WEBVTT - Are Artists Hardwired To Be Poor?

0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:06.760
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hi brain

0:00:06.800 --> 0:00:09.880
<v Speaker 1>Stuff Lauren vocal bomb here. The image of the starving

0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:13.480
<v Speaker 1>artist is a well known cultural stereotype. But is it

0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:17.520
<v Speaker 1>simply a stereotype or could the brain chemistry of artists

0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.960
<v Speaker 1>actually be responsible for their tendency towards poverty. An experiment

0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:26.000
<v Speaker 1>conducted in Germany raises this question and probably the eyebrows

0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:30.440
<v Speaker 1>of many artists. As reported in the April issue of

0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:34.560
<v Speaker 1>the Creativity Research Journal, the researchers sat down twelve artists

0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:37.440
<v Speaker 1>and twelve non artists and gave them colored images to

0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.760
<v Speaker 1>choose from on a screen, including green images that provided

0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:43.879
<v Speaker 1>a cash reward. When the green images popped up and

0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:47.160
<v Speaker 1>were chosen, the non artists brains showed a great deal

0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:50.840
<v Speaker 1>of activity in the pleasure area that releases dopamine. Brain

0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:54.240
<v Speaker 1>scans of the artists showed less activity in that dopamine

0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:57.880
<v Speaker 1>producing area. The researchers concluded that the artists were less

0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:01.760
<v Speaker 1>responsive to monetary rewards than other people. It's admittedly a

0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.520
<v Speaker 1>small sample size, but still an interesting result. The authors

0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:08.440
<v Speaker 1>wrote in the paper. These results support the existence of

0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:12.959
<v Speaker 1>characteristic neural traits and artists. But do these neural traits

0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.679
<v Speaker 1>mean that all but the most successful artists in fact

0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.600
<v Speaker 1>have low earning potential. First of all, the poverty of

0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:23.360
<v Speaker 1>artists may be culturally exaggerated. As a group, artists in

0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:26.479
<v Speaker 1>the United States have higher incomes than the average American worker.

0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.880
<v Speaker 1>According to census figures analyzed by the National Endowment for

0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.760
<v Speaker 1>the Arts, in the medium income for craft and fine

0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.279
<v Speaker 1>art artists in seventeen was a little over forty dollars

0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:39.840
<v Speaker 1>per year, or about twenty four dollars per hour, a

0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.840
<v Speaker 1>livable wage by most standards. And second, the nature of

0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:46.000
<v Speaker 1>the art market makes the life of an artist a

0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:49.600
<v Speaker 1>bit less fundamentally secure. This is explained well in the

0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:54.240
<v Speaker 1>book Art and Value Arts Economic Exceptionalism in Classical, Neoclassical

0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:58.680
<v Speaker 1>and Marxist Economics by painter and professor Dave Beach. He

0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.120
<v Speaker 1>described how the art market is different from the market

0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:04.160
<v Speaker 1>for most other goods. Art is not a standard commodity.

0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:06.480
<v Speaker 1>He wrote, the creation of art, as well as the

0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:09.280
<v Speaker 1>marketing and purchase of art, are outside the bounds of

0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.880
<v Speaker 1>the regular market. Art is not usually made as a

0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.080
<v Speaker 1>result of corporate investment. Artists do not generally get an

0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:18.760
<v Speaker 1>hourly wage for their labor, and the price of art

0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.120
<v Speaker 1>is not set through competition in the same way that

0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.560
<v Speaker 1>other products prices are determined. The art market is different

0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.600
<v Speaker 1>and it shapes the prices artists can set and expect

0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:32.119
<v Speaker 1>for their labor. Dutch painter and sociologist Hans Ebbing explored

0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:35.440
<v Speaker 1>the mindset as well as the socioeconomic forces that lead

0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:39.080
<v Speaker 1>to what he called the admiseration of artists, immiseration meaning

0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.799
<v Speaker 1>economic impoverishment. He said that for one thing, the art

0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.240
<v Speaker 1>market has a winner take all attitude, and in addition,

0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.240
<v Speaker 1>artists may not have other skills and so remain in

0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:51.720
<v Speaker 1>the work that they are drawn to. He said that

0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.600
<v Speaker 1>artists also find non monetary creation based rewards in their work.

0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:59.359
<v Speaker 1>By the way, a bit of perspective, if you earn

0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:01.840
<v Speaker 1>more than you one thousand dollars a year, you are

0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:09.880
<v Speaker 1>part of the richest four percent of the planet. Today's

0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.880
<v Speaker 1>episode was written by Still Simonton and produced by Tyler Clang.

0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:14.920
<v Speaker 1>If you enjoy our show and want to support us

0:03:14.919 --> 0:03:17.960
<v Speaker 1>in return for some brainy housewares or people wears, visit

0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:21.359
<v Speaker 1>our online shop at t public dot com slash brain stuff,

0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:23.880
<v Speaker 1>and of course, for more on this and lots of

0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.880
<v Speaker 1>other rich topics, visit our home planet, How stuff Works

0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:38.640
<v Speaker 1>dot com,