How Artists Make Money and How Money Makes Artists
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How Artists Make Money and How Money Makes Artists

David Berry
Coach House Books, 2025
First Edition: 2025
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The disconnect between art and money has always created friction between artists and the market structures that support them. Critic David Berry explains that artists exchange their work for support, elevation, and exposure, and that patrons, corporations, and online platforms exploit artists by taking a share of their product’s value. The result is that most artists cannot make a living. Until a sustainable model for supporting artistic production emerges, artists remain shackled to a system that is unable to assess the value of their work reliably or reward the unquantifiable forces that create it.

Summary

Money shapes art’s value. But art is priceless.

Throughout history, society defined “art” as a human endeavor to which no one can attach monetary value, because art is ineffable. Art is, in practical terms, useless. If art were merely a market product, it would lose the elevated status that makes it valuable. Those who determine art’s value – patrons, institutions, critics, consumers – aren’t purchasing a “product” per se, but proof that they have taste.

In elevating an artist you like, you elevate yourself. Artists, in turn, benefit from the exposure patrons provide and from supporters’ appreciation for their extraordinary gifts. Any compensation is a bonus. Indeed, the art world regards being an artist for the sake of making money as something crass, even as degrading the value of the arts in society.

Art began as worship. Artists believed that divine forces inspired them to create – paintings, sculpture, poetry, drama, and literature – to channel these forces. The first, known self-declared artist was the Akkadian priestess and princess Enheduanna (2300 BC), who ascribed godlike qualities to herself by invoking gods in her poetry. Fully 2,000 years later, ...

About the Author

Canadian author, editor, and critic David Berry also wrote On Nostalgia.

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