Alexander Adams: Why are artists poor? – July 2017

an economy that does not function like any other. In Why Are Artists Poor? Abbing

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seeks to understand how this singular market operates, drawing on academic research and statistics and demonstrating through anecdotal examples. Some of Abbing’s findings make profoundly uncomfortable reading for people who accept many common assumptions about the arts. Here are Abbing’s main findings:

 

Art is used as a social marker

 

Abbing states that class largely determines one’s google_ad_height = 90; attitude to high and low art. “As long as there is social stratification and as long

as art products are used to mark a person’s position on the social ladder,

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an asymmetric judgment of art products will exist. People higher on the ladder look down on the art of people lower than them, while the latter do not look down on, but look up to the art of the former.” Those ascending the social ladder will wish to consume high art while those descending will cling to high art despite straitened circumstances. This explains why a carpet tycoon in China buys an Andy Warhol as a symbol of his improved social status and great wealth, while an unemployed professor will still love Mondrian and Mahler even if deprived of his former position.

The fine/high arts are largely consumed and produced by the middle and upper classes. One could also view it another way: art of amateur and unqualified makers (produced by a constituency with a greater proportion of lower-class producers) is categorised as low, hobby or folk art not as high art. There seems a consensus that less-educated people believe that high-brow art is “not for them”; in other words, it is made for the middle and upper classes. It may also be that they feel alienated by contemporary art. We can all think of individual exceptions but data about exhibition attendance bears out Abbing’s thesis.

Abbing admits in an appendix that attitudes towards the high/low divide are changing and that this lower-class deference and upper-class disdain has altered over recent years.

 

The art economy is self-deceiving

 

The sensitivity, self-deceit and hypocrisy about the connection between aesthetic appreciation and

financial value are distinctive to the arts. This comes from the peculiarities of the special economy of high-status luxuries and the quasi-sacred status of items