Theme: Civilization

WHY THE CHANGE IN THE COST OF ART AND QUALITY OF ART?
@shelley11

What has caused the change in production of high art, especially monumental art, (as someone who has studied stonemasonry, sculpture, and medieval construction techniques), is that the price of human time has increased to where it’s no longer affordable to pay that many men of that much skill for that long a period of time. Even at the time something on the scale of 1/4 of regional GDP was consumed in the production of those edifices. So they were effectively jobs programs for skilled craftsmen – and we have few of those jobs programs remaining now that we have steel, concrete, and panel construction.

Worse, when the aristocracy (inheriting sons of nobility) and the church (non-inheriting sonse of nobility), sponsored the arts, they generated competitive demand between nobility for the status provided by the success of artists in their territory. We don’t think of this today, but just as the pyramids still draw tourists, and skyscrapers draw businesses, churches and cathedrals did the same – for obvious reasons. They were one of the primary forms of entertainment, information, and educastion of the day.

So, as for the price of labor, today, an painter for example must keep some number of paintings – say, six to twelve, in one or more galleries, at a price of 1500-3500 each (just as an average). That means a successful artist must turn over a dozen works per year just to make 40k in income, and only about two thirds of their works are likely to sell at stated prices – some just sit in inventory. So that means at best an artist gets 100 hours per painting including all the related work to that painting – including just thinking about sketching whatyou’re going to paint.. Just to produce enough supply to feed the channel. It’s not an economically viable job. For this reason, over ninety percent of artists lose money. This was’t true of craftsmen before 1880.

So all artwork looks like it takes less than twenty hours work for high production artists, and then the works of skilled craftsmen painters (realism etc that does not look like a photo projection) must be very expensive and only practiced as a hobby.

Economics in everything.

WHY THE CHANGE IN THE COST OF ART AND QUALITY OF ART?
@shelley11

What has caused the change in production of high art, especially monumental art, (as someone who has studied stonemasonry, sculpture, and medieval construction techniques), is that the price of human time has increased to where it’s no longer affordable to pay that many men of that much skill for that long a period of time. Even at the time something on the scale of 1/4 of regional GDP was consumed in the production of those edifices. So they were effectively jobs programs for skilled craftsmen – and we have few of those jobs programs remaining now that we have steel, concrete, and panel construction.

Worse, when the aristocracy (inheriting sons of nobility) and the church (non-inheriting sonse of nobility), sponsored the arts, they generated competitive demand between nobility for the status provided by the success of artists in their territory. We don’t think of this today, but just as the pyramids still draw tourists, and skyscrapers draw businesses, churches and cathedrals did the same – for obvious reasons. They were one of the primary forms of entertainment, information, and educastion of the day.

So, as for the price of labor, today, an painter for example must keep some number of paintings – say, six to twelve, in one or more galleries, at a price of 1500-3500 each (just as an average). That means a successful artist must turn over a dozen works per year just to make 40k in income, and only about two thirds of their works are likely to sell at stated prices – some just sit in inventory. So that means at best an artist gets 100 hours per painting including all the related work to that painting – including just thinking about sketching whatyou’re going to paint.. Just to produce enough supply to feed the channel. It’s not an economically viable job. For this reason, over ninety percent of artists lose money. This was’t true of craftsmen before 1880.