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There are three big reasons why artists are poor:* https://twitter.com/kortizart/status/1355309815933898752
1) Art is undervalued across society, and we internalize that at a young age ("Art is nice, but be sure you have something to fall back on..."). So if you ARE skilled, you have no idea what you're worth, and the people paying you don't know any better, either.
2) The spaces in art where there are actually HUGE amounts of money in play (i.e., what we think of as 'the art world') are completely divorced from skill as a measure of quality...
... and this is because the art world is a speculator's market. And--like the stock market--once you start attaching realistic assessments of value to something, you can't make up unrealistic numbers untethered to reality.
So, this results in a lot of b.s. about the individual 'genius' of an artist, because you can't put a price ceiling on genius. This is why you have artists commanding hundreds of thousands or millions per piece, even if all they did was breathe on it after an assistant made it.
3) There's little or no unionization/collective bargaining available to people in the visual arts. Why does the person who wrote the screenplay make more the person who drew the original character? Because the WGA exists to go to bat for the screenwriter.
*It is more than possible to make a lot of money making art, but each artist is kind of their own island. There's no set way, and society certainly isn't helping them out.
(If I sound bitter about this, I'm not. Because I think it's a situation ripe for change, in part because the existing institutions are unnecessary and not that powerful.)
Oh yeah, the other thing about the 'art world' is that it is completely backwards from all the industries people actually care about--imagine if a recording artist was all about making a single wax record that they sell for a million dollars.
Or if Tom Cruise showed up at a bajillionaire's house to do some acting for him and only him.
Follow-up example for point 3): recently I licensed a piece for use in a movie (can't say what, but it is going to be hilarious). I asked all my art pals with experience in that what the standard rate is and they were all, "I don't know/it varies."
Even where that money comes from to license art might vary from production to production (whether it's part of the set decoration budget, or part of licensing and clearances, or what).
But if you write or act in or direct a movie, what you are paid has industry-agreed minimums and established rules for use rights. Because of unions.
