Professional or profitable (but not necessarily both)?
Something seems to be missing from our understanding of how the visual arts and crafts sector operates. While quite a lot of research has been undertaken over recent years, we still have little concrete information about how, and why, artists' careers develop as they do.
There also seems to be little clear research to show how the various elements of arts training, and the new focus on professionalism, have impacted on the way the sector is developing- and along with it, individual careers. Of course, to assume that it is possible to make sense of the various layers of the artworld, and the very many different ways practitioners function within it, is asking more than any single research project or report might be able to deliver.
Writing these columns over the last few years I have suggested that the way we determine what counts as a "professional artist" may have an impact on the sort of results research generates: our grasp of the "professional artist" might be limited by a confusion between artists who earn significant income from their work, and those who might simply be picking up a little money on the side, or explicitly cross-subsidising their practice through other activities. I have suggested that we need to disentangle the career strands of part-time artists, academic artists and those who make art as their main occupation. I have argued that the very low median income for visual artists (last reported as $3,000) might simply not be sufficient to warrant the "professional" tag, with the implication that our professional artist population is only about half the size we normally assume it to be. In other words, I have been arguing... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline