Making Art Is a Job? Duh!

Artist is Charles Sprague Pearce (1851–1914). Photographed 2007 by Carol Highsmith (1946–), who explicitly placed the photograph in the public domain.

The Times’ A.O. Scott on — surprise, surprise — why making art is a job and why artists should be compensated.

The risk in separating the labor of making points and differences from its worldly reward lies in losing sight of the fact that it is labor, and therefore has a value that is material as well as abstract.

He continues,

Nobody would argue against the idea that art has a social value, and yet almost nobody will assert that society therefore has an obligation to protect that value by acknowledging, and compensating, the labor of the people who produce it.

Just a reminder: the compensation must be for both physical and intellectual labor, just like an attorney’s.

Tags: art as labor, art as work, Art Law, art market, artist compensation, intellectual property, wages