Monday October 22, 2007
LOCAL ARTS REPORT. At the New Yorker, James Surowiecki mulls the effect of high rents and prices on the cultural capital of New York, and comes down on the optimistic side:
Currid’s desire to subsidize creativity is understandable, but her insistence that the culture industry is on the verge of crisis is refuted by her own work. Unless you think that network effects in the art-and-culture business are suddenly going to stop mattering, creative people are still going to find ways to make a living here, because they must, in order to succeed. And, empirically, if you look at the history of New York in the twentieth century there is little evidence that a more expensive New York is a less creative New York. To be sure, there was a tremendous artistic efflorescence in the nineteen-seventies, the worst decade of the century for the New York economy. But, in the twenties and the sixties, cultural booms coincided with economic ones, while the explosion in the number of art galleries, bands, and boutiques in the past decade makes it hard to believe that New York is suffering from too little art and culture. It’s true that clusters of industry can fade away—think of what happened to Pittsburgh steel. But New York has been a cultural mecca in good times and bad, and until we hear otherwise it seems likely that the pilgrims will just keep coming.
I take his points, but "the explosion in the number of art galleries, bands, and boutiques in the past decade" is a little misleading. Certainly there are a lot of galleries, but what's the barrier to entry for young, un-networked artists of the sort who stormed the citadels in the East Village of the 80s? There may be plenty of bands, but the number of entry-level Manhattan clubs seems stuck on repeat, with no physical cluster that I know of evolving into a vital scene.
And "boutiques"? That's a weird but telling inclusion, suggesting that in search of a "rule of three" capstone Surowiecki had to go to the commercial arts, which, as I have suggested, is the predominant mode for arts in the City anymore.
In the arts, as in everything else, New York is heedlessly feeding on its seed corn. Big, bright entertainments swell our coffers, but the cost of living makes it ridiculously hard to launch a dance troupe, a theatre company, or any other group endeavor without a huge investment behind it. We can't keep the balloon aloft indefinitely with prestige productions at the American Airlines Theatre. How long can you expect the ambition of newbies to survive on ancient glamor? How long before the artistic capital flows somewhere else?
Here's a useful counterpoint at Broadway & Me (h/t James Wolcott), about the insane price of Broadway tickets in general and Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein in particular:
And it's part of an alarming trend that is turning the cultural world of New York into a gated community. As a kid, poor but culture-crazed, I used to stroll into the Met or MOMA on Sunday afternoons and wander their corridors without paying a cent. Those museums now say that you only have to pay what you wish but the big signs over their ticket booths say you should pay $20 and I can't imagine my younger self daring to walk by them. During one spring college break back in the '70s, I saw seven Broadway shows for $100 bucks. If the price of a single ticket back then had been $100, I wouldn't even have thought of going to one show. And that's the problem. Those of us who love theater want everyone, maybe especially poor theater-crazed kids, to think of theater and art and music as something that is for them.
...In his column last week, New York Post columnist Michael Riedel wrote about how [Mel] Brooks had resigned from the Dramatists Guild rather than pay the 3% of his royalties that all members are assessed (click here to read it). When Brooks brought The Producers to Broadway in 2001, he was hailed as its savior, someone who was leading the musical comedy into a new golden era, who was, as a lyric from the show put it, The King of Old Broadway. As my grandma used to say, you've got to be careful what you wish for.