Shortly after graduating from art school Alex applied for a government grant for visual artists. Everybody does. It would have been unprofessional not to. He applied because of the money. There are three different types of grants. Each of them offers the artist an amount of money, which is equal to a year's income in a comparable profession. For an artist, however, a grant of this sort represents an income for many years to come, given the low average incomes in the visual arts. No wonder these grants are attractive.

When Alex applied he knew his chances were small. All promising graduates applied; there were four times as many applications as there were grants. So, he wasn't counting on getting one. In this respect, he was not too disappointed when he was rejected. In another and unexpected way, the rejection hit him hard. It hit him in a way no statistical calculus could mitigate. He felt rejected as an artist. Secretly he had hoped for recognition. He had hoped that the most significant organization in the Dutch art world, the government, would say: ‘All right Alex, we know that nobody is lining up to buy your drawings, but we can tell that you’re a real artist. We want you to stay in the field.’

So the grants are not only attractive because of the money. In fact, Alex discovered that the symbolic attractiveness of the grants exceeded their immediate financial attractiveness. Since he did not get the grant, he continued to doubt his right to be an artist. Was he a fraud? He thought (and still thinks) that many unsuccessful artists make bad art. Little would be lost if they just left the arts. Was he one of them? The rejection lowered his selfesteem. He could not hide the doubts he harbored about his own art and that made it all the more difficult for him to find a good gallery. Had he gotten the grant it would have given him wings. The grant is also important in an objective way; for instance, if he could add that to his curriculum vitae it would certainly help convince Dutch gallery owners and collectors of his worth.