Saying what we already knew (now with numbers!)

Nothing quite brightens my day like a tidy, official report reminding me not only of how utterly dirt-poor I am, but also that I’m far from exceptional in this regard. And yes, apparently it’s that grim but all the same I believe Michael Maranda (assistant curator at the Art Gallery of York University) has done a great service in releasing his study, Waging Culture: The socio-economic status of Canadian Visual Artists, because as sickening as the results can be there is now, at the very least, a blueprint with which to assess the realities of a visual artist’s working life without resorting to romantic cliché.

Note: not a Canadian visual artist in the 21st Century. But for the occasion, I reckon John Simm as Vincent van Gogh in The Yellow House will do the job in a pinch.

The results of this study have recently been addressed in a couple Toronto papers, but I’ll be referencing James Bradshaw’s Globe and Mail article on account of its greater depth of information and lack of kneejerk starving-artist headline. Thanks owed to fellow Hamilton artist Thea Haines for the links.

Given the much snarked-upon furore around Harper’s depiction of artists in the last election, one of the sole gratifying elements of the report is the revelation that artists earn the majority of their paltry income from sales rather than grants or artists fees, leading to the categorical conclusion that “the primary funder of artistic practices in Canada is artists themselves.” Given that I have received two grant rejection letters in the last two days, I can only nod my assent and ask Harper to kindly go back to the kitten-infested hell from whence you came, and take your red-carpet trotting hallucinations with you.

Unfortunately, that affirmational bit of observation is a rare bright spot in an otherwise dark portrait of the Canadian artist, who frequently runs a studio practice in deficit and even with secondary jobs in both art and non-art related employment still comes up some $7000 short of the national median income. This, despite the fact that artists have generally completed more years of post-secondary education than the general population. Quoting Bradshaw’s article:

As a group, the study says, visual artists average six years of postsecondary education. Eighty-four per cent have at least an undergraduate education, and 45 per cent hold a graduate degree, compared with 23 and 7 per cent respectively for the general population. But all those years of schooling aren’t helping artists earn more from their art: The study shows that the higher an artist’s education level, the less they earn from their artworks after expenses.

And that sound you just heard was my mom’s brain exploding over the mortgages she took out to send me to Glasgow for my MFA.

I could go on. But I’d just as soon leave off by quoting the opening lines of Maranda’s Introduction from the report:

If the arts were not, as economists are wont to say, an irrational pursuit, they would hardly be thriving these days. And yet, thriving they are. Embattled, impoverished, and improbable, but thriving nonetheless.

For all the nitty-gritty in its sunshiny glory, the official summary is available via the AGYU website, with links to download the complete report at the bottom of the page. Happy reading, folks.

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