Milton Friedman wouldn’t have approved of a basic-income scheme restricted to artists. He would have argued that restricting the benefit to artists would distort incentives for choosing a profession in a way likely to reduce social welfare, and that eligibility by profession is a “welfare trap”: it’s hard to stop being an artist and start being something else when it means losing your guaranteed income.

But Friedman would have supported a broad basic-income scheme. We know this because he did support one. It was his proposal in 1962 of a “negative income tax” [0] (in Capitalism and Freedom) that gave rise to the movement to replace traditional social welfare programs with simple schemes that just give money to poor people. (This movement led to the Earned Income Tax Credit [1] in the United States.)

Friedman’s negative income tax is equivalent to the contemporary notion of a guaranteed basic income (but not to a universal basic income, as only people earning below some threshold would receive it). Like most economists, Friedman believed that people (even poor people) can typically make their own economic choices better than a government program can make those choices for them. (He was likewise not opposed to redistributive policies per se.) That was the root of his advocacy for market-based mechanisms of organizing the economy.

0. The idea dates to at least the 1940’s, but Friedman’s book is typically credited with popularizing it. See, e.g, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit