Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hi brain Stuff Lauren vocal bomb here. The image of the starving artist is a well known cultural stereotype. But is it simply a stereotype or could the brain chemistry of artists actually be responsible for their tendency towards poverty. An experiment conducted in Germany raises this question and probably the eyebrows
of many artists. As reported in the April issue of the Creativity Research Journal, the researchers sat down twelve artists and twelve non artists and gave them colored images to choose from on a screen, including green images that provided a cash reward. When the green images popped up and were chosen, the non artists brains showed a great deal of activity in the pleasure area that releases dopamine. Brain scans of the artists showed less activity in that dopamine
producing area. The researchers concluded that the artists were less responsive to monetary rewards than other people. It's admittedly a small sample size, but still an interesting result. The authors wrote in the paper. These results support the existence of characteristic neural traits and artists. But do these neural traits mean that all but the most successful artists in fact have low earning potential. First of all, the poverty of
artists may be culturally exaggerated. As a group, artists in the United States have higher incomes than the average American worker. According to census figures analyzed by the National Endowment for the Arts, in the medium income for craft and fine art artists in seventeen was a little over forty dollars per year, or about twenty four dollars per hour, a livable wage by most standards. And second, the nature of the art market makes the life of an artist a
bit less fundamentally secure. This is explained well in the book Art and Value Arts Economic Exceptionalism in Classical, Neoclassical and Marxist Economics by painter and professor Dave Beach. He described how the art market is different from the market for most other goods. Art is not a standard commodity. He wrote, the creation of art, as well as the marketing and purchase of art, are outside the bounds of the regular market. Art is not usually made as a
result of corporate investment. Artists do not generally get an hourly wage for their labor, and the price of art is not set through competition in the same way that other products prices are determined. The art market is different and it shapes the prices artists can set and expect for their labor. Dutch painter and sociologist Hans Ebbing explored the mindset as well as the socioeconomic forces that lead to what he called the admiseration of artists, immiseration meaning
economic impoverishment. He said that for one thing, the art market has a winner take all attitude, and in addition, artists may not have other skills and so remain in the work that they are drawn to. He said that artists also find non monetary creation based rewards in their work. By the way, a bit of perspective, if you earn more than you one thousand dollars a year, you are
part of the richest four percent of the planet. Today's episode was written by Still Simonton and produced by Tyler Clang. If you enjoy our show and want to support us in return for some brainy housewares or people wears, visit our online shop at t public dot com slash brain stuff, and of course, for more on this and lots of other rich topics, visit our home planet, How stuff Works dot com,