How Artists Make Money and How Money Makes Artists

(Paperback)

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From royal patronage to Spotify, how artists make a living and what it means for art

It may not be the worst time in history to get paid to make art, but it certainly is the strangest. The institutions and markets that have been supporting the arts are undergoing massive changes, some even disappearing. Meanwhile the tools to make art and find audiences have never been more accessible, and there are more people than ever making art.

How Artists Make Money and How Money Makes Artists is an attempt to reckon with the history of money in the arts - from Titian to Taylor Swift - and how that complicated relationship is changing. David Berry analyzes past and present financial dynamics in the arts to show the practicalities of how artists make a living and how that, in turn, affects the reception and perception of artists and their work: the impacts art has on wider society, how economic realities affect aesthetic judgements of art, what kind of people are able to work as artists, and how political and cultural ideas about the nature of art affect what kind of resources are made available to it.

David Berry explores how art has become central to our understanding of humanity by tying art to what makes the world go round: money. Along the way, he challenges popular ideas of what constitutes a successful artistic career and considers what our treatment of artists says about us.

Author Bio

David Berry grew up on the edge of Edmonton. He profiled and critiqued the book, film, music and theatre scenes for a local alt-weekly, and then nationally for the National Post, and has contributed essays, criticism and features to the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, CBC, Hazlitt, and many other places, a few of which also still exist.

His first book, On Nostalgia, was published in summer 2020 by Coach House Books, just in time for everyone to suddenly become incredibly nostalgic for a time when they could actually see people and maybe even buy books in person. When not writing, he spends his time editing, community organizing, and attempting to parent.