Quote:
Originally Posted by linelle
Something perverse can happen: artists can labor in obscurity in their lifetimes and all but starve, and generations after they die, their work is worth a fortune. It is loved and fought over. That is the most interesting thing about the starving artist to me.
What happens?
|
Part of that is that their critics die off I think. You see the same with science. A theory isn't accepted because it is true so much as that it's opponents (usually with their own theories) die and the next generation is more open minded. Another part is how things work in the time in which they lived. Mozart wrote for patrons for example. Once he was paid the one time for a given composition that was it. He didn't get any more money for that particular piece. In the past (a couple hundred yrs back) a lot of people couldn't read so the market for the written word was smaller. Plus many books were published serially in newspapers back then long before they went into book form, and no doubt the critics back then thought that so and so author was a hack who would soon be forgotten. Dickens was one writer who made his living that way for a while. The author of Varney the Vampire wrote about Varney that way. And true genius often isn't acknowledged when the person is still with us. Sad really.