The Starving Artist

That damned Van Gogh. Sold only one painting in his lifetime, but now his work commands millions. Exhbitions sell out. There’s a very popular museum dedicated to him in Amsterdam. And every artist, I’m telling you every damn artist of any kind who has ever lived since Van Gogh’s time, has said to her- or himself at one time or other, “I’m starving. Can’t sell a thing. Nobody’s interested. But that’s okay, because I’m the new Van Gogh.”

That way insanity lies. Literally. Look at Van Gogh.

The Starving Artist Myth is a lie twice over: it’s a lie we tell to ourselves, which is bad enough; but it’s also a lie that the established powers like to reinforce, because it benefits them when you feel like you have to come to them on bended knee. If you’re starving, you’re desperate. If you’re desperate, then any time you’ve got a new project to sell, you’ve already got your hand out, you’ve already got desperation in your eyes. Brian Michael Bendis, among others, tells us to “Always be prepared to walk away from a bad deal.” But if you’re a Starving Artist, you don’t dare walk away from any kind of a deal--and with that kind of attitude, it’s a cold certainty that the only deals you’ll be offered will be bad ones.

Once you’ve bought into the myth, then, you find that it’s self-reinforcing, a snake eating its own tail. And the trouble is, you can’t just walk away from all deals altogether, tempting though that may be. Kafka was a typical starving artist, who bought into that way of thinking entirely. He sold very little during his lifetime, and when he died, left instructions with his executor to burn everything he’d written. Kafka, clearly, wrote for himself, and that’s fine so far as it goes—but art without public display is just, let’s face it, aesthetic wanking, and I think we are all grateful that Kafka’s executor decided to ignore his friend’s dying wish. (‘Cause in this rare case, that was some pretty damn good wanking.) (And there is a metaphor that has now been extended way too far....)

There are people like Mark Lipsky who have gone whole-hog for the starving artist mindset as a requirement for creating good art. In his blog he wrote that “commerce has no role – or at least should be the absolute last thought rather than the first, second or tenth – in the independent filmmaking process.” In other words, the only reason Van Gogh’s stuff is any good, the only reason it’s worth millions now and adored worldwide, is that he never compromised by indulging the interests of any potential benefactors he might have gained if he’d just been a little more, y’know, compliant.

(Lipsky, by the way, is an interesting case: he’s someone who came out of the very commercial movie world, having worked on a lot of Eddie Murphy films, from the good to the awful. I suspect that his newfound zeal for ultra-pure indie film is delivered with the passion of the converted, a kind of religious fervor with which one cannot argue. C’est la vie.)

But Lipsky’s line of reasoning ignores another artist named Shakespeare. (To pick only the most prominent example.) Shakespeare was subsidized throughout his entire career, first by Queen Elizabeth’s chamberlain and then by King James directly. It’s also well understood that these subsidies came with certain costs: the reason why Banquo comes off so well in Macbeth is that King James claimed to be descended from, yes, that same Banquo. (In Holinshed’s Chronicles, Shakespeare’s principal source, Banquo is an accomplice of Macbeth’s.) And in his time, Shakespeare was popular and acclaimed, and when he retired he was able to purchase a very nice property back in Stratford, not to mention a coat of arms for the family.

Was Shakespeare necessarily a hack because he compromised? Must we dismiss his work because it doesn’t meet some starving-artist purity test? Hell no.

Let me assert as clearly as I can: selling your work does not make you a sellout. Wanting to sell your work does not make you a bad artist. Developing the marketing skills to sell your work effectively does not, by some weird law of inverse proportion, turn your art into bad art. We’re rich, complicated individuals full of potential, and we can in fact do both without sacrificing a damn thing.

No one can help you if your art is bad art. No one would have cared if the work that Kafka’s executor rescued wasn’t good. In this, Mark Lipsky is right: your first job is to make good, creative, risk-taking art. But I must insist that that is not your exclusive job. And art that never makes it into the public arena is just plain worthless. If you buy into the Starving Artist Myth, you will be depriving yourself of the opportunities you deserve, you will be short-changing the art you pretend to care about, and you will be denying the world of a voice that the world needs to hear. A double-edged lie that produces a triple-edged catastrophe. Banish the Starving Artist from your thinking, get out there and create, then work just as hard to make sure that you can share that creation with as many of the rest of us as you possibly can.

And for god’s sake, have a nice meal now and then. You deserve it.