Dennis Hollingsworth

Can Artists Ever Truly Be Modest?

As I like to say: Temerity is an occupational hazard for artists.
Check this out:

Among the virtues commonly attributed to artists, modesty, it can confidently be said, is not to be found. In their professional capacity, painters and sculptors may be described as ?visionary,? ?innovative,? and the like. As human beings, however, they are almost always spoken of in pejorative terms. As Rudolf and Margot Wittkower observe in their 1963 book, Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists, ?There is an almost unanimous belief among [laymen] that artists are, and always have been, egocentric, temperamental, neurotic, rebellious, unreliable, licentious, extravagant, obsessed by their work, and altogether difficult to live with.?

They might have added ?vain.?

Born Under Saturn.... a good title...