Starving artists

I've become an occasional reader of the site of a young artist, and one thing that comes out very clearly is that it's not for no reason that we talk about "starving artists." Even apart from the end of the Medici fortune and patronage, something very interesting is going on.

On one hand, you've got guys like this Mets player wannabe who have earned and squandered bazillions of dollars, as well as a painter of burning homes who is alleged to have served as a living example of a habit described in 1 Samuel 25:22. On the other hand, you've got thousands (millions?) of artists with no remarkably nasty habits who are struggling to make enough to buy canvas and Sculpey. Life certainly isn't fair, and the art world is proof of that.

What's the problem? I don't know, but there are two things that may be part of it. First of all, art, like many professions, has been absorbed by the universities from the traditional system of apprenticeship. As artists' training appears to increase, the distance between their art and the public that would buy it seems to increase as well. That's not good for artists who, say, want people to buy their work, as good as it is for artists who manage to get public funds for their work.

Which leads to the second observation; the arts were far better patronized BEFORE the government got into funding them. Part of this might be "we gave at the office," but another part might be that artists were increasingly trained to view the government, and not the public, as their source of approval--ensuring their failure in the marketplace. At least the Medicis had to live with bad art if they helped create it; not so the NEA bureaucrat.

I don't think the problem can ever be completely fixed--Van Gogh never received an NEA grant, nor was he university trained in art, and he still managed to be a starving artist, after all. That said, I would think that someone starting out today would do well to avoid the "College of Art," and even more the NEA, if he wants to make his mark.