Why is a day job seen as the mark of an artist’s failure?

THERE is a scene in the 1996 movie Basquiat where the incandescent young painter (played by Jeffrey Wright) has a handyman gig at a gallery. Willem Dafoe, making a cameo as an electrician, climbs down a ladder and delivers the immortal line: “You know, I’m an artist too.”

Here are the two sides of the myth: the obscure martyr unsoiled by commercial success; and the unbridled genius who cannot help but have it all.

In reality, most artists, even most great ones, also have day jobs. During the late 1950s and early 60s, the staff at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City harboured grand ambitions. Painters Robert Ryman and Robert Mangold were guards, curator and critic Lucy Lippard was a “page” in the museum library, minimalist Sol LeWitt worked the desk and sculptor Dan Flavin ran the elevator. (Miriam Takaezu, an employee in personnel and sister to famous ceramist Toshiko Takaezu, apparently took it upon herself to hire artists.)