Early success isn't always good for artists
For the next in our series, No One Told Me, we speak with Lydia Figes, author of a new book on vital lessons from contemporary artists.
By Jorinde Croese
No one leaves art school fully prepared. Between mounting tuition fees, dwindling resources, and the sense that tutors are more like service providers than mentors, many graduates step out feeling unsatisfied and unsupported. For writer and curator Lydia Figes, this tension became a recurring theme while interviewing artists for her book Survival Notes: Life Lessons From Contemporary Artists. What emerged was a chorus of voices, spanning generations, who spoke candidly about debt, disillusionment, and the importance of finding your own path.
The advice was rarely glamorous: take your time, don’t chase gallery representation too young, build resilience against rejection, and look to your peers for support as much as to teachers. Again and again, artists stressed that being “successful” too early can limit creative freedom, while what sustains a career in the long run is determination, authenticity, and community. And while these insights are rooted in the art world, they resonate far beyond it: lessons in patience, perspective, and the freedom to fail are just as vital for anyone trying to build a creative life.
This post is part of No One Told Me, a series of sharp, thoughtful conversations exploring how to build better creative careers, with insights from experts across design, psychology, philosophy, and business.
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I think there’s a lot of interest in big lessons from artists. When did you start reporting specifically on this?
Lydia Figes: It originally started because I was the editor of an arts platform and I proposed that we do a series interviewing emerging and established artists. To lighten the interview at the end, I’d always ask, “What advice would you give to a younger artist today?”
Artists wake up when you ask them that question. They get really animated. I think they appreciate the opportunity to pass advice to younger people, especially for the artists who did really well commercially or institutionally in the 90s or early noughties; people like Antony Gormley, Conrad Shawcross, Tracey Emin, Wolfgang Tillmans and Ryan Gander. Some weren’t even paying tuition fees, or received generous grants to study. You could survive in London on relatively little as the cost of living was less than it is now. There was also a lot more money circulating in the economy for the arts, and as a result, there were more opportunities.
Let’s talk a bit about art school. Through your reporting, what do you feel is broken in the art school system at the moment?