The Artist Starving in the Garret

As John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in Economics and the Public Purpose people of conventional mind tell artists that true art being appreciated by the few, "success" injurious to the true artist, and that they ought to not hope for worldly success, contenting themselves with being "unworldly and monkish figure[s]." Galbraith, of course, is sufficiently intelligent and honest (it was possible for an Establishment figure to be that back then) that this is an essentially dishonest and self-serving view promulgated by an elite uninterested in lending artists any support whatsoever--but all the same, just as with the other self-serving stupidities of the powerful the view has been so pervasive as to form what Professor Galbraith called "conventional wisdom," giving us the image of the artist starving in a garret for the sake of creation.

One irony of the situation is that the artist may be even more averse to poverty than others, not less--and, as Henri Murger explained in his most famous book, only "walking the paths of Bohemia" in the hope of reaching someplace better, suffering poverty now in the hope of opulence later. (It's not the journey but the destination that counts, especially as the journey offers little but insecurity and hardship.) This is likely even more the case in the age of mass media shoving images of opulence in one's face all the time, and a cult of celebrity telling everyone "You can do it too!"--all as that thought is perhaps the sole comfort making bearable the extreme inequality with which they live, with the taboo against admitting it only underlining how much this is the case.