"Sigmund Freud claimed that artists create to win honor, power, wealth, fame, and love. Art historian and painter Jonathan Weinberg investigates how artists' ambitions interact with their art, and how wealth and celebrity play a role in the artistic process. He also grapples with the modern artist's anxiety about the presence and absence of the self in the work of art. Focusing on extreme moments in the careers of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Walker Evans, David Hockney, Sally Mann, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Alfred Stieglitz, Andy Warhol, and others, Weinberg explores how these individuals struggled to gain or maintain the attention of an increasingly jaded audience."--BOOK JACKET.