Unless they make art works only for their own pleasure, regardless of personality makeup or type and level of intelligence or talent, artists depend directly or indirectly on social structures that provide them support. These may encompass a gamut of mechanisms, processes, institutions or agencies that reward or penalize artistic performance or creation. They range from simple, direct relations between artist and patron to relations of great complexity involving intermediaries, networks and circles (Kadushin 1976, 111; Peterson 1979). Not only do they provide avenues for recognizing talent and innovation and for entry into jobs or commissions, but they also disseminate such new knowledge to broader constituencies, including the publics or audiences for the arts that have become pervasive in modern societies. No matter how much they claim to be unconcerned about them, artists are obliged to gain their favor.

Support structures for the arts may be characterized as a two-way funneling device through which art works move from artist to client, and compensation from client to artist. This is a useful metaphor only if taken in all its complexity. In the first place, cultural support, creation, dissemination, and reception are not merely processes of economic exchange, but symbolic ones as well. Secondly, neither actor on either side of the relationship is merely a passive recipient, but interacts with others in processes of negotiation, selection, and conflict.