Think You're Failing as an Artist? You Need to Read This.

A Quick Foreword on My ‘Failed’ (or Maybe Successful?) Career

My career has been a patchwork of design, art, technology, and research. I interned in furniture design at 20, worked in exhibition design, interior design, graphic design, interaction design, and more. Now, as a mother of two, I consult as a UX designer and researcher, work on my public art, and write my Substack. I’m 45, with a portfolio that includes more than my fair share of failed projects and companies. I often find myself questioning whether I’ve failed or succeeded.

There’s a tension between my understanding of success and failure: On one hand, I’ve achieved a freedom that lets me call my work art, pursue diverse creative projects, and not be confined to a traditional career path. On the other, I grapple with the reality that I’m not financially where I thought I’d be and wonder if my varied career is a collection of successes or failures. This constant push and pull between the fulfillment I find in creative freedom and the practical realities of financial stability often leaves me questioning what success truly looks like.

Blue Print by Shagun Singh

Failure in the Arts

Failure in the arts can strike at any point in the process—from the initial idea to the final reception. One of my most crushing experiences came from a sculpture I created for a major event. The piece, designed to float on water, submerged the day before the big day. I lost money, credibility, and my sense of self-belief, leading me to seriously consider leaving the art world altogether. Yet, here I am, ten years later. In her article¹, Kaleidoscopic Failure: The Regularity, Repetition, and Patterning of Failure in the Arts, Rachel Skaggs, from the Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy at Ohio State University, explores the trope of the "starving artist" and how it often overshadows more nuanced discussions of failure—beyond just the financial aspects.

It’s important for artists to recognize that they are working in a field where the supply of talent far exceeds the demand. This imbalance creates an intensely competitive environment in which rejection and failure are common.

Artists who are isolated often experience failure more acutely and may respond in self-destructive ways, unlike those who have access to mentors or belong to occupational communities. These communities can play a crucial role in reframing failure—not just as an obstacle, but as an essential part of the creative process, offering insight into what it truly means to build, break, and begin again.

While all artists encounter failure, it's crucial to understand it as a normal and expected part of their field. Shifting the focus from personal self-doubt to a broader awareness of how art worlds operate can offer perspective and resilience. Researchers often study artistic trajectories because they offer a compelling insight into resilience—specifically, how artists recover and grow from failure. Failure in arts is also not final because artworks and artists rise from obscurity all the time.

While artists internalize failure and frame it through narratives of luck, risk, or resilience, it is helpful to zoom out: failure is often engineered by systems and norms. Some artists are set up to fail more often—and more quietly—than others. Failure in the arts isn’t just personal or random, it’s patterned. These patterns are not only recognizable, but they’re also shaped by institutional conventions, economic structures, and systemic inequalities. In short: who gets to succeed, and what gets recognized as art, is never neutral.

Different types of Capital

When we try to understand why some artists don’t succeed, it helps to think about how they gain—or don’t gain—different kinds of “capital.” And here, “capital” doesn’t just mean money. It also includes:

• Economic capital (money and financial resources)

• Human capital (skills and education)

• Social capital (connections and networks)

• Cultural capital (reputation, recognition, and knowledge of the art world)

Studies that focus on successful artists show that these people often have access to more of these kinds of capital—and they’re good at trading one kind for another. For example, someone might use their social connections (social capital) to get a gallery show, which boosts their reputation (cultural capital), which can lead to more sales (economic capital).

The Swan (No. 16), Hilma af Klint, Creative Commons License

On the flip side, artists who are considered “failures” often didn’t gain enough of these capitals, or couldn’t exchange them in helpful ways.

For example, Hilma af Klint was a Swedish painter who made abstract art in the early 1900s—years before artists like Kandinsky or Mondrian, who are usually credited with inventing abstraction.

But during her lifetime, she didn’t gain recognition. Why?

She lacked key forms of cultural capital:

• Her work didn’t fit the dominant art trends of her time.

• She was a woman in a male-dominated field, so her work wasn’t taken seriously.

• She didn’t exhibit much publicly and even asked that her work not be shown until 20 years after her death.

So even though she had human capital (artistic skill, formal training) and economic stability (she had family support), her work wasn’t valued or exchanged in the art world during her life.

But in the last few decades, things changed:

• Scholars and curators began re-evaluating who gets credit in art history (cultural capital shift).

• The art world became more open to spirituality, feminism, and historical rediscovery (social and cultural capital revaluation).

• A 2018 retrospective of her work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York drew massive crowds and acclaim (cultural + economic capital boom).

Suddenly, Hilma’s “failure” was reframed as being ahead of her time. Her work gained new value across all forms of capital. Even though she wasn't successful during her life, the potential for her work to be re-integrated into the art world existed because her ideas could eventually be exchanged for cultural and economic value.

So in her case, failure wasn’t terminal—it just needed a different moment in time and a shift in what the art world was ready to recognize.

This so called failure in the arts isn’t necessarily the end of the road. One reason is that these kinds of capital can often be turned into each other. So if an artist builds strong relationships or gets new skills, they might be able to bounce back, even if they’ve struggled before.

Reframing Success in the Arts

Artists often don’t just have one job—they juggle many different roles at once. This could include freelance work, side gigs, teaching, personal art projects, or contract jobs. This way of working—called self-structuring, multiple jobholding, or polyoccupationalism—is a key way artists keep going, even if they’re not successful in all areas. This could be looked at as a failure for not being able to an artist who lives off of their art.

But Laura Adler’s research² flips that idea on its head. She argues that these jobs can actually strengthen an artist's commitment to their craft—they reinforce their identity as an artist and keep them connected to their art practice. Making money or getting recognition—can look different depending on the artistic community you're part of. Different art fields and circles have their own standards of success and taste:

• In one community, an artist might be seen as a failure if they can't sell their work.

• In another, they might be respected for how they contribute to the field, even if they aren’t making a lot of money.

Ultimately, an artist’s success or failure is often not just about economic capital, but about how they leverage and exchange cultural capital (their artistic vision and reputation), social capital (their network and connections), and human capital (the skills they develop). So in the end, an artist can fail in one aspect (like not making money from art³) but still succeed in the broader context, especially if they’re building and exchanging other forms of capital in ways that matter within their particular art world.

The arts are full of risk, and not everyone stays in them professionally. But many still create, participate, and support the arts in meaningful ways. The idea of failure needs to be understood more broadly—not as an end, but as a shift in direction. And perhaps we need to rethink what “success” even means in creative lives.

In truth, art worlds are built on collectives, interactions, and shared cultures—not just individual talent or grit. Recognizing this helps shift the focus away from “did you make it?” toward “how do you stay in it, despite the odds?”

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379362033_Kaleidoscopic_Failure_The_Regularity_Repetition_and_Patterning_of_Failure_in_the_Arts

2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0730888420949596

3. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0730888413502059#:~:text=What%20Happens%20to%20Artistic%20Aspirants,Lindemann%2C%202013