I drove by a “Starving Artists” cafe the other day, or something like that. I got to thinking: why does the stereotypical starving artist starve? Why not get a real job? What is the point?
As I see it, there are a few answers. One is vanity. These people want to be recognized as the geniuses they believe themselves to be. This is common enough the world over in all trades. Their need to feel important trumps their need to secure a secure living. Most people who major in English feel superior to those who major in business, in my observation. But they aren’t.
Changing the world for the better. This happens seldom enough in art, but it does happen.
A genuine belief that the talent will eventually pay. This is the mindset of the entrepreneur.
Pleasure. It seems to me that this is perhaps the best answer: you simply enjoy doing what you do so much that you prefer poverty to abandoning it.
Edit: two more I might add would a be an inability to be happy NOT doing art, which is probably a subcategory of pleasure; and an inability to do normal work due to mental defects, which seems to have been the case for many better known artists in the modern era.