Does Having a Day Job Mean Making Better Art?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/t-magazine/art/artist-day-job.html

by prismatic • 8 years ago

45 28 8 years ago

nytimes.com

anotheryou2• 8 years ago

work, eat, sleep, repeat—an uninspiring 9to6 job does not help getting art done

kleer0012• 8 years ago

unless your job IS making art, then you're golden

anotheryou2• 8 years ago

if it's the art you want to make, yes :)

automoton1• 8 years ago

In my life, at least, there is still some time between eat and sleep that allows for the creation of personal art. Sometimes other things get in the way, but I think that if you've got the energy and motivation you can still get it done.

bobowzki• 8 years ago

Paywall. Can someone provide a summary?

combatentropy• 8 years ago

Many artists had day jobs. For example, the composer Philip Glass was a plumber, the poet William Carlos Williams was a doctor. The article explores whether a day job gets in the way of your art or feeds it in some way.

TheOtherHobbes• 8 years ago

And a very silly article it is too, because the confirmation bias is absolute.

We never hear of talented artists whose careers were sunk by job slavery, because their stories will never get media attention.

goldenkey• 8 years ago

We all know struggle is a prelude to strong beliefs. And that much of quality art relates to the struggles of the common man. So why should this be of any surprise?

8390832• 8 years ago

The article is about the creators of “static” art: writers, composers, and artists. Having a day job would affect actors, musicians, or dancers, much like it would affect athletes. The artistic fields that require “dynamic” performance need the hours spent on muscle memory.

asdf1234tx• 8 years ago

Live performance art can indeed impact time resources. But so can other kinds of art at intensive levels.

Indeed I have known, as you call them "static" artists, and "dynamic" artists (poor dividing lines for this conversation), that were so enveloped that they had no time for a day job, career, marriage, or children.

But I know far more artists that have plenty of time for additional choices, such as job, career, marriage, children, leisure, etc.

Back to the original point, I don't find myself engaging readily with people who don't know, or understand, profoundly difficult physical labor, and profoundly difficult mental labor.

Both are character shaping. So an artist who is lacking one or the other, I don't find accessible. It doesn't mean that we are all busy all the time, working and thinking hard, it just means that at some point in life, having gone through that deeply impacts a person.

Throw in a little philosophy, introspection, and reflection, and those kinds of artists can produce static or dynamic (to use your words) art that really pulls one in, and demands engagement.

8390832• 8 years ago

I didn’t like “static” and “dynamic” but they were the best words I could come up with quickly. Mostly I mean that the performative arts involve a physical skill component that will be hard to develop without the sheer hours. Introspection and character-building are also necessary but less primary, and the threshold for technical skill rises as the amount of originality required decreases. Compare standards for classical music and ballet to jazz and modern dance. The expectations for a top violinist or ballerina are essentially those of a figure skater or gymnast.

None of this is to say painting and sculpting don’t require skill, but I’m not sure Picasso or Van Gogh would’ve been able to show their genius if they had to be Bob Ross and do it live every time.

jadedhacker2• 8 years ago

NYT is always pro-working for people with money. Art freed from working works against the system as a whole because it shows other ways of being and thinking are possible.

I'm sure there's something to artists living and working among the rest of us to make the art relevant, but it doesn't need to be on an employer's schedule or in the quantity they demand.

EDIT: For instance, having a job allows an artist to be a mirror of the current society, but does it help them look beyond it? Maybe, maybe not.

EDIT 2: Note this article is not by an artist for artists. It's aimed at non-artists.

UenoHDTV803• 8 years ago

Please help me understand. You're saying the NYT has some agenda to keep artists from quiting their day jobs? If so that seems implausible.

For many artists there is no other choice. Art won't pay the bills but for a small few. I for one enjoy the freedom that comes with having a day job. I don't have to worry if people will like my art (because it doesn't need to make money) And I often get good ideas for writing and music when completing some monotonous task in the office.

About your first edit... I think it's absurd to think you need to be jobless in order to question society. In fact, having a job gives you a front row seat to everything wrong with us.

jadedhacker2• 8 years ago

Please help me understand. You're saying the NYT has some agenda to keep artists from quiting their day jobs? If so that seems implausible.

NYT doesn't specifically have it out for artists, they just are owned by capitalists and advocate the viewpoint that labor should be subservient to capital. Therefore they tend to publish viewpoints that are aligned with their internal ideology. They do publish some dissenting views, but by fraction this is their predominant viewpoint. If you'd like a sophisticated and detailed analysis of this, please read or watch Manufacturing Consent, a seminal work in this area.

For many artists there is no other choice. Art won't pay the bills but for a small few. I for one enjoy the freedom that comes with having a day job. I don't have to worry if people will like my art (because it doesn't need to make money) And I often get good ideas for writing and music when completing some monotonous task in the office.

Note that this conception of freedom is bound up within the capitalist system. People that do not labor for wages are strangled until they comply. It can be that the particular conditions of wage labor are suitable for your individual situation. That is fine, but is not a comprehensive view of how art and society should interact. Real freedom would be for you to be able to work on your art as you please without want for shelter, food, or transport. Public funding of the arts is one way we can help create those conditions for artists.

It's considered notable that the British system of the dole is what created the conditions for the Beetles to develop. If you want really good art, you have to let artists practice their craft consistently.

About your first edit... I think it's absurd to think you need to be jobless in order to question society. In fact, having a job gives you a front row seat to everything wrong with us.

That's exactly what I said. Having a front row seat allows you to be a mirror of society and allows you to develop particular kinds of criticisms. However, it is not the bounded conception of all possible kinds of art, many if not most kinds of art have nothing to do with developing a mirror. Instead, perhaps they imagine something totally different. Even producing a mirror does not necessarily require participating every day. Many times, just a taste is enough to develop an idea. Interviewing people can help you develop ideas. Importantly, the latter is inhibited if you have other things to do.

ruminasean• 8 years ago

I had the best of both worlds, working as a photographer and in a lighting gig in TV with enough downtime to do all the work on what I shot when I wasn't working. Then, the photography thing took off, the lighting gig got crazy busy and my other other job got crazy too. Now I'm so tired I can't even think about working on photos and I never get time off. Be careful what you wish for....

costcopizza• 8 years ago

As an aspiring songwriter with a 9-5 the main benefit is simply providing a time constraint that forces you to work.

1337biz• 8 years ago

I can totally understand this. This would be the main problem for me about freelancing. Too much freedom turns me into a hobo hermit.

btrettel• 8 years ago

Unfortunately intellectual property (IP) contracts make the lifestyle described in the article difficult for engineers and programmers. Work on something in your spare time that is plausibly related to work your company does? Too bad, your company owns it, usually. (I plan to negotiate on this point when getting a job offer in the future.)

I wouldn't be surprised if such policies were shown to be negatively correlated with innovation (however defined), because they remove much incentive to generate good ideas.

beebmam• 8 years ago

I made the best "art" of my life when I was unemployed living at home taking care of my elderly father.

However, I also believe that software engineering is an art, not just the programming part, but the communicating/organizing/planning part as well. It's hard to compare the two

biztos3• 8 years ago

As one of the (perhaps many) artists here with day jobs in software, I read this with interest. I was a bit disappointed but, given it's the NYT, unsurprised there wasn't more about the primary reason most artists have day jobs in the first place: the art, more often than not, doesn't pay; and some of us need to make rent just the same.

I would not say being a software guy has, by itself, had much influence on my art practice so far, though I may yet end up mixing the two disciplines. But I will say that having a reliable, full-time day-job over the years has hugely influenced my artistic productivity and not for the better. Other artists-with-day-jobs I know would almost certainly echo this.

However, for better or worse I chose this path because I didn't want the kind of financial insecurity I saw as a likely risk of trying the "professional artist" path. In retrospect I think I was only half right about that.

On the one hand, a good number of the successful artists I know have other money and also connections such that their worst-case scenario would have been falling back to a fancier version of my life. On the other hand, now that I'm 20-odd years into it I see that a lot comes to you from just staying in the game, and there are ways of balancing the "work" against the "art" that are more favorable to the latter. Figuring this out going forward is one of my big challenges at the moment -- it gets more complicated as your career progresses and you can't just punch a virtual clock anymore.

Purely anecdotal evidence: off the top of my head I can think of seven friends (plus me) who have real day jobs and are also visual artists. One basically gave up painting; two of us are stalled and trying to get started again; one has a job in the art world so is "inside" even during his downtime; and everyone struggles to find time for their art.

Among those I know without day jobs, I'd say about half are more or less broke and half are more or less successful (galleries, museums, etc.). But even among the successful ones there are several who would be broke if not for their partners. I guess I (obviously) still don't like those odds.

matthewwiese2• 8 years ago

Your Hacker News bio doesn't link to any of your art! That very well could be intentional, but if you don't mind I'd be interested in seeing the paintings of a fellow HN regular. :)

Also, I'm sure you're aware that Paul Graham wrote a book titled Hackers & Painters? The short blurb in your bio reads as if the coincidence was intentional, at least.

biztos3• 8 years ago

Yes, the coincidence was intentional, thanks for noticing! I haven't read the book but I loved the famous review[0] of it.

Getting my online portfolio in shape is one of those projects I keep weighing against actually making some new art. A few old pics can be found here, but I have many many more to photograph and put online:

http://web.archive.org/web/20140210041241/http://www.kevinfr...

Also: I don't mean to imply that my writing software has no influence on my artwork -- I've even made a few works of digital art[1], and for a while I was planning to go to grad school in that direction. But I've been programming since I was a kid, and I see "writes code" as a separate thing from "works as a software engineer." I could have made that clearer.

Thanks for your interest!

[0] http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

[1] http://lv8.biztos.com

stephenSinniah• 8 years ago

For me routine kills creativity, I suppose it could work if you're making "consumer art".

Does Having a Day Job Mean Making Better Art?

Related Stories