Starving artist

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A starving artist is an artist who makes sacrifices in order to focus on their artwork. They live on minimum expenses, either for a lack of business or because all their disposable income goes towards art projects. Some starving artists want to break into the mainstream but have difficulty due to the high barriers in art such as visual arts, film industry, and theater. These artists also live on minimum expenses taking temporary positions (such as waiter) while they focus their attention on breaking through in their preferred field.

A "starving artist" is a typical figure of Romanticism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and is seen in many paintings and works of literature.

Henri Murger wrote about four starving artists in Scènes de la Vie de Bohème. The book is the basis for the operas La Bohème (Puccini) and La Bohème (Leoncavallo).

Franz Kafka wrote a short story called A Hunger Artist in (1924). This story is about a man who is world-famous for his public performances of fasting.