Abstract
Understanding artists through their income is not an easy task : the diversity of forms of artistic activity, as well as the multiplicity of statistical sources, pose challenges to this type of approach. Artists are distinguished from other workers by their more frequent recourse to multiple employment. They may have several employment contracts and/or several employment statuses : salaried, non-salaried or artist-author. Given the alternation between salaried activity and unemployment, some artists may also combine salaried income with unemployment insurance benefits. A number of methodological problems can arise when studying artists' income : identification of artists varies according to the source used, representativeness of artists in certain public statistics surveys, difficulty in obtaining an overall view of artists' income.
