For our present purposes, however, we want to consider active and living artists, those who allow themselves the opportunity to experiment, to create new vistas, to make political statements, or to struggle with issues in self-identity. These are individuals who garner a living and manage their business affairs. They exhibit their work widely and in innovative venues, maintain integrity of passion and vision, and engage society and our various communities in diverse ways. They continue to cultivate new ideas and images, and share these undertakings actively with the world. Such models of accomplishment should be used as exemplars in education for teaching artists about the business of art.
Artists live in the same world as everyone else.
They eat, they sleep, they rent studios, they buy materials, they sell their work and pay taxes. They drive cars, they have children and live in houses and apartments and they take vacations. Some will say that there is a conflict between artists' creative visions and the mundane need for money, and this may be one reason our faculties of art and art colleges do not embrace business as an essential element in art education. This belief holds that artists must follow their visions and intuitions, or their true value will be lost. Some believe that the nature of art is so private and personally compelling that artists must be free from external demands, or they will not be able to pursue their creative compulsions.