"Marry rich"

This old-timer at my work asked if I was a student the other day.
"Naah, I don't like school. I'm an artist. I write and I draw and sometimes other stuff. Sometime I teach."
"My advice for you as an artist is to marry rich," he tells me.
"Naah, I don't think so. Being an artist, a partner has proved to be very useless."

I think of Marina Abramovic's interview with The New Yorker Presents:
Ariel Levy : ... there's some man artist working at 4 in the morning, and he has his girlfriend come and give him hot soup in the middle of the night in his studio, right?

Marina : And which woman great artist gets the hot soup? Nobody know that women do not get the great hot soup. Is complete disaster.
No hot soup.

"I don't need money," I tell him. "I can make money. I want someone to bring me some soup."