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Being Paid in “Exposure” Through History
By Adam Guggemos
Most professional artists are familiar with that particular siren song of promoters, non-profits, new businesses, and the adjacent offering heaps and heaps of audience attention (viral, even) promising untold future work and remuneration, if only this gig, this piece of work, that artistic output, could be free — because “it's not in the budget;” they “didn't plan for it;” it's “for a good cause;” you “want to get your art out there;” and “you do it for the love of the art anyway.”
It is quite clear that this race to the bottom in terms of endeavoring to pay artists little to nothing is a longstanding tradition, with deep investments in simultaneously attempting to convince artists their output is valued... but not *that* valued:
“The members of the Painters Guild in Haarlem, for example, had a debate during the 1630s and 1640s about the desirability of public auctions, raffles, and lotteries, which, according to the guild officials, were ‘extremely damaging to, and disrespectful of, the artist and the art of painting.’ Yet guild members were themselves heavily involved in the illicit practices, and one of the offenders was a former dean, Frans de Grebber, who argued that these outlets stimulated the demand for paintings and could especially benefit young little-known masters.”
Access to the Trade: Monopoly and Mobility in European Craft Guilds in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries - Maarten Prak, Clare Haru Crowston, Bert De Munck, Christopher Kissane, Chris Mins, Ruben Schalk, and Patrick Wallis. Journal of Social History, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 421-452, 2020
So, for artists being subjected to the “soft ask,” know that you are not alone. The historical documentation of being requested to create art “for exposure” dating to the 17th century can more than likely be traced back even farther — to Grog asking Ugg to make cave paintings gratis.
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