ARTS: What does it take to be an artist?

"There's a moment in the Tom Stoppard play Travesties, where an English consular official starts ranting about the role of the artist in society, complaining, "When I was at school, on certain afternoons we all had to do what was called labour - weeding, sweeping, sawing logs for the boiler-room, that kind of thing; but if you had a chit from matron you were let off to spend the afternoon messing about in the art room. Labour or art. And you've got a chit for life." A chit for life. Is that what it is to be an artist? A cushy side-stepping of the grit and slog of the ordinary mortal? A "real-life" exemption certificate?

In Private Views: Artists Working Today, practitioners from across the artistic spectrum, from their 20s to their 80s - painters, photographers, poets, composers, sculptors, playwrights, film- makers, novelists and installation artists - are interviewed to find out what characterises life as an artist in Britain today." Judith Palmer, The (London) Independent

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