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Comment by nilamo | Hacker News Reader

Most artists don't make enough, though? Isn't that famously well known? Picasso was never rolling in it, burned his paintings to stay warm, and had trouble even eating.

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I think you meant Van Gogh instead of Picasso.

I have forgotten the face of my father, please forgive me.

Worse still, you're perpetuating a debunked myth of a starving artist. 99% of the artists you've heard of were able to support themselves with their craft - those that weren't stopped producing and that's why you've never heard of them (a prime example of survivorship bias). Van Gogh is an extreme outlier.

Last week I also had to burn a Picasso to stay warm.

Picasso was worth $240 million at the time of his death, and that's in 1976 dollars.

Plenty of artists become very, very wealthy.

"Plenty" is kind of vague. How many in total are we talking? 100? 1000? 10k?

Well, how many artists are there in total?

Hundreds of millions. Up to a billion maybe? If you mean people that actually make a living at it, not many.

Art is highly valued it's just a winner takes most market just like sports. A tiny minority make all the money and the rest get nothing.

This seems both a) vague and b) based on a sample size of n=1. 85% of all visual artists in the U. S. make less than 25k/year [0]. Also, don't forget that most artists work in companies (again: visual art), like making story boards for anime etc.

[0] https://www.contemporaryartissue.com/art-world-statistics-ev...

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