{{Short description, Artist who focuses on their art above even their own well-being VanGogh Bedroom Arles1

A starving artist is an

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

who sacrifices material well-being in order to focus on their artwork. They typically live on minimum expenses, either for a lack of business or because all their

disposable income Disposable income is total personal income minus current taxes on income. In national accounting, personal income minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income or household disposable income. Subtracting personal outlays ( ...

goes toward art projects. Related terms include starving actor and starving musician. Some starving artists desire mainstream success but have difficulty due to high

barriers to entry In theories of Competition (economics), competition in economics, a barrier to entry, or an economic barrier to entry, is a fixed cost that must be incurred by a new entrant, regardless of production or sales activities, into a Market (economics) ...

in fields such as the

visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual a ...

, the

film industry The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production company, production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre- ...

, and

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a Stage (theatre), stage. The performe ...

. These artists frequently take temporary positions such as

waiter Waiting staff (British English, BrE), waiters () / waitresses (), or servers (AmE) are those who work at a restaurant, a diner, or a Bar (establishment), bar and sometimes in private homes, attending to customers by supplying them with food an ...

ing or other

service industry The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the s ...

jobs while they focus their attention on "breaking through" in their preferred field. The Starving Artists Project describes these artists as those who have not yet broken into their careers. Other artists may find enough satisfaction in living as artists to choose

voluntary poverty Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse

regardless of their prospects for future financial reward or broad recognition.

Virginia Nicholson Virginia Nicholson (née Bell; born 1955) is an English non-fiction author known for her works of women's history in the first half of the twentieth century. Nicholson was born in Newcastle and grew up in Leeds before becoming a television resea ...

writes in ''Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900–1939'':

Fifty years on we may judge that
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer, whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Un ...
's poverty was noble, while
Nina Hamnett Nina Hamnett (14 February 1890 – 16 December 1956) was a Welsh artist and writer, and an expert on sailors' Sea shanty, shanties, who became known as the Queen of Bohemia. Early life Hamnett was born in the small coastal town of Tenb ...
's was senseless. But a minor artist with no money goes as hungry as a genius. What drove them to do it? I believe that such people were not only choosing art, they were choosing the life of the artist. Art offered them a different way of living, one that they believed more than compensated for the loss of comfort and respectability.Virginia Nicholson, ''Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900–1939'', (p. 2); Penguin, 2003.

Cultural depictions

The starving artist is a typical late 18th and early 19th-century Romantic figure featured in many paintings and works of

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

. In 1851,

Henri Murger Louis-Henri Murger (27 March 1822 – 28 January 1861), also known as Henri Murger and Henry Murger, was a French novelist and poet. He is chiefly distinguished as the author of the 1847-1849 book '' Scènes de la vie de bohème'' (''Scenes ...

wrote about four starving artists in '' Scènes de la Vie de Bohème'', the basis for operas entitled ''

La bohème ''La bohème'' ( , ) is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions '':wikt:quadro, quadri'', ''wikt:tableau, tableaux'' or "images", rather than ''atti'' (acts). composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto b ...

'' by both

Puccini Giacomo Puccini (22 December 1858 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long line of composers, s ...

and

Leoncavallo Ruggero (or Ruggiero) Leoncavallo (23 April 18579 August 1919) was an Italian opera composer and librettist. Throughout his career, Leoncavallo produced numerous operas and songs but it is his 1892 opera ''Pagliacci'' that remained his lasting co ...

Knut Hamsun Knut Hamsun (4 August 1859 – 19 February 1952) was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to conscio ...

's 1890 novel ''

Hunger In politics, humanitarian aid, and the social sciences, hunger is defined as a condition in which a person does not have the physical or financial capability to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs for a sustained period. In t ...

'' featured a starving artist as the protagonist. In 1922,

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

wrote a short story called "

A Hunger Artist "A Hunger Artist" (German: "Ein Hungerkünstler") is a short story by Franz Kafka first published in ''Neue Rundschau, Die neue Rundschau'' in 1922. The story was also included in the collection ''A Hunger Artist (collection), A Hunger Artist'' ...

" about a man who seeks fame for his public performances of

fasting Fasting is the act of refraining from eating, and sometimes drinking. However, from a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (before "breakfast"), or to the metabolic sta ...

References

Artists Asceticism Simple living Stereotypes

Cultural depictions

See also

References