patrons and other financial supporters are being too conservative, asking for too much certainty about the finished product and not being tolerant enough of projects that fail to produce or may fail to produce. This in turn is making artists & art too conservative, and not exploring enough risky ideas. The perspective for the normative (being too conservative; shouldn't chastize) appears to "for the sake of art" rather than the "for society/economy/artist wellbeing" I think you're responding from. A tech startup analogy is pretty straightforward. If investors are too risk averse (eg avoiding startups with execution risk), the odds of big wins go down. Art, like startups is risky. Low failure rates can be a bad sign, and lower overall "returns."
- 0815test 7y ago
  > It's claiming that patrons and other financial supporters are being too conservative, asking for too much certainty about the finished product There's a reason for this, of course - most customers don't want to incur hard-to-assess risk. Creators could deal with this by self-insuring and offering some sort of money-back guarantee, but of course this comes with additional challenges-- including having to raise a larger amount in the first place to offset the possibility of failure, which still makes for sharply-lower "tolerance" of failure-prone projects! In general, it could even be that just letting the chips fall where they may is the least bad approach, for all its clear drawbacks.
gdubs 7y ago
So many of the artists we treasure today were completely undervalued in their time and died without knowing any kind of success.
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  This isn't unique to art though. I can't name the inventor of any product in my home. No idea why came up with the architectural style of the building, etc.
  - badpun 7y ago
    The fact that you can't name them does not mean they didn't get recognized and/or wealthy for their inventions.
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      It's not my understanding that most inventors are recognized and/or wealthy. I feel like the cultural references we know are the exceptions that prove the rule. Edison, for example, is credited with inventing the light bulb. He was definitely wealthy, but there were a number of other inventors who contributed but have little to no recognition and did not become wealthy.

llamataboot 7y ago

I agree overall that this article seems a bit incoherent. I also actually agree that, other than in times of the rich patrons, there's actually more ways to get funded as an artist now than 10 years ago. I'm not sure that marketability has ever been a good metric for deciding whether art is useful or not though. Useful art shows something about 'us' to the rest of 'us', and that may not be marketable at all. In that case, what would really help is a basic income. If you are passionate about art, you can pursue meaningful art that might show us some things about the human condition without needing to worry about whether it is marketable. If it becomes marketable so be it, there's your step up. If not, you are free to at least survive while trying to do whatever you are doing. -- I'd argue that the way art is funded is highly tilted towards what grantmakers think is "good art", which often isn't, but is the idea that the people that give them money to fund art has....

xj9 7y ago

> None of that is society's fault. if a society can only produce debt-ridden failures, that society has failed. if society does not provide adequate resources and training, you end up with angry stupid people. there's not really a reason why people need to get into debt to be able to be useful members of society. that's how things are done in the united states, but its a pretty ineffective system in a lot of ways.

fnordsensei 7y ago
To continue along this line of reasoning, a successful society should allow for people to try their hand at a few different things without catastrophic consequences. It stands to reason that people who are allowed to fail as well as recover are more likely to find a niche that allows them to thrive.
- dheera 7y ago
  I agree with this. As an engineer I can say engineers very much have this. Free cloud computing credits, dirt cheap hardware to experiment on, plenty of free learning resources, and zero travel expenses for most projects. Artists (and to a great degree, fundamental scientists in traditional academic tenure paths) don't.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Time is the primary limitation on learning art, engineering, or even science not other resources. Kids have a lot of time growing up with few limits, especially with long summers, but it’s still finite. Adults just have more obvious opportunity costs. Kids are also competing with other kids for recognition and positive feedback, where adults are judged more harshly.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Is this evidence-based? I have believed this for a long time but it's from first principles (being able to experiment safely leads to more experiments) but I've noticed that European society is more conservative and prefers not to experiment despite having better welfare systems. I wonder now whether proportionality is key. Whether the people who will experiment are precisely those who would prefer to make a metric ton for themselves by experimenting and aren't worried about the downside. FWIW I have lived in Europe, America, and Asia. I like to think I'm fairly neutral.
  - watwut 7y ago
    It a bit depends also on "experiment in what?" and what are other cultural values that interact with it. VC startup/entrepreneur culture does not punish failure all that much and people experiment a lot of time. There are people who get money after failure and after another failure and again. If you fail, then unless you went into dept you can find job somewhere. The social system is only one factor in play.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

Being an artist is nothing like being a contractor, and markets are the worst possible way to determine artistic value. Being an artist can involve doing things that hardly anyone likes, or no one at all likes, or no one at all likes for a few decades, or no one likes for most of the artist's working life - but then everyone likes. Or which everyone likes while the artist is still alive, and then no one likes. There's no objective test of a "good portfolio". Drawing skills are easy to assess, but art is about vision and breadth of imagination, not about mechanical mimicry. That kind of talent is much harder to spot, especially at 18.

amelius 7y ago
Also, those pieces of art that an artist considers a failure may become worth millions after the artist has been recognized.
taneq 7y ago
Historically the artistic value of a painting isn't realised until well after the artist is dead. Kind of makes it hard to recommend art as a career.
- harimau777 7y ago
  Is that actually true though? My understanding is that most of the works of the Renaissance Masters were commissions so presumably someone valued them. It seems to me that the problem is that at some point the idea developed that making art that is meaningful to the masses is beneath an "artist" and that is the point at which "artist" ceased to be a viable career path.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    Well, making art has always been about making something impressive. It used to be that making stuff that was impressive and meaningful to the masses was relatively easy; whereas nowadays much of the worth of an artistic endeavor is not so easy to appreciate. (Can "the masses" appreciate a 4k demoscene intro? As in, understand what exactly makes it worthwhile?) It may be that such art is inherently harder to fund/support more generally, and even to assess (which leads to people falling back on their social networks - if you're a well-known demoscene coder, I'm more likely to think that your 4k intro may indeed demonstrate something novel and worthwhile - even and especially if I'm not a demoscene expert!)

dalbasal 7y ago

This article is not so much about artists failing in their careers, financially or otherwise. It seems to be more about failing in more of a "project failed to come to fruition" sense. It's claiming that patrons and other financial supporters are being too conservative, asking for too much certainty about the finished product and not being tolerant enough of projects that fail to produce or may fail to produce. This in turn is making artists & art too conservative, and not exploring enough risky ideas. The perspective for the normative (being too conservative; shouldn't chastize) appears to "for the sake of art" rather than the "for society/economy/artist wellbeing" I think you're responding from. A tech startup analogy is pretty straightforward. If investors are too risk averse (eg avoiding startups with execution risk), the odds of big wins go down. Art, like startups is risky. Low failure rates can be a bad sign, and lower overall "returns."

0815test 7y ago
> It's claiming that patrons and other financial supporters are being too conservative, asking for too much certainty about the finished product There's a reason for this, of course - most customers don't want to incur hard-to-assess risk. Creators could deal with this by self-insuring and offering some sort of money-back guarantee, but of course this comes with additional challenges-- including having to raise a larger amount in the first place to offset the possibility of failure, which still makes for sharply-lower "tolerance" of failure-prone projects! In general, it could even be that just letting the chips fall where they may is the least bad approach, for all its clear drawbacks.

gdubs 7y ago

So many of the artists we treasure today were completely undervalued in their time and died without knowing any kind of success.

Consultant32452 7y ago
This isn't unique to art though. I can't name the inventor of any product in my home. No idea why came up with the architectural style of the building, etc.
- badpun 7y ago
  The fact that you can't name them does not mean they didn't get recognized and/or wealthy for their inventions.
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    It's not my understanding that most inventors are recognized and/or wealthy. I feel like the cultural references we know are the exceptions that prove the rule. Edison, for example, is credited with inventing the light bulb. He was definitely wealthy, but there were a number of other inventors who contributed but have little to no recognition and did not become wealthy.