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VOL. 10, NO. 2 
FALL 2021 

 

BOOK REVIEW 

The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to 
Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by 
William Deresiewicz 

Jonathan Kuuskoski 
University of Michigan 

ABSTRACT:  Jonathan Kuuskoski reviews William Deresiewicz’s The Death of the 
Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech. 
DOI: doi.org/artivate.10.2.159 

Critics speak for themselves, but they also speak, or try to speak, for something 
larger than themselves: for the values and ideals, the past and the future, of the 
art itself (p. ). 

Over the last decade, criticism against arts entrepreneurship education has been brewing. This 
criticism is driven by trepidation based on the assumption that  the integration of business-
school models and practice within arts training (ostensibly to more effectively prepare our 
students for professional realities) would subvert artmaking towards calculated, utilitarian ends. 
At worst, the critics say, our efforts feed into the digital age’s arch-capitalist agendas. One of the 
most acidic critiques of arts entrepreneurship came from William Deresiewicz, in his essay in 
The Atlantic entitled “The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur” 
(January/February ). He posited that the identity of the artist—which he defined as having 
evolved over time from artisan to bohemian to professional—was on the precipice of 
transformation into something altogether new. The fourth paradigm was upon us, and it 



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demanded that artists become entrepreneurs. This shift, he believed, signaled the dismantling 
(intentional or not) of artistic identities and practices as we knew them.  

I had the chance to see Deresiewicz speak on the subject at the Three Million Stories 
Conference hosted by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) and Arizona State 
University in March . As part of the keynote panel, he was undoubtedly selected to provide 
counterpoint to the inspirational undertones of the gathering, which brought together hundreds 
of thought leaders from across the country to discuss and analyze best practices surrounding 
career development for arts graduates. I’ll never forget that conversation, not only because 
Deresiewicz was publicly called to task for his views, but also because he hinted then that his 
own next steps on the subject would be to turn his polarizing think piece into a book. It was a 
courageous act to participate in public dialogue with a large group of vocal detractors; one had 
a sense then that he took these questions seriously, that he wanted to go deeper, and that he was 
committed to getting to the truth about whether building a life as an artist today was as viable 
as was being touted. And, at that time, I had a nagging feeling that he was onto something.  

So, it was with great anticipation, nearly five years later, that I picked up a copy of 
Deresiewicz’s follow up book: The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in 
the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech (Henry Holt & Company, ). Would he double down on 
what many had perceived as cynicism, or would he reply in a constructive way to the reflexive 
criticism he had witnessed firsthand? I was pleasantly surprised to find that, as Deresiewicz 
expanded his inquiry, his commitment to truth-telling only deepened. The book’s timing is 
prescient, of course, having dropped in the middle of what is likely the arts’ greatest 
multidimensional crisis of the last century.  

But this book does much more than simply interrogate the myths of artistic career-building 
in a twenty-first century context. It actually pits two contemporary philosophies against one 
another. In one corner sits the techno-positivist mantra that more (and cheaper and more 
convenient) content is better, which is espoused by the modern forces of artistic distribution 
(mostly, but not exclusively, tech companies). Everyone can be an artist, so it goes, and thus 
everyone has a chance to find their audience. Democratizing creativity is essential to unlocking 
the full economic potential of the digital age. 

In the other corner sits the collected voices of artists themselves. Can everyone really 
become an artist? If so, then what does that inevitably mean for the business of artmaking, and 
of training artists to that end? And how has the rise of digitization, along with its partner-in-
crime neoliberalism, changed the actual realities of those who are seriously trying to make a 
living through their creative work? The book explores these questions through a multitude of 
personal stories—representing a cross section of well over one hundred formal and informal 
interviews with visual, literary, musical, dance, theater, film, and television professionals—
embellished by richly detailed commentary from the author.  

Explicating the philosophical disconnect between cultural production and late-stage 
capitalism is nothing new; what sets this book apart is its focus on the individual experiences of 
those on the frontlines of that dichotomy. Yet those narratives aren’t centered around 
debunking entrepreneurship as an educational trope, either. Instead, they investigate something 



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more sophisticated, the question of “how to keep your soul intact and still make a living as an 
artist” (p. ). And, for those profiled, it is clear that the cornerstone rules of today’s 
economy—maximizing utility to crush the competition—just don’t translate.  

Structured across five sections, made up of sixteen chapters in total, Deresiewicz assesses 
the problems at hand from a variety of interrelated angles. The first section explores “The Basic 
Issues,” namely the troubling relationship between art and money today, and the way arts 
workers experience the digital economy as emboldening  extreme pressure. The next section, 
“The Big Picture,” delves into the resultant economic and societal forces that undercut the 
potential for professional artmaking in every way—gentrification, the demonetization of artistic 
content, and the proliferation of prosumerist creatives all fighting for a slice of the pie. Part 
three, “Arts and Artists,” tackles these travails in more detail by profiling twenty-five musical, 
visual, literary, and film and television artists. The fourth section, “What is Art Becoming?,” 
frames the predicament in historical context, and the final section, “What is To Be Done?,” 
focuses on the imperative to advance training paradigms, update intellectual property doctrine, 
and spur public action (in particular, stronger unionization and lobbying efforts) as prospective 
responses to today’s status quo. 

This book is not for the faint of heart. Nowhere else in recent memory has the mythology 
of equal opportunity in the arts been vanquished so cogently. It’s hard not to imagine that the 
artists profiled throughout could be our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends—individuals 
driven by incredible creative energy, yet socially discouraged from voicing any complaints about 
their unbearable day-to-day realities. The choice to use this documentarian journalistic writing 
style, wherein one can almost hear Deresiewicz’s voice narrating off the page, inevitably also 
reveals our culpability in espousing unrealistic expectations for success, while unpacking the 
complexity of what it actually means to survive in the arts today. Spoiler alert: it takes 
tremendous struggle in the face of dwindling upsides. In the midst of this paradigm shift, artists 
seem to feel pressured to value a killer instinct over a collaborative spirit. What a shame. 

The sixth chapter (located in section two), “Space and Time,” is a standout that really hits 
home the compounding effects of these forces on artists’ daily lives. By now it is clear that 
gentrification is symptomatic of capitalism, but that force has had a particularly depreciating 
impact on artists. The author does not mince words in describing the ways money (and, 
naturally, moneymaking) has emerged as the defining feature of the dominant cultural identity 
in America. That is a by-product, after all, of purely economic aspiration—to buy the best house, 
in the right neighborhood, preferably in an artsy part of town. Unfortunately, as a result, artists 
can’t afford to live, let alone create, there. How ironic. And why? Because, by and large, artists 
now have to hustle, at all costs, just to survive. And if you have to stay busy to make it to next 
month, that mentality transforms your existence—with no time to mull, play, experiment, or 
even meet new people, creativity itself is eroding from former cultural centers. For anyone who 
has served to prepare eager, idealistic artists for a career in their field, these are raw, sobering 
observations. 

At some points, though, it feels as though Deresiewicz is biting off more than he can chew, 
relying occasionally on sweeping generalizations about market conditions in order to hit home 



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the larger points that he wants to emphasize from his interviews. For example, while the push 
and pull of major arts hubs is a thread that permeates much of the narrative, one wishes that the 
potential of other, more midsized urban centers was more closely inspected. One might take 
away from this book that artists nowadays cannot survive outside of New York, Chicago, and 
Los Angeles, even as they are squeezed out of those very metro areas. To a degree, that obviously 
rings true. But in order for such an analysis to be productive, one needs to account for the 
inherent paradox. Artists will have to live somewhere, after all. It would have been an intriguing 
counterpoint to discuss more incisively how efforts within cities like Minneapolis and Atlanta 
(among others) have—through combinations of public policy changes, lobbying, and grassroots 
community action—found ways to develop thriving arts scenes despite national trends. 
Certainly, the housing market is a concern across the country, and artists are having a tough 
time in most if not all urban centers. Yet not every artist who develops in a scene outside the 
two or three major hubs feels their only choice is to sacrifice a professional future if they cannot 
afford to relocate somewhere larger. 

More importantly, if we want the arts to permeate our society, we need to foster some 
degree of opportunity for a sustainable artistic life beyond the biggest markets. Acknowledging 
the potential hidden within some of these other cities could have strengthened Deresiewicz’s 
astute observations around the need to reassess what success and sustainability should mean in 
a more localized context (one reminiscent, as the author suggests, of homegrown artist 
communities such as Greenwich Village in the mid-twentieth century). It would have also 
reinforced his final conclusions, which center on social action as perhaps the only viable way to 
stem the converging tides of gentrification, commodification, and cultural erosion. In today’s 
America, any salient cultural response will need to be locally mobilized, driven by communities 
that believe in their arts scenes and are committed to preserving the character of their place. In 
the book’s concluding chapter, he provides numerous examples of arts collectives who are doing 
just that: banding together, pushing back against market forces, and fostering more tenable 
employment and consumption models (in one case, moving beyond the market through a 
barter-based system). Why not include some concrete, forward-thinking public policy models 
that already exist, which the author readily admits should be a part of the very call to action he 
holds us to in his conclusions? 

Similarly, by the time we get to the twenty-five case studies profiled in the third section, we 
already get the point that artists are struggling. The narrative here feels labored primarily 
because the first two sections are also framed around innumerable, expertly curated anecdotes 
pulled directly from dozens of interviews and other primary sources. That said, each chapter in 
this section could suffice as deep-dive, case-study analyses relevant to discipline-specific 
professional development courses. And the introductory portions that frame the (sometimes 
divergent) problems plaguing specific arts subsectors are important; they quantify the personal 
while capturing the real consequences of aggregate market behavior.  

Perhaps this is Deresiewicz’s overarching intent: we are all responsible, as consumers of 
cultural content, to interrogate our habits and their impact on the creative pipeline. Even more 
so as educators preparing artists to create content for the markets of tomorrow. Reiterating the 



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common issues that traverse individual artist stories does position those stakes in a tangible, 
humanistic way. The reader is called to understand that it is not enough to want access to culture 
simply because it makes us feel good. We have to believe artmaking means something more, 
something elemental that fuels how humanity interprets the world. And with that 
understanding comes a responsibility to change a system that keeps artists down. In this regard, 
Deresiewicz proposes ideas that are very relevant to our work in the field of arts 
entrepreneurship pedagogy. It seems imperative that change requires us to get, somehow, to a 
place where we are collectively willing to give something up—unlimited accessibility, our 
subservience to immediate gratification, perhaps more—to rebalance the equation. Can art 
survive? That may only be possible if we can motivate consumers to participate more actively 
in their arts ecosystems, which means paying for quality over quantity, spending more locally, 
and understanding the consequences of our choices. Our training programs are already on the 
frontlines of those advocacy efforts. 

The narrative ultimately drives toward some inevitable conclusions about the need to 
socially organize around workers’ rights, dismantle big tech’s monopolistic power, and advance 
a significant wealth redistribution agenda. But what stands out most prominently, as we 
approach the final chapters, is the way Deresiewicz articulates the evolution of his own criticism. 
Upon further consideration, it turns out, the challenges presented by the fourth paradigm of the 
artist aren’t so symptomatic of entrepreneurship, after all. This is a conclusion he came to, at 
least partially, thanks to interviews with noted arts entrepreneurship practitioners Linda Essig 
and Susan Solt. Instead, here he has latched onto Sharon Louden’s notion of the artist as “culture 
producer,” precisely because it “relieves us of the need to choose between the poles of labor and 
capital . . .” (p. ). Powerful moralistic messaging aside, unpacking the tactics of how we 
leverage this new paradigm, specifically in ways that circumvent our economy’s existing fault 
lines, remains largely a task for another volume. 

Overall, this book is exceptionally detailed in its research, and generally spares no expense 
in unpacking every nuance of its dense and complex subject matter. That said, two 
intermingling points percolate up from Deresiewicz’s final analysis. First, the democratization 
of creativity has watered down artistic output to the point of oversupply, ultimately diminishing 
the rigor with which we evaluate artistic intent and quality. At the same time, that 
democratization has exponentially fed our hunger for disposable, low-cost content, which has 
subsequently driven creators into the ground. We cannot afford to look away as the world 
continues to position artmaking as a nearly impossible profession. We have to work together to 
rethink our priorities as a society. Maybe it’s not just myths about artists that have to go. This 
conversation harkens to the critical, dual role of arts entrepreneurship training today—that of 
reframing what professional development should be while also shaping larger dialogues around 
what we must do to live in a thriving, equitable, and progressive democracy. “To fix the arts 
economy,” he writes, “we need to fix the whole economy” (p. ). 

It is hard to remove the memory of Deresiewicz sitting alone at a circular conference table 
immediately after his conference keynote appearance back in , eating his post-debate hors 
d'oeuvres in silence. One hopes more people will join him at the table this time, because we all 



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deserve a wake-up call. The Death of the Artist is an unflinching look at the realities—scars and 
all—of making one’s way in today’s arts world. It is also a vital piece of criticism that should be 
on the shelves of every aspiring arts practitioner, educator, administrator, and cultural advocate. 


