Yet, even at a time when the benefits of fitness are widely known and when fitness culture is so pervasive that it affects how people dress each morning, it is difficult to find more than a handful of artists who extol their exercise regimen. The reasons for this could be as much cultural as structural. The nightly rounds of drinking at openings, artist dinners, and other social events makes healthy choices difficult, as does a lingering nostalgia for the artist as romantic sufferer, which continues to validate the image of the undernourished, cigarette-smoking waif. There is also the fact that studio life itself can be physically taxing: artists often stand for much of the day; work long hours; and they might have to move heavy sculpting material, canvases, or equipment—all of which leaves little energy for the gym.

Nevertheless, there are artists for whom working out is central to their lives and their work. Of those I spoke with, virtually all report using exercise for cognitive enhancement of the sort described in the various studies.

Hugh Scott-Douglas , for instance, originally began to get fit in order to step off the path of heavy drinking and obesity that art-world socializing had set him on. “What I do centers around thinking and reading and writing,” he tells me, and in the studio “I am making decisions and trying to build a network of thoughts that might eventually produce something tangible; I need to have a clear head.”