Let's do the numbers...

I've been poking around a little on the subject of art careers and thought some readers might be interested in looking at art as a career in the way that the federal government looks at art as a career. To that end, here's a link to U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook. I'll quote a few choice passages (with occasional emphasis)...

Fine artists typically display their work in museums, commercial art galleries, corporate collections, and private homes. Some of their artwork may be commissioned (done on request from clients), but most is sold by the artist or through private art galleries or dealers. The gallery and the artist predetermine how much each will earn from the sale. Only the most successful fine artists are able to support themselves solely through the sale of their works. Most fine artists have at least one other job to support their art careers. Some work in museums or art galleries as fine-arts directors or as curators, planning and setting up art exhibits. A few artists work as art critics for newspapers or magazines or as consultants to foundations or institutional collectors. Other artists teach art classes or conduct workshops in schools or in their own studios. Some artists also hold full-time or part-time jobs unrelated to the art field and pursue fine art as a hobby or second career.

Usually, fine artists specialize in one or two art forms, such as painting, illustrating, sketching, sculpting, printmaking, and restoring. Painters, illustrators, cartoonists, and sketch artists work with two-dimensional art forms, using shading, perspective, and color to produce realistic scenes or abstractions.

It goes on to talk about working conditions, but this passage from a chapter called "Training, Other Qualifications and Advancement" is noteworthy:

Postsecondary training is recommended for all artist specialties. Although formal training is not strictly required, it is very difficult to become skilled enough to make a living without some training. Many colleges and universities offer programs leading to the bachelor’s or master’s degree in fine arts. Courses usually include core subjects such as English, social science, and natural science, in addition to art history and studio art.

The site notes that 63% of artists are self-employed and that the "median earnings for fine artists, including painters, sculptors, and illustrators, were $38,060 in May 2004". The passage goes on to note that "Many [artists] find it difficult to rely solely on income earned from selling paintings or other works of art. Like other self-employed workers, freelance artists must provide their own benefits."

If you get further into the Bureau of Labor Statistics' site, you can find a National Compensation survey that tracks painters, sculptors, craft artists and artists printmakers' earnings since 1997. In that time, they have risen and astonishing 15%, from an hourly rate of $18.70 to just over $21.50. That works out to almost $45,000 per year. Not bad, but factor in adjustments to the comsumer price index, medical insurance, materials costs, rent or mortgage payments on a studio over and above housing and it starts to look a little less comfortable. And let's not even talk about how far $45,000 goes in a market like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago relative to other, less expensive areas with less well-developed art markets.

This is not meant to be another whining protest against how artists are undervalued in society or a form of rallying cry for a living wage for cultural workers. It is meant to suggest that, as a profession requiring significant educational investment, art is risky and uncertain, but when risk and uncertainty are discussed, it's only in relation to aesthetics. It has been suggested that if other professional preparation institutions performed as poor in purely statistical terms, Congress would be obliged to investigate. All of this is the upshot of a culture in which access to art is seen as basic right when in fact it remains an elite privilege. But even that statement is fraught – it’s not access to art, it’s access to the right to make art as if it were a job like any other.

Perhaps my ire about this is so greatly inflamed because I recently visited the studios of a certain MFA program and have been scratching my head since then. Curious? You'll have to come back and visit HyperCritical tomorrow for more.

Warhols of Tomorrow

...that's just how I think of my students. Not!

But some folks think of your ambition that way, and in case you missed it, here's a link to Carol Vogel's April 15th story in the New York Times about MFA students thinking about careers.

There's a story like this in the Times just about every spring (who knew the graduating-from-art-school beat was so good?) though none have ever touched Deborah Solomon's Times' Magazine story of a few years ago. The subtext in all of them remains the same - there's something desperately wrong with art students these days. Or rather, with art schools who are leading the geniuses of tomorrow down the wrong path with professional practices courses, classes in theory and criticism, and open studios that invite collectors' and dealers' participation in the discourse of contemporary practice. This is a path that can only lead to ruin (hilarious ruin if the film is one half as insightfully wicked as the comic, and afterall, if we can't laugh at ourselves, what good are we? But ruin nonetheless...)

Are we really failing y'all with this stuff? Would it be better for western civilization as a whole to return to the French Academy model, or some other utopian memory of what art school is supposed to be like? Or - as this post from the Gotham Gazette suggests, are young artists frankly unrealistic about what a career in the arts might mean relative to other, more stable professions?

Is everyone a critic?

The unfortunate few who've been reading the blog for my classes have been subjected to a long tirade about Radical Craft, so I thought I'd bother the rest of you with some other ruminations that are not entirely unrelated. Here goes:

I have been teaching a research class at Art Center this semester and I have included a lot of critiques in the class because I think one of its covert reasons for being is that crits are so deadly. Artists tend to have a very narrow concept of what influences them and relatively little specific vocabulary for relating their interests to the work or idea of others. To that end, I've been using very rigidly formulated crits to get at different aspects of the work.

The results have been disappointing. In part because the work is too rooted in intuition and pleasure to stand up for a critique in the first place, but in part because everyone is really good at evaluating but not that good at trying to figure out who they envy and why (here I paraphrase Keith Gruber's thoughtful post on the other blog ). This I find funny. At Art Center, the faculty is especially proud of what's called "critique culture" and its influence on learning. But even here, "criticism" is often a code word for justifying preference, but it shouldn't be that (or at least that's not what i was interested in practicing when I wrote criticism...) I watch Iron Chef and see people who can talk about why one plate is better than another, or Project Runway and see people who can talk about fashion and I wonder how to get that conversation - thoughtful, evaluative but also engaged - into my classes.

So I wonder where people see criticism in action? What are its models? Not its manners, with which we're all too familiar, but its models, best practices, exemplars, etc.? As a society, we've grown fond of saying that 'everyone's a critic', but we're not too willing to accept criticism form some people...why? And from whom are we going to seek it out? (Need some more grist for the mill? visit here and scan the headlines for interesting tidbits, or visit this blogand take a look...a)