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by rocannon
2956 days ago
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> In 1971, Terry Ellis, the co-founder of Chrysalis Records, paid him a flat $1,500 fee for the three paintings which would comprise the album’s artwork It is too bad he didn't negotiate a royalty agreement, but then they might not have given him the work, either. FWIW if he had invested $1000 in the S&P 500 on January 1 of 1972, that investment would be worth about $100K today, according to some online calculators that I tried. Granted, investing is a lot easier, now that online brokerages exist. It was probably not something that many artists did back in the '70s. |
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Generally speaking, and of course with all due exceptions, most painters, even many of those that were later acclaimed as masters, tend to have the need to sell their artwork in order to barely survive, so, besides the missing online brokerage, there would be the issue about the possibility of saving and investing.
Anyway, to provide another easy comparison, the Average Hourly Wage[1] in US in 1970 was around 3.50 US$, while now it is around 22.50 US$, assuming that buying power is correspondent, the US$ 1,500 in 1970 represent something like US$ 10,000, IMHO not that bad for three paintings.
[1] Series Id: CES0500000008 here: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000008