Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Currey (the Daily Rituals books) provides a diverting overview of how some of history's most celebrated artists and authors supported themselves. He profiles entrepreneurs like Virginia and Leonard Woolf, who worked as journalists and operated their own printing press, and lucky beneficiaries of family money, among them French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, whose profligate spending habits caused his mother to put his inheritance in a trust from which he received installments mostly upon guilt-tripping her. Some artists got by on odd jobs, like painter Grace Hartigan, who used a temp agency to find "work just enough to get through the next month." Others embarked on careers that shaped their art; William Carlos Williams, a physician, gained a fuller understanding of the human condition from his interactions with patients, and writer Kathy Acker's work in the sex industry influenced her transgressive writing. Currey enriches this look at how making art is inextricable from the messy practicalities of the real world with colorful details (American avant-garde composer John Cage originally foraged for mushrooms to supplement his meager diet, became an amateur mycologist, and taught a course on mushroom identification for cash), even if the profile-by-profile structure becomes repetitive. Still, it's an intriguing accounting of the varied realities behind the starving artist myth. (Mar.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In this entertaining work, Currey (Daily Rituals: How Artists Work) explores how artists--philosophers, writers, filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists--have funded their artistic projects. Writing in a conversational tone, he explores the careers and lives of many famous and not-so-famous artists. The book includes an astonishing array of creatives, including Black artists and women artists such as Romare Bearden, Augusta Savage, and Chantal Ackerman. Artists have long relied on financial support from patrons or governments, a situation unchanged since Petrarch's time. Despite having a section called "Family Money," Currey finds that most artists were not wealthy. A few of them, such as Charles Baudelaire, relied on an allowance, which freed them from securing ordinary work. Others had day jobs or parallel careers, like poet John O'Hara, who wrote his famous Lunch Poems while on break from his regular job, working at the Museum of Modern Art. Some artists, such as Petah Coyne, had a parallel, creative career--hers was in advertising--while others had a series of odd or temporary jobs. VERDICT While artists will not find advice on funding their own projects, Currey's tribute is great reading for art lovers and historians.--Chantal Walvoord
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An astute assemblage of biographical sketches highlights how practical circumstances can complicate artistic ambition. Artists, asDaily Rituals author Currey posits, live to pursue their art but still require a roof overhead, food to eat, and supplies for their craft. The tension between making the money necessary for survival and making room for art forms the backbone of this engrossing book. Four sections loosely organize artists into those dependent on "Family Money," "Jobs," "Patronage," and "Schemes." Both Virginia Woolf and Charles Baudelaire received inheritances, but Wolff parceled hers out diligently while Baudelaire spent profligately to the point of destitution. Patronage could be a boon--but the artist might have to shift to suit the patron. Petrarch, for instance, joined the clergy in pursuit of a benefactor. Painters who lived in unheated studios to save money and paint in peace appeal to romantic perceptions of a starving artist. However, the majority of subjects here are white creators from the 19th and 20th centuries, and stories of minority artists like Black sculptor Augusta Savage complicate the book's premise. A unique talent, she taught and supported other minority artists while her own work went unfunded. Non-white artists, faced with the unlikelihood of recognition and profitability in a biased cultural milieu, beg the question: Is the economic pressure experienced by white creatives working in recognized mediums such a tremendous challenge? Since Currey zeroes in on the stories of compelling individuals, broader economic and cultural realities are gestured at rather than explicated. Nonetheless, as an invitation to create--to push up against limits, to squeeze time from the margins of the day, and to live on sardines and crusts of bread if necessary--Currey's case studies may well spark the artistically inclined reader to attend more dutifully to their life's calling. Thought-provoking, interwoven profiles celebrate the creative drive in context. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
