Should artists be paid a living wage?

[rrneck]

33. Every artist has to decide how much of the marketplace s/he will allow into the studio.

It's pretty easy to sell anything that tells people what they want to hear. Much like the restaurant business, if you get enough salt, fat and sugar in the product people will eat it. Spinach doesn't move as fast. That's the difference between Kincaid's "light paintings" and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Art is one of the few products that is designed and produced without any previously established market. The market for any work that creates an existential dilemma in anyone is small to non existent, not when people can find any number of comfort zones with a few mouse clicks. It won't expand until society experiences enough difficulty for the people who can afford to buy art start to start to ask, "why is this happening to me?" As it stands now we are so hyper-materialistic the content issues addressed by the arts just won't command much interest and by extension much of a price.

Our current culture only rewards the desire for monetary gain. Such are the times. Financial security is only one part of the requirements of a happy and healthy life. Art is basically cultural research and development. Just like any other R&D the benefits of that research may not be immediately apparent but are nevertheless indispensable for the survival of any culture. The great malaise of our times is anomie in no small part because the social systems that are supposed to help us answer the question "why" don't have a cogent answer or even a way to properly ask the question.

So, yes, artists deserve a living wage. Certainly as much as anybody else. Artmaking is hard work and necessary to the health of our culture. That wage should be attached to quality, and there is an infrastructure in place to evaluate that quality. But that infrastructure won't function without the an enlightened public to make it work. As usual, education is the real solution to the problem.