Young Adult Predictors and Midlife Outcomes of Male Fine Art Careers

Abstract

The fine artist is often characterized as atypical and as one who persists with an unconventional lifestyle and career pattern because of the satisfaction derived from creating. To persevere with such an unconventional pattern over an extended period requires an unusual person. Can such a person be identified before he or she experiences this career pattern? The current study followed a group of male fine and applied artists over an 18‐year period and identified the young adult and midlife variables that differentiated the two groups. Results indicate that men in stereotypical fine art careers (labeled fluid careers) are more talented, inner‐focused, and less materialistic as young adults than their peers. By midlife, such fine artists also have significantly lower socioeconomic status than those in stable applied art careers, yet are equally satisfied with their lives. The results suggest that men who experience a fluid, fine‐art career are intrinsically oriented.

Enduringness and change in creative personality and the prediction of occupational creativity.

“…A follow-up of young artists from the Chicago Art Institute by Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1976) offered only very modest evidence for the ability of personality measures to predict recognition in the world of art; rather, this study showed the meager rewards and uncongenial complexities of the social system with which artists had to contend. However, subsequent research on male artists of this sample by Stohs (1990) showed that the initial personality data predicted well whether the artist would maintain himself as a commercial artist or persist in the struggle to do his own art, whether recognized or not.…”

Creative artists, career patterns and career theory: insights from the Australian context

“…There is now a considerable body of literature that explores the careers of artists, in terms of recognition that they are very different to typical mainstream careers in other disciplines (Comunian & Ooi, 2015). Stohs (1990, p. 213) refers to the fine artist as ‘atypical and … one who persists with an unconventional lifestyle and career pattern [which] requires an unusual person’. Throsby (2007) evidences the now well-established fact that many artists undertake non-creative work in order to sustain their preferred creative work, while it is also evidenced in the literature that jobs are relatively scarce in the arts and many practitioners are required to undertake multiple job holdings and create their own employment opportunities.…”

Information Strategies of Fine Art Collectors, Gallerists, and Trendsetters

“…All the studies mentioned which analyze the difference between successful and less successful artists either use a crosssectional approach or investigate how the career of the artist has evolved, whether successfully or unsuccessfully. It therefore remains unclear if the differences that were found are the reason for the success of the artist, or if the differences developed because of their success and the public attention and recognition related to it (see also Kogan, 2002;Stohs, 1990), and are therefore socialization effects.…”