4 ms·

Artists typically do get paid for their work... it's just that the value of content is approaching zero.

Cullinet 6y ago
I vividly remember being woken up by my dad returning from a squash match the surprise me with the set of poster paints and brushes I'd been dreaming of that cost 99c in Woolworths... I'm no artist but when I had the desire to learn no obstacles would discourage me in my quest to afford materials and the process of obtaining a new watercolour book would take weeks and weeks I think the first third of school summer holidays actually. now I'm wondering if I inadvertently lost interest in the impatience of adolescence... but access to incredible artists materials is equally amazingly nearly ubiquitous in the western world along with peak uninstructed leisure time for young people to dabble but unfortunately not study and practice and master their tools in the dedicated way I remember absolutely everyone who had aspirations applied themselves in my youth. by no means do I mean to hand waving dismiss the younger generations for laziness, but the economic realities are radically different from the seventies and maybe we haven't culturally adjusted quite yet to the increase in availability of purported artwork which might have formerly been graded as something less. Certainly the self regarding high social status of the art world at the time I was growing up excluded too many worthy creative talents from serious consideration, but that seems to have flip flopped to most liberally apply the glaze of authenticity over a entirety of output with unclear to me discrimination.
- analog31 6y ago
  Even if you only count the people who do study and master their tools in a dedicated way, you still end up with an absolute flood of talent compared to demand. My kids are both music students, so I'm immersed in it, plus I'm a part time working musician myself.
erikschoster 6y ago
Artists typically don't get paid for their work unless they are working in a commercial field where their work is used to sell something else...
WorldMaker 6y ago
It depends on the art market. Certainly a lot of forces are at work conspiring to push the marginal value of digital content towards zero, but there are some digital art markets that aren't at zero or at least aren't stuck at zero over longer terms. There was a joke I saw the other day on Mastodon that "if NFTs actually worked as promised then the furries would have invented them years ago". While an amusing joke, it's also one of those things with buried bits of truth that stick out like wisdom. The furry commission markets have generally seemed to be stable over the life of the internet, the prices haven't converged to zero, and generally there seems to be respect for the labor costs of the artists in that market. Obviously a lot of other art markets wish they were that stable, and it's a weird benchmark (thus the humor to it), but it's still a benchmark.

I vividly remember being woken up by my dad returning from a squash match the surprise me with the set of poster paints and brushes I'd been dreaming of that cost 99c in Woolworths... I'm no artist but when I had the desire to learn no obstacles would discourage me in my quest to afford materials and the process of obtaining a new watercolour book would take weeks and weeks I think the first third of school summer holidays actually. now I'm wondering if I inadvertently lost interest in the impatience of adolescence... but access to incredible artists materials is equally amazingly nearly ubiquitous in the western world along with peak uninstructed leisure time for young people to dabble but unfortunately not study and practice and master their tools in the dedicated way I remember absolutely everyone who had aspirations applied themselves in my youth. by no means do I mean to hand waving dismiss the younger generations for laziness, but the economic realities are radically different from the seventies and maybe we haven't culturally adjusted quite yet to the increase in availability of purported artwork which might have formerly been graded as something less. Certainly the self regarding high social status of the art world at the time I was growing up excluded too many worthy creative talents from serious consideration, but that seems to have flip flopped to most liberally apply the glaze of authenticity over a entirety of output with unclear to me discrimination.

analog31 6y ago
Even if you only count the people who do study and master their tools in a dedicated way, you still end up with an absolute flood of talent compared to demand. My kids are both music students, so I'm immersed in it, plus I'm a part time working musician myself.

erikschoster 6y ago

Artists typically don't get paid for their work unless they are working in a commercial field where their work is used to sell something else...

WorldMaker 6y ago

It depends on the art market. Certainly a lot of forces are at work conspiring to push the marginal value of digital content towards zero, but there are some digital art markets that aren't at zero or at least aren't stuck at zero over longer terms. There was a joke I saw the other day on Mastodon that "if NFTs actually worked as promised then the furries would have invented them years ago". While an amusing joke, it's also one of those things with buried bits of truth that stick out like wisdom. The furry commission markets have generally seemed to be stable over the life of the internet, the prices haven't converged to zero, and generally there seems to be respect for the labor costs of the artists in that market. Obviously a lot of other art markets wish they were that stable, and it's a weird benchmark (thus the humor to it), but it's still a benchmark.