Do You Have to Be Rich to Make It as an Artist?

• Dodie Jacobi

"He wrote that he couldn’t help but feel that her Whitney show was emblematic of a moment in which “more and more cultural space is being occupied by extremely wealthy cultural producers.” - artnet.com

The odds are stacked against artists not born into privilege in these times. For one thing the cost of contemporary production of the arts, installation, video, etc, exceeds just plain canvas costs, which are prohibitive in itself.

Another issue is that in Canada governments grants are given based on only the merit criteria and not merit and need, so privileged artists are also eligible to compete for sparse grant money, making it that much more difficult for poor artists to survive.

Also art is seen as a competing business that artists as entrepreneurs should be able to regulate themselves, so if you don't happen to have those essential business skills, and they are not always able to be learned, you will not survive.

Add to that an inheritance in Canada of the British "Old Boy" system of networking, and you have privileged people connecting with other privileged people, leaving the poor but maybe super talented artists behind. It is much easier for a gallery owner to convince his wealthy clients to buy an art work of their wealthy friends off spring then someone totally unrelated to their circle of acquaintances.

In a society where money, in of it itself, has value and art has become a wall street endeavour where it accrues value as a stock might, depending on the hype around it, art is no longer able to to be what it was, a dialogue between the souls of the artist and the viewer and appreciated for that alone.

I am not saying that the privileged artist might not have soul, but I think it is much harder to reach the depths of it when you have the money to spend most of your time playing only with the superficialities of life. Christians will tell you that it is "..harder for a rich man to get to heaven, than a camel through the eye of a needle...", a metaphor for a spiritual life, which is what an artist was supposed to have and be. Instead our society has forced him to be a self-made cunning business tycoon relying on his familial dowry and privileged connections. A contradiction in terms.