The Artist in Society—Problems and Treatment of the Creative Personality.

Abstract

Everyone has ideas about artists, even in the stereotype of appearance with which they are invested; note the common phrase: get a haircut or get a violin . Society alternately lauds and condemns artists. It wants the reflected glory of a handshake when he is accepted or when he makes money via a best-seller, and it wants to persecute him when he espouses new ideas or threatens society's entrenched pomposities. But few understand the artist. And many active as artists have little substance to understand, some even use the image of the artist as license for their own anomy. Among the latter are individuals who are undisciplined in the work of their endeavor, or plainly, too lazy to work while grasping for the fruits which the special image of the artist gives them. The artist as a special individual, at least in his impact upon society, is emphasized by the author