The Unsustainable State of Art

HowlRound: If you want to make great art, you must suffer. If you are truly compelled, truly gifted, you will find a way to make art and be heard. So attest our collective wisdom and a handful of recent HowlRound articles. An artist’s poverty becomes a testament to the value of his or her art—an artistic virtue. She crams artistic pursuits into evenings and weekends, to fit around her day-job, because what artist can live on art alone? Young artists, making their way out of increasingly expensive educational institutions into unpaid internships (if they are lucky) and life-long professionals in the field alike stack jobs like coffee cups and unpaid bills. Here we are.