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About the only billionaires that I might excuse are artists, who take a blank page, or a black canvas, and write song, or a book, or create some work of art out of their thin air, using only the ideas in their head. If they can create something out of their head, and get enough people pay them for it, then they deserve the money.
The problem is, in order to transfer than money from the fan to the artist, especially in massive amounts, it usually takes some gargantuan corporation that does all the exploiting on the part of the artist.
So while the artist wasn't exploitive in the creation of his art, his distribution company that collected the money for him, certainly was.
IMO, I think that artists, like any other person, should have wealth and income limits imposed on them. No one should be rich enough to buy influence, and artists would be especially dangerous if they had mogul money and the ability to popularize ideas through their works. JK Rowling, Ronald Reagan, Kanye West, Alex Jones, and others come to mind.
The answer isn't to make artists rich, but rather to eliminate poverty and provide a baseline of living that allows anybody to succeed at life.
Valid.
No one deserves to be a billionaire. Most artists are not wealthy in their lifetime. In fact, most art is never even sold. It is so strange that we are so addicted to money that saying an artist deserves billions makes sense to people.
I didn't say that artists deserve to be billionaires. I said that if an artist writes a song, and enough people buy that song to make him a billionaire, at he hasn't done it by exploiting thousands of workers, and keeping profits that should have been shared with those workers. He got rich because people were willing to buy his ideas.
However, I also acknowledged while his side of the process may be exploitation-free, the side that actually distributes that song in the marketplace is NOT exploitation-free.
I'm not excusing any billionaires, I'm just saying there's a big difference between wealthy artists, and people whose business was conceived with exploitation baked into the business plan from the start.
Sorry, I was not trying to make it out like you said that. Just generally that people are so obsessed with money it has perverted their view of art. Art is not about making money even if a few people successfully do this. It is about expression.
Trying to make art about money is a perversion which can be seen on platforms like Spotify where artists now pay more than streamers to get their music heard. This is not art/expression, it is commercialization.
While I am not against artist trying to sell their works, I am against corporations stealing and taking the lions share of the profits. Think musicians who don't own their works or graphic artists that regularly get ripped off by corporations.
Corporations are so addicted to greed they are even trying to cut out the small portion of profits given to artists with AI and all signs seem to indicate they are going to be wildly successful pushing slop without any human artists.
This, of course, is not the end of art by any means.
Most actors and singers aren't successful just because they have talent, it's because they have the right connections in Hollywood.
This. And nearly no artist makes big money on art unless a.) they die first or b.) it's some BS "modern art" paint splattered on a page made for the explicit purpose of being purchased by a bazillion are and "donated" to a museum so they can make a huge tax write off. (Read: used to dodge taxes)
Well JK Rowling made over a billion dollars from book sales alone, so it's possible to make a billion dollars.
Suppose I should have been more specific, I meant "visual" artists like painters lol. Plenty of artists have made billions off book, movie, and song deals.
Wow, you really don't have a clue about art.
Can you name a living visual artist (ya know painters or whatever) that are alive?
I can name a LOT of them: Damien Hurst, Banksy, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, and many, many more. Plenty more that have died recently, but were hugely famous during their lifetimes, like Chuck Close or Roy Lichtenstein, who are displayed in nearly every museum in the world, including the Met and MOMA. Many artists like Picasso, Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Monet, and many more, were extraordinarily famous in their lifetimes.
The idea that famous artists and composers didn't get famous until long after they were dead, is an exaggeration to the point of being mostly false.
I have a degree in music history, and I can name 10 famous composers who were relatively famous in their own lifetimes, for every one that became famous posthumously. Many famous artists and composers were very famous in their lifetimes, which is why they became even more famous in death. There are the notable exceptions like JS Bach and Van Gogh, but there are a lot more like Beethoven or DaVinci, who were enormously famous during their lifetimes. Even those that are known for becoming famous after death, like JS Bach or Schubert, were still well known among local and regional musicians, which is why their music was preserved after death.
And that's where I concede that there may have been great composers who NEVER became famous because nobody ever heard their music, and nobody ever preserved it. But that's not the same as becoming FAMOUS after death. That's a bit of a cliche, with few actual examples.
I think you're being very naive. One of the people you mentioned did something exactly for the purpose op was saying. 20 artists in the last century in museums isn't a lot of people either. All of that is decided by the tastemakers, the people who have connections and/or lots and lots of money to run the museum. Bill Gates mom ran the Seattle Art Museum for years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Love_of_God
I wasn't offering a comprehensive list of "famous" or "great" living artists, just a few examples. I'm not naive, I know about Damien Hurst, and his consortiums, but he's the exception. I chuckled typing his name as an example, he's a K-Pop band, on a stage with Springsteen and Dylan, but technically he IS an artist, just like technically the K-Pop band are musicians. He's just figured out a way to monetize his art, but he's an exception. Koons is another one. So was Thomas Kinkade. These guys are bomb throwers, not serious artists.
Most artists don't have that kind of notoriety, nor do they want it. Most artists I know, would be happy just making their living from their art, so they can only do art. Some don't even want to make money from their art. Generally, success is based on how well they personally feel they rendered the emotion they were trying to explore.
And the wealthy have ALWAYS been the best benefactors for the arts, especially music and painting, that's nothing new, and should be strongly encouraged. Most of Haydn's greatest compositions were written while he spent decades employed by Prince Esterhazy. Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and just about every composer took commissions from wealthy patrons.
And why shouldn't an artist take it? The wealthy generally have more money than brains (most inherited), so if they are going to throw away their excess excess excess money on obviously metaphoric rockets, throw some dough to the artists instead. It's one way to get that promised trickle down money, although you got to squeeze that tree really hard to get the juice out of it.
And now we're back to OP's original comment. I think you're agreeing with them.
Both of which I don't agree with, and the second one is just insulting and stupid.
There are a lot of different kinds of artists, not just actors and singers, and while Nepo-Babies are common in Hollywood, they are less common in most other art forms.
Art tends to be very merit-based. Bad artists don't tend to be very successful. Good artists don't always find success, but bad artist almost never do, and never on a huge basis. Wealthy artists are generally very good at what they do.
How many artists are actually billionaires? It's a lot of difference from being a millionare
There are getting to be quite a few these days. Musicians like McCartney, Springsteen, Dylan, Sting, Beyonce, Jay-Z, and more, are reaching Billionaire status these days. Most of them have sold their publishing for $500 million, putting them halfway there, with a lifetime of royalties. Being a Rock Star used to be a great path to serious wealth, when records actually sold in the millions.
Visual artists are another story. I feel sorry for them. They create a beautiful painting, and then sell it for a bit of money. Then that buyer holds it for a few years, and sells it for double, but the artist doesn't see any of that. All he gets are the proceeds from that initial sale. Being the artist that holds the record for the largest sale by a living artist has got to be rough. Some guy just got $50 mill for a painting that you sold 20 years ago for rent money.