Comment by sorcerer-mar
6 days ago
Right... and if they can't sell their art... then what do they do?
They have to get a job that feeds them... which means they spend less time developing their art...
Ergo there is less art and the art that does exist is less well-developed.
I made no claim that artists' "primary motivation" is financial.
You're making the unsubstantiated assumption that the job will replace the time spent on their art rather than replace the time spent trying to sell their art.
Since most peoples art sell extremely poorly, it's entirely plausible for most artists to replace their income by replacing their sales effort with another job.
For a tiny sliver of the highest paid artists, it might have an effect. In a lot of markets this is already addressed by public funding and patronage because even for many of they highest paid it is hard to make a living from sales.
And now we're back to other commenters' argument. You can substantiate it by sharing some examples of master-tier artists -- people who really pushed the craft -- who did so without any financial component to their work.