To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Could you live on this?
MARGARET HEFFERNAN draws attention to a new report on the conditions of financial precariousness facing visual artists
The world’s most economical Taxi by Rogue One
[Boortz47/Flickr]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
ARTISTS are generally thought of as either starving in a garret (La Boheme and all that) or jammy millionaires producing works valued at eye-watering sums (hello, Damien Hirst). But the reality of life in the visual arts is more prosaic and a great deal more worrying, as the publication of Glasgow University’s report into the pressures facing UK visual artists reveals.
The median annual income for self-employed visual artists currently stands at just £12,500, 40 per cent less in real terms than they were earning in 2010. More than half of visual artists take on additional jobs, 51 per cent of which are in non-creative fields.
But even with additional jobs, the median individual earnings for visual artists remains at an unsustainable £17,500. And if you wonder how artists manage to live on such low income, consider that women in the visual arts typically earn 40 per cent less than men.
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