on Toshareproject.it - curated by Bruce Sterling
*A little odd that he doesn’t mentiion artists who are dead, who also tend to be the most profitable and the most famous and influential artists.
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An artist is a self-directed artistic expressor. They work for themselves and express what they want. There’s no one beyond their anxiety looking over their shoulder telling them what to do.
A creator is a self-directed market expressor. Everything they do has a commercial aim at its core, but they answer to themselves and their audience. Rather than a traditional boss, they have an algorithmic one that implicitly and explicitly shapes their output.
A commercial artist, or “a creative,” is a contracted market expressor. Everyone who works at an ad agency or as an in-house designer fits into this bucket. This group is much better paid than anyone else because they fulfill a market-oriented purpose. Today this role is often called a “creative” — a dehumanizing phrase with roots in the advertising industry.
An institutional artist is a form of contracted artistic expression. Think of an artist being asked to produce a Biennale commission or a piece for a museum. They are being contracted for their voice in a defined way. You have to have “made it” to be part of this quadrant.
These segments also show us how and by whom each gets paid:
Role: Artist
Who pays: Patrons, foundations, collectors
How: Grants, residencies, commissions, sales of work
Role: Creator
Who pays: Audiences, platforms, sponsors
How: Memberships, merch sales, rev shares, sponsorships
Role: Institutional artist
Who pays: Museums, public arts, universities, nonprofits
How: Commissions, grants, honoraria, stipends, exhibition fees
Role: Commercial artist or Creative
Who pays: Employers, agencies, brand clients
How: Salaries, day rates, project fees, retainers
The artist is the least compensated because there’s no outside entity contracting them to produce their work. Commercial artists and creatives are the highest paid because there are. Creator incomes range across a huge curve defined by the size of the internet. Institutional artist funds are the hardest and often stingiest to get.
In terms of artist compensation, the data supports this. Art critic Ben Davis reports in his excellent book 9.5 Theses On Art and Class that “artists earn less than workers in their reference occupational category (professional, technical and kindred workers), whose members have comparable human capital characteristics (education, training and age).”
Artists get paid less than people like them. Now we see why…