University of Chicago economist David Galenson has a paper in the American Enterprise Institute’s Journal, The American, on the relationship between artists and the art market. His thesis is that the renaissance created an unrealistic idea of the artist as above commerce when many artists have used their work to advance themselves in every realm, including financially. He locates the beginning of the idea of the artist as a noble calling here:
Although many artists would be interested in, and motivated by, the prospect of financial gain, the convention that artists should not openly and publicly appear to be concerned with money became a legacy of the Renaissance. Notably, when the French government authorized the establishment of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1648, members of the academy were required to appear to be above commercial activity.The founding statutes included a rule forbidding any member from opening a gallery to sell his work, “Nor to do anything to permit the confounding of two such different things as a mercenary profession and the status of Academician.”6 Katy Siegel and Paul Mattick observed that of course these artists lived by selling their work, “But the higher social status embodied in the work of academic art was expressed by a theoretical disdain for monetary considerations; the fine artist, like the aristocrat who was his ideal customer, worked in theory not for money but for personal and national glory.”7
Arti$ts and the Market (The American)
