Stories of struggle have become a normalized way to talk about the difficulty of earning a living from creative work in a post-crisis economy, but does telling these stories do any good, or play any role in helping artists find their feet in economically stagnant times?
We’re living in an era where fame does not mean fortune, despite dominant perceptions that achieving visibility equates with financial success. Essayist David Rakoff lampooned the “old fantasy of carnal chaos of drop cloths, easels, turpentine, raffia-wrapped Chianti bottles holding drippy candle ends, and cavorting nude models,” highlighting instead how painful, tedious, and lonely artistic work can be.
Making art “requires the precise opposite of hanging out” and is often “a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out,” characterized by a “lack of financial security and the necessary hours and hours of solitude spent fucking up over and over again.”
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Miranda Campbell, Culture Isn’t Free
from Stowe Boyd http://stoweboyd.com/post/132265495647
