I’ve been thor­oughly enjoy­ing Hans Abbing’s Why Are Artists Poor?, which formed an impor­tant source in my last two arti­cles. Abbing is an econ­o­mist and a visual artist, and he tack­les the broad ques­tion of artist poverty from the per­spec­tive of both dis­ci­plines, try­ing to fil­ter out the biases and myths that color tra­di­tional interpretations.

As a part of his dis­cus­sion, Abbing brings up the ques­tion of what con­sti­tutes a pro­fes­sional artist. Accord­ing to econ­o­mists, pro­fes­sion­als are peo­ple who earn some non-negligible por­tion of their liv­ing via their pro­fes­sional activ­i­ties. This def­i­n­i­tion works for a lot of the activ­i­ties humans do, but it’s prob­lem­atic in the arts. Con­tinue read­ing “Is There Such Thing As A Pro­fes­sional Composer?” »