"She carried a brief case, of course."

Despite being an artist himself, in his short story "Go East, Young Man" Sinclair Lewis delights in skewering the artsy dilettantes who dominated the American expatriate scene in Paris during the 1920s. Here's one wonderfully wry passage:

Isadora was not a painter. She wrote. She carried a brief case, of course. Once it snapped open, and in it Whit saw a bottle of vermouth, some blank paper, lovely pencils all red and blue and green and purple, a handkerchief and a pair of silk stockings. Yet he was not shocked when, later in the evening, Isadora announced that she was carrying in that brief case the manuscript of her novel.

Actually, Lewis wasn't really picking on artists in particular. During his career he skewered pretty much everybody - businessmen, preachers, urban socialites, small-town provincials. Artists were just one of the many groups on his list.