What Doesn't Kill You... Gives You Art

An Enneagram Perspective on the "Starving Artist"

The relationship between suffering and the creation of art is no great secret. The “starving artist” motif has been around for more than 250 years, showing up in various texts throughout the turn of the twentieth century and infiltrating our culture into the present day. The notion that one must expect to sacrifice material comforts and endure a degree of suffering to pursue art has been largely normalized and even romanticized.

But is there anything substantive to this association? Aside from widespread cultural devaluation of the humanities, which has been the subject of both public and academic discourse countless times, we can explore the entanglement of suffering and art through an Enneagram lens. I think it’s time we discuss the correlation between art and Type Four, and why artistic expression is so entwined with the type.

Photo by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash