Within the last 2 weeks, by complete accident I read 3 things

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Within the last 2 weeks, by complete accident I read 3 things that happened to tackle the same theme: in particular the idea that you can't be a part-time artist/part-time businessman, and in general the idea that artists are corrupted by contact with the "real world". Even more in general, trying to sell the "ascetic ideal".

The first is JR, I don't think I need to go into more detail on this one.

The second is Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai. There are multiple angles on the issue presented here. On the one hand you have commercial concerns directly impinging on artistic ones. On the other hand you have a more nebulous fear of getting involved in the "family business" as it would be corrupting.

The third is a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson titled "Man the Reformer". Emerson draws out a quasi-primitivist position, recommending that everyone be a farmer as a solution to the world's problems. But he highlist the artist in particular as damaged by contact with the modern world:

>This is the tragedy of genius,--attempting to drive along the ecliptic with one horse of the heavens and one horse of the earth, there is only discord and ruin and downfall to chariot and charioteer.

Instead:

>Let him be a caenobite, a pauper, and if need be, celibate also.

So...what do you think about this? In my view it's completely and utterly wrong. Let's split the issue into two:

1. Art is corrupted by commercial concerns.
2. The artist is corrupted by contact with commerce.

There are many historical cases that contradict these points. Shakespeare is the big one: a successful businessman, he wrote plays that had to succeed financially. When he left London, he stopped writing.

And just think about how much great art was painted or written or composed on commission.

There's also many superb artists who had day jobs: Kafka, Pessoa, Eliot, Dickens.

On the other hand, how many ascetics have been great artists? Getting involved in the hustle and bustle, living a real life, seems like a necessary ingredient to me. Thoreau could only take Walden so long. Even an anarcho-primitivist "recluse" like Pynchon lives in Manhattan!