Hunger/Want and Art

Do we produce better art/music/literature when we're young and relatively hungry for experience? 

Stated differently: is good art the product of some degree of suffering?  Maybe this is too broad a question.  There are certainly examples of young artists who produced a kind of mega-work early in their career only to fade out later on into the oblivion of mediocrity. 

Another question, then: what variables are most conducive to the production of good art outside of innate skill? 

I'd say, to answer that question briefly, a good artist is highly dedicated to his/her craft, almost to the exclusion of other things, but this exclusionary aspect is probably only an aspect of youth or inexperience--any good art sort of folds in other aspects of life, of brute experience; if a piece of music can show the listener boredom and glee and go back to anger, and do it in a way that condenses the experience successfully, this seems to me like good art. 

There's also the question of accessibility.  Some art takes a while to understand.  What's the threshold of time that distinguishes value?  I don't think, as the knee-jerk reaction might be, that impenetrability is equivalent to good art, but having a history or the type of art and what went into a piece conceptually will certainly aid in appreciating and understanding it.  Having said that, maybe good art should operate on a number of levels of accessibility--a kind of democratic art form?

Another question is about flexibility within the genre.  Good art seems to push boundaries, but in a way that still maintains semblance with the concept of the category in the first place.