In Praise of Commercial Culture
Tyler Cowen
Acknowledgments:
I have received an unusual amount of assistance with this book. First I
would like to give special thanks to Michael Aronson for his work as
editor. A number of other individuals also have been of special help,
including Colin Day, Martin Kessler, Daniel Klein, Thelma Klein, and Titus
Levi. Andrew Levy gave especially useful comments on the literature
chapter and Eric Lyon gave especially useful comments on the music
chapter. Several anonymous referees offered very useful feedback as well.
I also would like to thank Michael Aronson, Andrea Rich and Thomas
Schelling for their encouragement and support during the publication
process. I also have received useful comments from Milton Babbitt, William
Baumol, Marvin Becker, Mark Blaug, David Boaz, Peter Boettke, Peter Brook,
Meyer Burstein, Penelope Brook Cowen, Jerome Ellig, Joel Foreman, H. Bruce
Franklin, Jeffrey Friedman, Elisa George, Richard Goldthwaite, Dan Green,
Kevin and Robin Grier, David Henderson, George Hwang, Tom Jenney, Paul
Keating, Alvin Kernan, Susanne Kernan, Paul Korshin, Randall Kroszner,
Timur Kuran, Don Lavoie, David Levy, John Majewski, Julius Margolis,
Carrie Meyer, John Michael Montias, Fabio Padovano, Pamela Regis, David
Schmidtz, Daniel Sutter, Alex Tabarrok, Turok of Turok's Choice, Karen
Vaughn, Fred Wall, Katarina Zajc, Marty Zupan, and seminar participants at
New York University and the Institute for Humane Studies. I wish to thank
Richard Fink, Charles Koch, and David Koch for assistance with funding,
through the Center for Market Processes and the Koch Foundation. General
thanks are due also to Walter Grinder and Roy Childs. Katarina Zajc and
Sarah Jennings provided invaluable research assistance.
Reader feedback is welcome. I can be reached at Department of Economics,
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, or tcowen@gmu.edu.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Arts in a Market Economy
2. The Market for the Written Word
3. The Wealthy City as a Center for Western Art
4. From Bach to the Beatles: The Developing Market for Music
5. Why Cultural Pessimism?
There is no great work of art which does not convey a new message to
humanity; there is no great artist who fails in this respect. This is the
code of honor of all the great in art, and consequently in all great works
of the great we will find that newness which never perishes, whether it be
of Josquin des Pres, of Bach or Haydn, or of any other great master.
Because: Art means New Art
Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea, Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg
(London: Faber and Faber, 1975), p.115.
I have many times asked myself, not without wonder, the source of a
certain error which, since it is committed by all the old without
exception, can be believed to be proper and natural to man: namely, that
they nearly all praise the past and blame the present, revile our actions
and behaviour and everything which they themselves did not do when they
were young, and affirm, too, that every good custom and way of life, every
virtue and, in short, all things imaginable are always going from bad to
worse.
Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier{London: Penguin Books, 1967
[1528]), p.107.
1. THE ARTS IN A MARKET ECONOMY
Does a market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the
visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the
pursuit of creativity? I see commercial enterprise as encouraging cultural production for the same reasons that
non-pecuniary enjoyments tend to rise in wealthier and more productive
societies. This book will present some social mechanisms that link
markets, wealth, and creativity (chapter one), examine how these
mechanisms have operated throughout cultural history (chapters two through five), and attempt to account for
the widespread perception that modernity suffers from a cultural malaise
(the concluding chapter five).
I seek to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and
encourage a more favorable attitude towards the commercialization of
culture that we associate with modernity. I portray the capitalist market
economy as a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for
supporting a plurality of coexisting artistic visions, providing a steady
stream of new and satisfying creations, helping consumers and artists
refine their tastes, and paying homage to the eclipsed past by capturing,
reproducing, and disseminating it.
In support of this view I will develop several related themes concerning
culture. First, I will contrast cultural optimism with some opposing
philosophies of cultural pessimism. Differing varieties of cultural
pessimism are found among conservatives, neo-conservatives, the Frankfurt
school, and some versions of the political correctness and
multiculturalist movements, as well as in the history of ideas more
generally. The first four chapters offer a critique of these views, and
the final chapter offers a deconstruction of them.
Second, I redefine the distinction between popular or "low" culture, and
"high" culture from a cultural optimist perspective. When viewed in
long-run terms, successful high culture usually comes out of a healthy and
prosperous popular culture. Forces for popular culture therefore serve as
forces supporting the eventual emergence of high culture as well. I also
question the common identification of quality culture with high culture,
and of popular culture with low-level or accessible culture. Shakespeare,
Mozart, and Beethoven thought of their work as popular, while much of
today's so-called popular culture is in fact a highly refined product
which appeals only to a distinct minority. Rather than trying to use
aesthetic criteria to order art works on a high/low spectrum, I examine
how economic incentives affect the artist's choice of audience. Poetry
costs very little to write, and therefore can appeal to minority tastes.
Most movies, in contrast, must cover their high capital costs by appealing
to a larger number of viewers.
Third, I focus on the role of markets and economic factors, including
technology, in influencing culture. I do not present a monocausal
materialist theory of culture, but I do outline some ways in which
economic forces have shaped Western art, literature, and music since the
Renaissance. Without dismissing the role of non-economic forces, I argue
that economic forces have had stronger effects on culture than is commonly
believed. The printing press paved the way for classical music, while
electricity led to rock and roll. For better or worse, artists are subject
to economic constraints, just as other businessmen are.
Fourth, I attempt to account for why the philosophy of cultural pessimism
has proven so persuasive and has attracted so many adherents. The fifth
and final chapter outlines a series of social mechanisms that help explain
why cultural pessimism has remained such a successful and popular
philosophy. For a variety of reasons discussed in that chapter,
contemporary culture tends to appear degenerate even when it is thriving.
This deconstruction of cultural pessimism does not prove the worth of
contemporary creations, but I do hope to encourage a more critical stance
towards views that culture is corrupt or declining.
DEFINITIONS: CAPITALISM AND THE MARKET ECONOMY
I define capitalism as a legal framework based on private property and
voluntary exchange; this framework supports an advanced system of
commerce, industry, technology, and markets. I take it for granted that
capitalism supports these institutions, and I focus on the more
controversial question of how culture will fare in such a world.
The word capitalism refers to the private ownership of capital goods that
is found under such a regime. I also use the term "market economy" to
refer more generally to a nexus of voluntary exchanges. Beethoven and
Michelangelo, who sold their artworks for a profit, were entrepreneurs and
capitalists. Rembrandt, who ran a studio and employed other artists, fits
the designation as well. I treat capitalism in terms of its underlying
economic logic, rather than in terms of a particular historical epoch, as
do many Marxists. Nonetheless I do not assume that capitalism has operated
in the same fashion across historical eras. In reality, different kinds of
markets (and states) have shaped the arts in radically different ways. The
greater ability of modern performers to reach large audiences has given
popular music a relative boost over classical music, for instance. The
declining financial power of the church lead to a diminution of interest
in religious art. Chapters two, three, and four will present numerous
examples of how cross-sectional variations in forms of capitalism have
influenced accompanying artistic productions.
I do not define capitalism in terms of a pure market model, as do many
libertarians. Historically capitalism and powerful states have risen
hand-in-hand; this connection will not be severed in foreseeable
imaginable future. I am concerned more with particular features of the
capitalist model than with the purity of market freedom. Specifically, I
focus on the following features, which I identify with our modern,
commercialized society: profit and fame incentives, decentralized
financial support, the possibility of financial independence for some artists, the
entrepreneurial discovery of new artistic technologies and media, and the
ability to profit by preserving the cultural creations of the past.
I do distinguish capitalism from societies whose wealth is based on
outright plunder, fortuitous discovery of a natural resource, tax haven
status, or other accidental features. These societies may develop wealth,
but they will not reap the full benefit of the mechanisms discussed below.
Stealing wealth, or lucking into wealth, typically will stimulate the
demand for culture, but unlike under capitalism, the supply capacity for
cultural production will not be favored as well. Artistic masterpieces
usually stem from favorable conditions on both the demand and supply sides
of the market, as will be illustrated by numerous examples throughout the
text.
I do not argue that capitalism is a monocausal or even a primary
determinant of artistic success. If Beethoven's parents had not met,
married, and slept together when they did, the market could not have
produced another Beethoven some other way. Pure, dumb luck is one of many
factors in cultural success. The greater cultural vitality of Renaissance
Florence than modern Singapore does not serve as a counterexample to my
thesis, even though Singapore is wealthier and arguably more capitalistic
as well. Singapore and Florence differ in many important regards,
including their cultural heritage, degree of government censorship, and
intellectual climate. Culture is a problem of joint production involving
both economic and non-economic forces; I am arguing that we should upgrade
our estimate of the efficacy of the market, not that the market is
all-important.
Counterexamples to my version of cultural optimism arise to the extent
that cultural successes come about in spite of the market, and to the
extent that cultural failures come about because of the market. The text
presents a number of counterexamples, including the failure of the modern
world to support contemporary classical composers, the declining quality
of the bestseller lists, and the dubious quality of much of American
television, among many others. I view these counterexamples as real rather
than apparent, and I seek to explain them rather than to explain them
away. An optimistic perspective should not blind us to failures or hinder
the identification of the mechanisms that cause cultural markets to
misfire.
It is obvious to most observers that new art faces significant obstacles
in a market economy. Large numbers of consumers are ignorant, poorly
educated, and sometimes even hostile to innovation. Many creators are
confronted by large corporate conglomerates that demand a proven track
record or prior contacts. Complex networks of retail distribution,
advertising, and media make some products profitable and others
unprofitable, often without regard for artistic quality. Art lovers, who
revere aesthetic merit, often dislike or resent market exchange for these
reasons. No social system, however, elevates "Goodness" to a deciding
principle, whether the realm be art, politics, or economics. Rather than
comparing the market for art to a Platonic alternative, I seek to uncover
the social mechanisms that encourage and discourage creative artistic
achievement and therefore shed light on the production of culture.
DEFINITIONS: CULTURE AND ART
I use the terms culture and art interchangeably to cover man-made
artifacts or performances which move us and expand our awareness of the
world and of ourselves. I have in mind painting, sculpture, music, film,
architecture, photography, theater, literature, and dance. What counts as
culture is a matter of degree; broadly, culture ought to broaden our
horizons and help us see the world in a new way. Culture stands above the
concept of entertainment, although good culture is often entertaining. I
will devote special attention to the visual arts, literature, and music,
arguably the three arts most central to the Western tradition. Each of
these topics receives a chapter of its own. These arts come closest to
providing a common knowledge base and they have provided the primary field
of debate for the economics of the arts.
No single book can consider artistic production as a whole. Furthermore,
the question "What is art?" has become increasingly less fruitful with the
growing diversity of production. Numerous quasi-artistic activities hold a
blurred, in-between status.
Fashion, decoration, cuisine, sports, product design, computer graphics,
and commercial art - to name just a few examples - bring beauty and drama
into our lives. Even if these genres do not fit a narrow definition of art
they nonetheless stimulate our aesthetic sense. Most of these genres have
met with great success in the contemporary world, but I do not address
those topics directly in this book. I hope to show some illustrative
factors in the history of the major arts, rather than cover each and every
cultural episode.
In addition, I focus on Western culture, although I am currently working
on a more systematic treatment of non-Western, tribal, and indigenous
cultures, which I will present in future writings. Some foreign cultures
appear to provide counter-examples to the view that markets benefit the
arts. Haiti, for instance, has produced much painting and music of note,
despite being the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. My
preliminary research indicates two conclusions, which I will only mention
here. First, some of the mechanisms regulating artistic success may differ
in countries with very small degrees of division of labor, both in
consumption and production. To that extent the arguments of this book do
not hold in all circumstances. Second, many non-Western arts have relied
more heavily on markets and wealth than it may first appear. The market
for Haitian Naive paintings, for instance, has been driven largely by
tourists from wealthier, capitalist countries. Much of the growth in third
world arts, musics, and literatures has been supported by modernization,
growing wealth, and cultural exchange. A more complete approach to the
matter must, however, await future research and writing.
What is good culture?
The case for cultural optimism relies partly on judgments
about the quality of contemporary cultural creations. Skeptics
who dislike all contemporary culture usually cannot be convinced
to weaken their pessimism. Cultural assessments contain an
irreducibly subjective component and for this reason it is not
possible to present a knockdown argument for (or against) cultural
optimism. Rather than tackling cultural pessimism head on, I
attempt to chip away at its plausibility, while keeping debate
over the quality of particular artworks from dominating the
analysis. My approach to cultural pessimism runs as follows. First,
this opening chapter presents a number of social mechanisms
through which a healthy, growing economy tends to support cultural
creativity. While these mechanisms do not prove the intrinsic
aesthetic worth of any particular creations, they do weaken the
expectation that commerce should corrupt culture. Second, the
three subsequent empirical chapters will outline the successful
operation of these mechanisms in the past, and will show that criticisms
of contemporary culture resemble the criticisms leveled at past
masterworks. Finally, the text will discuss some particular developments
in our contemporary culture which I see as healthy and creative. The
discussions of contemporary culture will entail both a
value-neutral aspect and a value-laden aspect. The value-neutral
aspect attempts to show that market wealth supports creative
artworks of many different kinds, appealing to many different
tastes. My favored variety of aesthetic pluralism admits the
validity of contrasting perspectives on culture, values diversity, and
recognizes the ultimate incommensurability of many artistic values.
Orson Welles argued for the supremacy of consumer opinion in
judging aesthetic value. He once said: "We must not forget the
audience. The audience votes by buying tickets. An audience is
more intelligent than the individuals who create their entertainment. I
can think of *nothing* that an audience won't understand. The only problem
is to interest them. Once they are interested, they understand anything in
the world. That must be in the feeling of the moviemaker."
Harold Bloom advocates a different point of view. He considers the true
masterpieces of the Western canon to be inaccessible to most readers.
Culture, Bloom's substitute for religion, requires a Gnostic rather than
Catholic view of the truth. Only those who read, reread, and study the
classic works can hope to unlock their secrets. A work easily accessible
on first reading is unlikely to be truly great. The best writers know far
more than their audiences, who are wrongly tempted to dismiss Finnegans
Wake as nonsense. The elitist venture of criticism can proceed without
much regard for the preferences of the audience. Rather than attempting to
adjudicate between these two provocative perspectives, the value-neutral
aspect of my analysis considers the ability of capitalism to support each
kind of art. The market brings crowd-pleasing artists, such as Michael
Jackson or Steven Spielberg, in touch with their audiences, while at the
same time securing niches for more obscure visions, such as those of James
Joyce or Charles Ives. The categories commonly labeled high and low art
often are complements rather than alternatives that we must choose
between. The value-neutral approach to cultural evaluation also stresses
how the wealth, commercialization, and technology of the modern world
provide the means and the incentives to preserve past culture. Cultural
optimism does not suggest that any modern
playwright is the superior or even the equal of William Shakespeare. It
will never be the case that our favorite works, or the very best works,
all were produced just yesterday (see chapter five for more on this
point). Rather, cultural optimism receives some of its support from the
unparalleled ability of the modern world to preserve, maintain,
disseminate, and interpret past masterworks by the likes of Shakespeare,
Mozart, Monet, and many others. Artistic preservation and dissemination
are supported by market mechanisms, just as artistic creativity is.
Artistic production is not a once-and-for-all event, but rather is an ongoing process, often stretching over centuries, and requiring continued societal cooperation. William Hazlitt wrote a famous essay - "Why the Arts are not Progressive - A Fragment" - that has been cited against the idea of cultural progress. Hazlitt argued correctly that the arts do not experience progress in the same manner that the natural sciences do. In the arts, later inventions do not typically render earlier inventions obsolete. To give a modern example, we cannot establish that Garcia Marquez is objectively "better" or "worse" than Charles Dickens. I do not, however, accept Hazlitt's total rejection of the idea of cultural progress. Today's art consumers enjoy more choice and greater diversity than ever before. Regardless of how aesthetic philosophy judges Garcia Marquez vs. Dickens, modern readers can now enjoy both for a pittance.
Market exchange and capitalism produce diverse art, rather than art that
appeals to one particular set of tastes. Mid-to- late twentieth century
Western culture, although a favorite target of many critics, will go down
in history as a fabulously creative and fertile epoch. The culture of our
era has produced lasting achievements in cinema, rhythm and blues, rock
and roll, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, architecture, dance, graphic
and commercial design, fashion, jazz, the proliferation of classical,
early music, and "original instrument" recordings, the short story, Latin
American fiction, genre fiction, and the biography, to name but a few
examples. These genres have offered a wide variety of styles, aesthetics,
and moods. An individual need not have a very particular set of tastes to
love contemporary creations. The second part of the book's aesthetic
argument requires a greater role for subjective judgments about artistic
value. Are Jasper Johns, Steven Spielberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the
Beatles frauds, mediocrities, or geniuses? Dare we go one step further and
ask the same question about even more controversial (and lesser known)
figures, such as Robert Gober, John Woo, Robert Ashley, and My Bloody
Valentine? Although I am not providing a treatise on aesthetics, I do,
throughout the chapters, raise the possibility that these artists and
others are in fact notable masters who will last the ages. The three
chapters on art, literature, and music suggest that the contemporary world
has produced a very large number of excellent creators and works. I do
not, and cannot, provide knockdown arguments for these aesthetic views,
but I hope that the book as a whole will persuade the reader to take a
closer look at these and other artists. Despite the subjective component
behind these judgments, I try to persuade the reader to see widespread
support for the cultural optimist vision, as I do.
The tastes and recommendations which comprise the value-laden part of the
argument will appear odd or idiosyncratic to some readers. Nonetheless I
have deliberately tried to restrict myself to figures and works which have
already achieved recognition from the specialists in their fields. Most
lovers of Mozart and Haydn react with skepticism or disagreement when
Ashley, Feldman, Scelsi, and Glass are cited as notable composers of our
age. Yet the highly respected Fanfare, a journal of music reviewing,
promotes precisely these names and rejects the notion that music
composition is dead, as do I. Observers tend to be cultural optimists in
areas where they specialize, and cultural pessimists when they serve as
outsiders or general critics, for reasons to be discussed in chapter five.
The cultural optimist position does not seek to make the achievements of
modern creators commensurable with the achievements of the greats of the
past, just as we cannot rank Dickens and Marquez, or ascertain whether
five or ten Beatles songs might add up in value to one Haydn string
quartet. It can be said, however, that modern creators have offered the
world a large variety of deep and lasting creations, which are universal
in their scope and significant in their import. These creations delight
and enrich large numbers of intelligent listeners, and continue to
influence subsequent artists. We can expect many modern and contemporary
works to stand the test of time, and indeed many have already stood a test
of time. Alfred Hitchcock, once considered a purely commercial filmmaker
for the masses, now is revered as an artistic genius by audiences, film
critics, and other movie directors. We can expect many more recent
creators to pass the test of time in a similar manner.
CULTURAL PESSIMISM AND OPTIMISM
One significant class of critics, whom I call the cultural pessimists,
take a strongly negative view of modernity and of market exchange. They
typically believe that the market economy corrupts culture. The modern age
is often compared unfavorably to some earlier time, such as the classical
period, the Enlightenment, the nineteenth century, or even the early
twentieth century. T. S. Eliot exemplified the pessimistic view when he
wrote: "We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of
decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty
years ago; and that the evidences of this decline are visible in every
department of human activity." Cultural pessimism comes from various
points along the political spectrum and transcend traditional
left-wing/right-wing distinctions. Its roots, in intellectual history,
include Plato, Augustine, Rousseau, Pope, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
Spengler.
Cultural pessimism received its most explicit statement in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, in the so-called "Battle of the Books." In these
debates, William Temple, Jonathan Swift and others argued that modern
writings and achievements were inferior to those of antiquity. The
following chapters, and chapter five, cover the intellectual history of
cultural pessimism in greater detail. In the contemporary scene, however,
various forms of cultural pessimism exert wide intellectual influence.
Neo-conservative intellectuals, such as Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol,
have questioned whether a market economy supports healthy artistic
tendencies. Bell, for instance, favors artistic modernism but views it as
exhausted and superseded by less constructive movements. Allan Bloom, in
his Closing of the American Mind, provides a Straussian slant on cultural
pessimism. Bloom blames left-wing academics, youth culture, and the
philosophy of moral relativism for our supposed cultural malaise. In the
American political realm the new religious Right and Republican right have
attacked the moral values exhibited by contemporary culture. Nationalist
parties in Europe have criticized the loss of cultural unity brought by a
market economy.
The pessimism of the neo-conservatives often extends beyond
culture in the narrow sense. Many neo-conservatives believe that Western
civilization is collapsing under a plague of permissiveness, crime, loss
of community, and related ailments. Robert Bork, in his latest book
Slouching Towards Gomorrah, provides an extreme statement of this view.
The supposedly sorry state of the modern arts is both a cause and
reflection of the deeper plight of modernity. As I consider cultural
pessimism, however, I focus only on the charges about culture in the
narrower sense of artistic production. Neo-Marxists and critics of mass
culture, including the Frankfurt School, also adhere to largely
pessimistic views. Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse,
among many others, believe that market exchange damages the quality of
cultural production. The commodification of culture stifles our critical
faculties, induces alienation, degrades artworks, and protects the
capitalist system against internal challenges. Adorno advocates atonal
music, and regards jazz and rock and roll as abominable corruptions.
Frankfurt School writers tend to dislike popular culture, which they
perceive as hostile to the project of a society built on modernist reason.
Jorgen Habermas, also associated with the Frankfurt School, stakes out a
positive position on modernity but holds unsympathetic attitudes towards
the culture of capitalism. On one hand, Habermas views modernity as
explicitly progressive, as did Marx. Habermas believes in the utopian
potential of modernity, based on objective reason and the Enlightenment
project of a good society. On the other hand, Habermas is highly critical
of modernity as we experience it in contemporary capitalist society. He
sees Western reason, when combined with capitalism, technology, and the
media, as a force of domination rather than a force of liberation or free
expression. Critical social theory is needed to reform communicative
discourse and bring about a more fully progressive modernity. Habermas
sees the market as hindering rather than aiding critical communication.
Many neo-liberal writers echo the concerns of the Frankfurt School,
although they do not accept Marxist solutions. Neil Postman emphasizes how
modern technology and media corrupt our culture. The title of Herbert
Schiller's book summarizes the views of many: Culture, Inc.: The Corporate
Takeover of Public Expression. Pierre Bourdieu, one of the leading
sociologists of culture, argues against the corporate control of culture
that he associates with a market economy. Even the mainstream American
case for liberal social democracy portrays capitalism as an uneasy ally of
culture, at best. The political correctness movement often identifies
market culture with the suppression of women and minorities. Puritan
feminist Catherine McKinnon, in her book Only Words, argues that sexually
explicit literature and art create harm and should be banned. Some
branches of multiculturalist thought argue that free cultural exchange
leads to cultural homogenization and a culture of the least common
denominator. Marshall McLuhan raised the specter of a "global village," in
which we all consume the same products. In the political realm we find
cultural protectionism practiced around the world.
Many left-wing "cultural studies" scholars stake out a mixed position.
These individuals tend to look sympathetically on modern popular culture
but they dislike capitalism and the forces of the market. Frederic Jameson
exemplifies these attitudes. He describes himself as a "relatively
enthusiastic consumer of postmodernism," but he also promises us that
central planning someday will return in superior form. Only then will our
culture become a "project" to be planned by free individuals. Writers from
the British Birmingham school (e.g., Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams,
Stuart Hall) tend to reject the distinction between high and low culture
and they propose a unified methodological approach to the two. Like much
of the cultural studies movement, writers in that tradition have helped
legitimize popular culture and have shown sympathy for cultural optimism.
Unlike the Frankfurt School, Birmingham writers see popular culture as
containing liberating influences against otherwise elitist capitalist
structures. When it comes to the market, however, the Birmingham school
uses neo-Marxist economic analysis and emphasizes mechanisms of hegemony,
rather than innovation and freedom of expression. Finally, to conclude
this discussion of sources, cultural pessimism is by no means an
exclusively intellectual phenomenon. The final chapter of this book
examines the criticisms of contemporary culture coming from parents,
churches, artists themselves, and other sources.
Cultural optimism
The cultural optimists are a less prominent group in intellectual history
than the pessimists. Cultural optimism nonetheless has attracted a number
of prominent defenders in the history of ideas. Charles Perrault, a
seventeenth-century French believer in cultural progress, wrote Mother
Goose and other tales in a deliberate attempt to match Aesop's Fables.
Baldesar Castiglione defended cultural progress in his The Book of the
Courtier. He argued that the modern age (1478-1529 for him) compared
favorably to the world of the ancients. Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth-
century English writer defended the civilizing aspects of books,printing,
and commercial bookselling. Jean Antoine Condorcet, a classical liberal
Girondist and victim of the French Revolution, argued that human reason
provides a strong impetus for cultural progress.
We find at least three versions of the cultural optimist position in the
history of ideas. The first view suggests that the arts tend to flourish
in a modern liberal order (today, democratic capitalism, although not all
the cultural optimists of the past were democrats). I promote that
position in this book. This view does not predict that any single
geographic area necessarily produces great culture in a particular genre.
As discussed above, artistic creativity is highly contingent upon many
factors, including luck. Nonetheless the world as a whole is highly
diverse and we can expect a flourishing of creativity in the aggregate.
Bad luck or intervening causes may influence a specific culture for the
worse, but cultural optimism nonetheless suggests that a preponderance of
factors favor positive outcomes for the free world as a whole.
The second version of cultural optimism goes further and makes the
political prediction that a liberal order will remain prominent for many
years to come. I have sympathies for this view as well, but it lies beyond
the purview of this book (in its defense, see Francis Fukayama, The End of
History.) The third version of cultural optimism argues that the arts will
flourish precisely because capitalism is doomed and will be replaced by a
superior system, such as socialism or communism. This is the classic
Marxian statement of cultural optimism, which I reject.
My favored version of cultural optimism draws upon a wide variety of
contemporary writers, many of whom work outside a purely academic context.
Camille Paglia defends the Rolling Stones and Hollywood cinema as
artistically vital forces in the modern world. She even writes favorably
about how capitalist wealth has stimulated artistic production. Robert
Pattison's The Triumph of Vulgarity, takes the supposed aesthetic defects
of rock and roll and interprets them as virtues; his book On Literacy
argues that literacy has been increasing over time, rather than
decreasing. Herbert Gans, in his Popular Culture and High Culture, praises
popular culture and argues that modernity has produced increasing
diversity of culture. Cultural studies theorist Paul Willis, in his Common
Culture, praises the "symbolic creativity" of capitalist consumerism.
Nelson George, well-known author and critic for the Village Voice, defends
rap music and argues the importance of "black capitalism" for contemporary
music. Wendy Steiner, in her The Scandal of Pleasure, defends contemporary
culture and the autonomy of art against moralizing critics, from both left
and right. William Grampp, economist and author of Pricing the Priceless,
argues that artistic production is not necessarily subject to market
failure. Terence Kealey's The Economic Laws of Scientific Research deals
with science rather than culture, but makes analogous arguments about the
benefits of commerce. Alvin Toffler, in his early The Culture Consumers,
chronicled the growth of art and culture in America; his later book The
Third Wave writes of the tendency of mass media to decline in the face of
decentralized competitive forces. The postmodern theorists, while they do
not necessarily hold optimistic attitudes towards either culture or
capitalism, have insightfully analyzed the forces behind the proliferation
of cultures in a market economy and the breakdown of absolutist cultural
standards.
I proceed by considering how markets influence artistic creation. Material
wealth helps relax external constraints on internal artistic creativity,
motivates artists to reach new heights, and enables a diversity of
artistic forms and styles to flourish. I then turn to high and low
culture. The same forces that encourage artistic production for the market
also help explain why high and low culture have split. A brief overview of
each subsequent chapter is offered at the very end of this introductory
chapter.
SOCIAL MECHANISMS FOR CULTURE:
HOW WEALTH SUPPORTS HIGHER AESTHETIC GOALS
Art markets consist of artists, consumers, and middlemen, or distributors.
Artists work to achieve self-fulfillment, fame, and riches. The complex
motivations behind artistic creation include love of the beautiful, love
of money, love of fame, personal arrogance, and inner compulsions.
Creators hold strong desires to be heard and witnessed. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, in his Discourses on Art, pronounced that "The highest ambition
of every Artist is to be thought a man of Genius." More generally, I treat
artists as pursuing a complex mix of pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns.
Consumers and patrons stand as the artist's silent partners.
We support creators with our money, our time, our emotions, and
our approbation. We discover subtle nuances in their work which
the artists had not noticed or consciously intended. Inspired
consumption is a creative act which further enriches the viewer
and the work itself. Art works provoke us to reexamine or reaffirm what we
think and feel, and consumer and patron demands for artworks finance the
market. Distributors bring together producer and consumer, whether
the product be beauty soap, bread, or Beethoven. The resultant
meeting of supply and demand fuels the creative drive and disseminates its
results. Neither producers nor consumers of art can flourish without the
other side of the market. No distributor can profit without attracting
both artists and consumers.
The interactions between producers, consumers, and distributors
provide the basic setting for the analysis of this book. Creators respond
to both internal and external forces. Internal forces include the artist's
love of creating, demands for money and fame, and the desire to work out
styles, aesthetics, and problems posed by previous works. External forces
include the artistic materials and media available, the conditions of
patronage, the distribution network, and opportunities for earning income.
When translated into the terminology of economics or rational choice
theory, the internal forces correspond to preferences and external forces
represent opportunities and constraints. These internal and external
forces interact to shape artistic production.
Psychological motivations, though a driving force behind many great
artworks, do not operate in a vacuum, independent of external constraints.
Economic circumstances influence the ability of artists to express their
aesthetic aspirations. Specifically, artistic independence requires
financial independence and a strong commercial market. Beethoven wrote: "I
am not out to be a musical usurer as you think, who writes only to become
rich, by no means! Yet, I love an independent life, and this I cannot have
without a small income."
Capitalism generates the wealth that enables individuals to support
themselves through art. The artistic professions, a relatively recent
development in human history, flourish with economic growth. Increasing
levels of wealth and comfort have freed creative individuals from tiresome
physical labor and have supplied them with the means to pursue their
flights of fancy. Wealthy societies usually consume the greatest
quantities of non-pecuniary enjoyments. The ability of wealth to fulfill
our basic physical needs elevates our goals and our interest in the
aesthetic. In accord with this mechanism, the number of individuals who
can support themselves as full-time creators has risen steadily for
centuries. Perhaps ironically, the market economy increases the
independence of the artist from the immediate demands of the culture-
consuming public. Capitalism funds alternative sources of financial
support, allowing artists to invest in skills, undertake long-term
projects, pursue the internal logic of their chosen genre or niche, and
develop their marketing abilities. A commercial society is a prosperous
and comfortable society, and offers a rich variety of niches in which
artists can find the means to satisfy their creative desires.
Many artists cannot make a living from their craft, and require external
sources of financial support. Contrary to many other commentators, I do
not interpret this as a sign of market failure. Art markets sometimes fail
to recognize the merits of great creators, but a wealthy economy, taken as
a whole, is more robust to that kind of failure in judgment than is a poor
economy. A wealthy economy gives artists a greater number of other sources
of potential financial support. Private foundations, universities,
bequests from wealthy relatives, and ordinary jobs, that bane of the
artistic impulse, all have supported budding creators. Jane Austen lived
from the wealth of her family, T. S. Eliot worked in Lloyd's bank, James
Joyce taught languages, Paul Gauguin accumulated a financial cushion
through his work as a stock broker, Charles Ives was an insurance
executive, Vincent van Gogh received support from his brother, William
Faulkner worked in a power plant and later as a Hollywood screenwriter,
Philip Glass drove a taxi in New York City. William Carlos Williams worked
as a physician in Rutherford, New Jersey, and wrote poetry between the
visits of his patients. Wallace Stevens, the American poet, pursued a
full-time career in the insurance industry. "He was a very imaginative
claims man," noted one former colleague. When offered an endowed chair to
teach and write poetry at Harvard University, Stevens declined. He
preferred insurance work to lecturing and did not wish to sacrifice his
position in the firm. At one point a co-worker accused Stevens of working
on his poetry during company time. He replied: "I'm thinking about surety
problems Saturdays and Sundays when I'm strolling through Elizabeth Park,
so it all evens out."
Parents and elderly relations have financed many an anti- establishment
cultural revolution. Most of the leading French artists of the nineteenth
century lived off family funds - usually generated by mercantile activity
- for at least part of their careers. The list includes Delacroix, Corot,
Courbet, Seurat, Degas, Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and
Moreau. French writers Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Gustave Flaubert
went even further in their anti-establishment attitudes, again at their
parents' expense. Even the most seclusive artists sometimes rely furtively
on capitalist wealth. Marcel Proust sequestered himself in a cork-lined
room to write, covering himself in blankets and venturing outside no more
than fifteen minutes a day. Yet he relied on his family's wealth, obtained
through the Parisian stock exchange. Paul Gauguin, who left the French art
world for the tropical island of Tahiti, did so knowing that his pictures
would appreciate in value in his absence, allowing for a triumphal return.
Gauguin never ceased his tireless self-promotion, and during his Pacific
stays he constantly monitored the value of his pictures in France.
Wealth and financial security give artists the scope to reject societal
values. The bohemian, the avant-garde, and the nihilist are all products
of capitalism. They have pursued forms of liberty and inventiveness that
are unique to the modern world.
Pecuniary incentives
Many artists reject the bohemian lifestyle and pursue profits. The artists
of the Italian Renaissance were businessmen first and foremost. They
produced for profit, wrote commercial contracts, and did not hesitate to
walk away from a job if the remuneration was not sufficient. Renaissance
sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, in his autobiography, remarked that "You poor
idiots, I'm a poor goldsmith, and I work for anyone who pays me." Bach,
Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven were all obsessed with
earning money through their art, as a reading of their letters reveals.
Mozart even wrote: "Believe me, my sole purpose is to make as much money
as possible; for after good health it is the best thing to have." When
accepting an Academy Award in 1972, Charlie Chaplin remarked: "I went into
the business for money and the art grew out of it. If people are
disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth." The
massive pecuniary rewards available to the most successful creators
encourage many individuals to try their hand at entering the market.
Profits signal where the artist finds the largest and most enthusiastic
audience. British "punk violinist" Nigel Kennedy has written: "I think if
you're playing music or doing art you can in some way measure the amount
of communication you are achieving by how much money it is bringing in for
you and for those around you." Creators desiring to communicate a message
to others thus pay heed to market earnings, even if they have little
intrinsic interest in material riches. The millions earned by Prince and
Bruce Springsteen indicate how successfully they have spread their
influence.
Beethoven cared about money as a means of helping others. When approached
by a friend in need, he sometimes composed for money: "I have only to sit
down at my desk and in a short time help for him is forthcoming." Money,
as a general medium of exchange, serves many different ends, not just
greedy or materialistic ones.
Funding artistic materials
Artists who chase profits are not always accumulating wealth for its own
sake. An artist's income allows him or her to purchase the necessary
materials for artistic creation. Budding sculptors must pay for bronze,
aluminum, and stone. Writers wish to travel for ideas and background, and
musicians need studio time. J.S. Bach used his outside income, obtained
from playing at weddings and funerals, to buy himself out of his
commitment to teach Latin, so that he would have more time to compose.
Robert Townsend produced the hit film "Hollywood Shuffle" by selling the
use of his credit cards to his friends. Money is a means to the ends of
creative expression and artistic communication. Capitalist wealth supports
the accouterments of artistic production. Elizabethan theaters, the venue
for Shakespeare's plays, were run for profit and funded from ticket
receipts. For the first time in English history, the theater employed
full-time professional actors, production companies, and playwrights.
Buildings were designed specifically for dramatic productions.
Shakespeare, who wrote for money, earned a good living as an actor and
playwright. Pianos, violins, synthesizers, and mixers have all been
falling in price, relative to general inflation, since their invention.
With the advent of the home camcorder, even rudimentary movie-making is
now widely available. Photography blossomed in the late nineteenth century
with technological innovations. Equipment fell drastically in price and
developing pictures became much easier. Photographers suddenly were able
to work with hand cameras, and no longer needed to process pictures
immediately after they were taken. Photographic equipment no longer
weighed fifty to seventy pounds, and the expense of maintaining a
traveling darkroom was removed.
Falling prices for materials paper have made the arts affordable to
millions of enthusiasts and would-be professionals. In previous eras, even
paper was costly, limiting the development of both writing and drawing
skills to relatively well-off families. Vincent van Gogh, an ascetic loner
who ignored public taste, could not have managed his very poor lifestyle
at an earlier time in history. His nonconformism was possible because
technological progress had lowered the costs of paints and canvas and
enabled him to persist as an artist. Female artists, like Berthe Morisot
and Mary Cassatt, also took advantage of falling materials costs to move
into the market. In the late nineteenth century women suddenly could paint
in their spare time without having to spend exorbitant sums on materials.
Artistic willpower became more important than external financial support.
This shift gave victims of discrimination greater access to the art world.
The presence of women in the visual arts, literature, and music has risen
steadily as capitalism has advanced.
Falling materials costs help explain why art has been able to move away
from popular taste in the twentieth century. In the early history of art,
paint and materials were very expensive; artists were constrained by the
need to generate immediate commissions and sales. When these costs fell,
artists aimed more at innovation and personal expression, and less at
pleasing buyers and critics. Modern art became possible. The
Impressionists did not require immediate acceptance from the French Salon,
and the Abstract Expressionists could continue even when Peggy Guggenheim
was their only buyer.
The artist's own health and well-being, a form of "human capital,"
provides an especially important asset. Modernity has improved the health
and lengthened the lives of artists. John Keats would not have died at age
26 of tuberculosis with access to modern medicine. Paula Modersohn-Becker,
one of the most talented painters Germany has produced, died from
complications following childbirth, at the age of 31. Mozart, Schubert,
Emily Broennte, and many others who never even made their start also count
as medical tragedies who would have survived in the modern era. The
ability of a wealthy society to support life for greater numbers of
people, compared to pre-modern societies, has provided significant
stimulus to both the supply and demand sides of art markets.
Most advances in health and life expectancy have come quite recently. In
the United States of 1855, one of the wealthiest and healthiest countries
in the world at that time, a newly born male child could expect no more
than 39 years of life. Yet many of the greatest composers, writers, and
painters will peak well after their fortieth year. Birth control
technologies, generally available only for the last few decades, have
given female creators greater control over their lives and domestic
conditions. Most of the renowned female painters of the past, for various
intentional or accidental reasons, had either few children or no children
at all. Child bearing responsibilities kept most women out of the art
world. Today, budding female artists can exercise far greater control over
whether and when they wish to have children. The increasing prominence of
women in music, literature, and the visual arts provides one of the most
compelling arguments for cultural optimism. For much of human history, at
least half of the human race has been shut out from many prominent
artistic forms, and women are only beginning to redress the balance.
Do the arts lag in productivity?
William Baumol and William Bowen, two economists who have
analyzed the performing arts, believe that economic growth imposes a "cost
disease" on artistic production. They claim that rising productivity
causes the arts to increase in relative cost, as a share of national
income. The arts supposedly do not enjoy the benefits of technical
progress to equal degree. It took forty minutes to produce a Mozart string
quartet in 1780, and still takes forty minutes today. As wages rise in the
economy, the relative cost of supporting the arts will increase, according
to this hypothesis.
Contrary to Baumol and Bowen, the evidence presented in this book suggests
that the arts benefit greatly from technological progress. The printing
press, innovations in paper production, and now the World Wide Web have
increased the availability of the written word. The French Impressionists
drew their new colors from innovations in the chemical industry. Recording
and radio, both capital technologies, have improved the productivity of
the symphony orchestra. Symphonic productions now reach millions of
listeners more easily than ever before. These technological improvements
are not once-and-for-all events that only postpone the onset of the cost
disease. Rather, technological progress benefits the arts in an ongoing
and cumulative fashion.
The cost disease argument neglects other beneficial aspects of economic
growth. The arts benefit more from technological advances than it may at
first appear. Production of a symphonic concert, for instance, involves
more than sitting an orchestra in a room and having them play
Shostakovich. The players must discover each other's existence, maintain
their health and mental composure, arrange transportation for rehearsals
and concerts, and receive quality feedback from critics and teachers. In
each of these regards the modern world vastly surpasses the productivity
of earlier times, largely because of technological advances. Other
productivity advances arise from new ideas. A string quartet in 1800 could
play Mozart, but a string quartet today can play Brahms, Bartok,
Shostakovich, and Jimi Hendrix as well.
Creativity - a form of human capital - pervades cultural industries. Most
productivity improvements, whether in the arts or not, come from human
creativity, the "performing art" of the scientist, engineer, or inventor.
Our entertainment and leisure industries have generated productivity
increases that would put many computer companies or engineering firms to
shame.
MECHANISMS IN SUPPORT OF ARTISTIC DIVERSITY
Well-developed markets support cultural diversity. A quick walk through
any compact disc or book superstore belies the view that today's musical
and literary tastes are becoming increasingly homogeneous. Retail outlets
use product selection and diversity as primary strategies for bringing
consumers through the door. Even items which do not turn a direct profit
will help attract business and store visits, thereby supporting the
ability of the business to offer a wide variety of products. The
successive relaxation of external constraints on internal creativity tends
to give rise to a wide gamut of emotions and styles. Contemporary culture
has proved itself optimistic, celebratory, and life-affirming. Buddy
Holly, the skyscraper, Howard Hodgkin, and Steven Spielberg's Close
Encounters of the Third Kind show positive cultural forces with great
vigor. Hank Williams, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Ingmar Bergman's Persona
depict a sadder, more shattering aesthetic, although not without the
possibility of redemption. And for a dark and ecstatic experience we are
drawn to the works of Mark Rothko. Depravity and excess, exquisitely
executed, can be found in Robert Mapplethorpe, the Sex Pistols, and
Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.
The available variety of artistic products should come as no surprise.
Adam Smith emphasized that the division of labor, and thus the degree of
specialization, is limited by the extent of the market. In the case of
art, a large market lowers the costs of creative pursuits and makes market
niches easier to find. In the contrary case of a single patron, the artist
must meet the tastes of that patron or earn no income. Growing markets in
music, literature, and the fine arts have moved creators away from
dependence on patronage. A patron, as opposed to a customer, supports an
artist with his or her own money, without necessarily purchasing the
artistic output. Samuel Johnson, writing in the eighteenth century,
referred to a patron as "a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid
with flattery." Even Johnson, however, did not believe that patrons were
intrinsically bad; the problem arises only when artists are completely
dependent upon a single patron. Patronage relationships, which today stand
at an all-time high, have become more beneficial to artistic creativity
over time. The size and diversity of modern funding sources gives artists
bargaining power to create space for their creative freedom. Growth of the
market has liberated artists, not only from the patron, but also from the
potential tyranny of mainstream market taste. Unlike in the eighteenth
century, today's books need not top the bestseller list to remunerate
their authors handsomely. Artists who believe that they know better than
the crowd can indulge their own tastes and lead fashion. Today it is
easier than ever before to make a living by marketing to an artistic niche
and rejecting mainstream taste. The wealth and diversity of capitalism
have increased the latitude of artists to educate their critics and
audiences.
Starting in the late nineteenth century, many painters deliberately
refused to produce works that were easily accessible to viewers. At first
Manet, Monet, and Cezanne shocked the art world with their paintings but
eventually they converted it. The financial support they received from
their families and customers was crucial to this struggle. The twentieth
century American Pop artists, such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein,
Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns, also made initial sacrifices to
elevate our tastes. Today we enjoy their brilliant pictures while taking
the once-shocking approach for granted.
In the realm of culture, market mechanisms do more than simply give
consumers what they want. Markets give the producer the greatest latitude
to educate his or her audience. Art consists of a continual dialogue
between producer and consumer; this dialogue helps both parties decide
what they want. The market incentive to conclude a profitable sale
simultaneously provides an incentive to engage consumers and producers in
a process of want refinement. Economic growth increases our ability to
develop sophisticated and specialized tastes.
Many commentators, such as Joergen Habermas, see the development of
"critical theory" as vital to the reform of social and individual wants.
Habermas's critical theorist stands outside the market order and attempts
to deconstruct and dehegemonize the presuppositions upon which modern
society is based. Rational communicative discourse, and want refinement,
provides a key to his philosophy. I differ from Habermas in terms of how I
conceive the cultural discovery process. Rather than seeing communicative
reason as a project which stands outside and evaluates the market, I
conceive of communicative reason within a concrete institutional framework
with market incentives and property rights. Habermas wishes to step
outside of that framework to direct culture from above by reason and clear
communication. I see his "pure speech community" as a Platonic myth, and
instead place greater emphasis on the competition of contrasting notions
of cultural reason within regimes ruled by incentives.
Competition and complementarity are forces for innovation. Artists offer
new products to increase their income, their fame, and their audience
exposure. They seek to avoid duplicating older media and styles, which
become played out and filled with previous achievements. Picasso had the
talent to master many styles, but won greater accolades with his
innovations than he would have achieved by copying the French
Impressionists.
Rather than safely performing Haydn and Beethoven, four young talented
performers decided to become the Kronos Quartet, and to perform music by
Glass, Riley, and African music. As a leader in a new line of production,
the quartet has earned especially high profits. The Arditti Quartet has
not earned the profits of Kronos, but nonetheless has staked out its
position as preeminent string quartet for contemporary chamber music.
Innovation enables artists to overcome their fear of being compared to
previous giants. A century of German and Austrian musicians - Schumann,
Schubert, Brahms, and Bruckner - dreaded comparison with Beethoven and
pursued new directions. Brahms avoided composing symphonies for many
years, instead writing songs and vocal ensembles. These works surpassed
Beethoven's vocal music. Later Brahms turned to symphonies when his skills
were up to the task. Brahms had once written: "You don't know what it is
like always to hear that giant marching along behind me." Beethoven
refused to hear the operas of Mozart for this reason, but even Beethoven
could not escape being intimidated by his own achievements. Rather than
finishing a tenth symphony, which might have paled in comparison to his
ninth, he wrote his innovative late string quartets.
Walter Jackson Bate coined the phrase The Burden of the Past. Harold Bloom
produced a theory of poetry based on The Anxiety of Influence. In another
book, A Map of Misreading, Bloom suggests another response to the past -
deliberate misunderstanding of previous contributions. These tactics allow
artists to overcome the quantity and quality of accumulated past
masterworks. Creators sometimes respond to past masterworks with emulation
rather than with product differentiation. The Impressionist painters saw
many of their innovations with sharp colors, flatness of field, and
verticality of perspective in Japanese woodblock prints. They responded by
collecting and promoting such prints; Mary Cassatt even copied the style
literally. Similarly, the Rolling Stones were encouraged by the
possibility of following in the footsteps of Muddy Waters, not scared off.
Raphael favored the preservation of antiquities to "keep alive the
examples of the ancients so as to equal and surpass them."
Many of the newest cultural permutations emulate the very old and the
sometimes forgotten. Tribal or "primitive" modes of art have exercised a
strong influence throughout our century. Picasso took much inspiration
from African masks, Brancusi and Modigliani drew upon Cycladic art, the
Surrealists looked to the South Pacific, and Art Deco was influenced by
the Mayan Temple. Both rock-and-rollers and contemporary "classical"
composers explore originally African rhythmic traditions.
Critics often write premature obituaries for changing styles and genres.
The writing of epic poetry has not ceased but lives on in the works of
Derek Walcott, who emulates Homer. Body Heat and Paul Verhoeven's Basic
Instinct follow the film noir tradition of the 1940s or 1950s. Many of the
most popular bands of the last several years - like Nirvana, Pearl Jam,
and Smashing Pumpkins - have created a deliberately retrograde sound,
hearkening back to the 1970s. In classical music, Arvo P__rt resurrects
the medieval tradition and in jazz George Gruntz has revitalized the big
band.
The pastiche orientation of today's so-called "postmodern" style responds
to two market incentives. First, an increasing number of past styles
accumulate over time. It becomes harder to create works that do not refer
to past styles in some fashion. Second, both creators and audiences come
to know more past styles over time, due to the success of markets in
preserving and disseminating cultural creations. Performers find
themselves increasingly able to establish rapport with their audiences by
referring to past works. Warhol could reproduce Chairman Mao, Marilyn
Monroe, or the Mona Lisa in silkscreen form, but Leonardo da Vinci had a
smaller number of established icons - primarily religious - to draw upon.
Some new artistic developments turn their back on the futuristic and
high-tech and embrace earlier, more naturalistic forms of art. Witness the
recent trend of rock stars to go "unplugged" and produce acoustic albums
and concerts. Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson, two contemporary
sculptors, work with objects taken from nature, such as stones, tree
branches, and ice. Artist Cy Twombly uses crayon to great effect. Artists
increase their income and fame by reaching audiences, and they will not
hesitate to cast off electronic gadgetry and draw upon earlier styles to
achieve that end.
Standing still is one tactic that artists cannot prosper by in a dynamic
market economy. Artists stake out niche positions but they are not
protected against competition for long. Picasso and Braque introduced
cubism but eventually had to contend with competitors who built on their
work. Declining eminence and profits, combined with threatening
competition, often induce the original artist to innovate again.
Stravinsky, Picasso, and the Beatles outpaced their competitors, at least
for a while, by undergoing several metamorphoses of style.
Eventually most artists lose the drive or depth to meet challenges and
consequently, they give up their place as industry leaders. Andy Warhol
set up The Factory and sold studio-made prints and silkscreens under his
own name, Maria Callas did not take sufficient care with her voice, and
Rossini ceased composing operas altogether. E.M. Forster published his
last novels in the 1920s, even though he did not die until 1970. "I have
nothing more to say," was his explanation. These artists ceded their
places on the cutting edge of their respective fields.
New innovations do not always eclipse older, more established artistic
forms, but they do inevitably change them. Outside competition shakes up
older forms and spurs new ingenuity. Renaissance sculpture communicated
the idea of depth perspective to painters, jazz crept into the rhythms of
classical music, and movies have speeded up the pacing of the best-selling
novel. Sometimes a new medium pushes other works in the opposite
direction. The advent of television prompted film directors to
develop the big-screen, spectacular movie with special effects.
Photography created a cheap substitute for portraiture, which
induced painters to direct their talents to more abstract and
less realistic themes.
Artistic fertilizations and innovations also occur backwards in time, as
later works improve the quality of earlier ones by changing their meaning.
Verdi's opera Otello and Orson Welles's film Othello tell us more about
Shakespeare's Othello than does any piece of literary criticism. These
variations on the work, through different media and presentation, enable
us to see Shakespeare's work anew. Verdi's music brings out the aspect of
terror in the text and influences how we read the play. Subsequent
contributions and adaptations thus make Shakespeare's work richer, just as
Shakespeare's original Othello now contributes to the depth of the later
versions. Art Tatum's piano improvisations, Lichtenstein's takeoffs on
French and Abstract Expressionist paintings, and Beethoven's Diabelli
Variations all shed light on previous artworks to an especially high
degree. T. S. Eliot, who focused on this mechanism in his essay "Tradition
and the Individual Talent," has been prominent on both sides of such
exchanges.
Art creates an interdependent language whose whole exceeds the sum of the
parts. Masterpieces therefore provide more satisfaction and insight as we
accumulate artistic experience. Rossini's operas were once viewed as "too
Germanic" and "too intellectual," because he used the orchestra to frame
the melodic line. The eventual adoption of this practice by opera
composers all over Europe illuminated the universality of Rossini's
original conception. Arthur Danto observes that Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes
would not have qualified as a work of art, had they been created one
hundred years ago. Not only would these works have passed unappreciated,
but they would not provide compelling images outside of a modern
commercial context.
The importance of context and the possibility of ex-post
"reinterpretations" make the best artworks truly inexhaustible. The more
music we know, the more we can hear in the compositions of Bach and
Beethoven. The very best creators manage to anticipate the future
development of their genre and to produce works that will subsequently
exhibit an ever greater richness. In these cases both the consumption and
production of art are subject to increasing returns to scale. The more
notable works that are produced, the greater the significance of the best
works from the past. The present therefore deserves at least partial
credit for our understanding of the past. Ironically, if modern culture
were so poor, it would not be able to produce so many cultural pessimists
with such a fine appreciation of past masterworks. Successive creations
increase the potency of some works but devalue others. We now find
Richardson's Pamela to be implausible and chauvinist; the heroine submits
to a forced marriage to an unsavory character and eventually grows to
enjoy it. Contemporary audiences might best enjoy James Dean's Rebel
Without a Cause as unintended farce, rather than as a rousing story of an
angry young man. Markets have preserved the physical substance of these
works but have devalued their original force and meaning.
Cultural critics and commentators contribute powerfully to the vitality of
market art. Critics put artistic consumers in touch with artistic
producers, and help us separate the wheat from the chaff. They support the
process of taste refinement. Listeners who take a sudden interest in
classical music do not have to sort through the entire eighteenth century
repertoire, but can listen to Mozart and Haydn. Clement Rosenberg and
Harold Greenberg helped the American Abstract Expressionist painters find
a public audience and win their way into museums. Pauline Kael directs our
attention to the best of recent film. I hope my own commentary - in the
form of this book - boosts the interest in contemporary art and music.
These forms of professional cultural criticism, all relatively new
professions, owe their thanks to capitalist wealth. The modern world can
support many thousands of intellectuals who specialize in arguing the
merits of artistic products.
Outsiders as innovators
Outsiders and marginalized minorities often drive artistic innovation.
Much of the dynamic element in American culture, for instance, has been
due to blacks, Jews, and gays, as Camille Paglia has noted. Outsiders have
less stake in the status quo and are more willing to take chances. They
face disadvantages when competing on mainstream turf, but a differentiated
product gives them some chance of obtaining a market foothold. Individuals
who will not otherwise break into the market are more inclined to take
risks, since they have less to lose. Were an all-black orchestra or black
conductor to record the umpteenth version of Mozart's Jupiter symphony,
the racially prejudiced would have no reason to promote or purchase the
product. (Few individuals know the name or the works of the most
critically renowned black conductor of our century, Dean Dixon.) The cost
of indulging discriminatory taste is low when the market offers the
virtuostic von Karajan and Boehm, both former Nazi supporters. But when
black performers played "Take the A Train" or "Maybellene," even many
racists were impelled to support the outsider with their dollars.
The most influential African-American contributions have not come in the
most established cultural forms, such as letters, landscape paintings, and
theater. Instead, America's black minority has dominated new cultural
areas - jazz, rhythm and blues, breakdancing, and rap. Minority innovators
bring novel insights to cultural productions. Their atypical background
provides ideas and aesthetics that the mainstream does not have and,
initially, cannot comprehend. Minorities also must rationalize their
outsider status.
They deconstruct their detractors, reexamine fundamentals, and explore how
things might otherwise be. They tend to bring the upstart, parvenu
mentality necessary for innovation. Jazz musician Max Roach pointed out:
"Innovation is in our blood. We [blacks] are not people who can sit back
and say what happened a hundred years ago was great, because what was
happening a hundred years ago was shit: slavery. Black people have to keep
moving."
Capitalism has allowed minority groups to achieve market access, despite
systematic discrimination and persecution. Black rhythm and blues
musicians, when they were turned down by the major record companies,
marketed their product through the independents, such as Chess, Sun, Stax
and Motown. The radio stations that favored Tin Pan Alley over rhythm and
blues found themselves circumvented by the jukebox and the phonograph.
These decentralized means of product delivery allowed the consumer to
choose what kind of music would be played. The French Impressionist
painters, rejected by the government-sponsored academy, financed and ran
their own exhibitions.
In the process modern art markets were born. Jews were kept out of many
American businesses early in this century, but they developed the movie
industry with their own capital, usually earned through commercial retail
activity. Women cracked the fiction market in eighteenth century England
once a wide public readership replaced the system of patronage. Innovators
with a potentially appealing message usually can find profit-seeking
distributors who are willing to place money above prejudice or grudges.
Innovations in preserving past culture
The diversity of the contemporary world includes our unparalleled ability
to preserve and market the cultural contributions of the past. Markets
provide profits to those who successfully preserve and market the cultural
contributions of previous artists. Today's consumers have much better
access to the creations of Mozart than listeners of that time did, even if
we restrict the comparison to Europe. More people saw Wagner's Ring cycle
on public television in 1990 than had seen it live in all Ring productions
since the premiere in 1876. Recorded boxed sets and complete editions of
little-known composers are now common. Once-obscure operas and symphonies
are available in profusion.
Compact disc reissues of classic performances have exceeded all
expectations; record companies eagerly reissue obscure recordings that
sell only a few thousand copies. Old movies, including many silents, can
be rented on video cassette for a pittance. The video laser disc, likely
to fall drastically in price, will provide new and better access to movies
and musical performances. Many classic symphonic and instrumental
performances have been reissued on compact disc. New and definitive
editions of many literary works, or better translations, are being
published for the first time. The classics are available in cheap
paperback. Television, video stores, and bookstores give modern fans much
better access to Shakespeare than the Elizabethans had.
Even lesser painters now have their own one-man shows with published
catalogs full of beautiful color plates. Wealthy American art collectors
have enabled New York's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of
Art to become world leaders in preserving the art of our century and of
centuries past. The Getty and Norton Simon museums in California have been
assembled in recent times from two large private donations. Even the
government-run National Gallery of Art assembled most of its holdings from
private collections like those of the Mellon, Kress, Dale, and Widener
families - paintings that were headed for museums in any case.
Live performance, as a means of preserving the past, also has flourished.
Today's concertgoers can sample a range of musical periods, instruments,
and styles with an ease that previous ages would have envied. While
conductors are mastering twentieth century idioms, they are also refining
"original performance" presentations of Renaissance, Baroque, and
classical styles. American symphony orchestras in Cleveland, Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, and other cities have outpaced many of their European
competitors. From 1965 to 1990 America grew from having 58 symphony
orchestras to having nearly 300, from 27 opera companies to more than 150,
and from 22 non-profit regional theaters to 500.
Our increasing facility at preservation accelerates the rate
of artistic innovation. As extant products are spread and assimilated with
greater ease, newer innovations are demanded and thus spurred to arrive
more quickly. Artists can satisfy these demands through their quicker
access to a wide variety of ideas and inspirations. Beethoven's late
string quartets remained inaccessible to most listeners for long periods
of time, whereas Bartok's string quartets received quick fame because of
the Juilliard Quartet recordings. That is one reason why Bartok's
innovations were assimilated more rapidly than were Beethoven's.
Musicians, critics, and listeners could hear Bartok's quartets whenever
they chose, and they assimilated the new ideas speedily; Beethoven's
contributions took more time to sort out. New methods of communication and
preservation have been arising and spreading at an increasing pace. Print
took at least two centuries to become a generally used means of storing
and communicating information. Radio took thirty-five years. Cinema and
television each took less than twenty years. The compact
disc, the VCR, and now the Internet have caught on even more quickly. As
new media spread with greater rapidity, so do new artistic products and
genres.
Learning from the past requires preservation and reproduction. Many of the
artistic creations of antiquity, which were not maintained in sufficiently
durable form, have been lost to the world forever. The onset of the Dark
Ages caused the market for cultural preservation to dry up; during early
medieval times, for instance, many sculptures were worth more for their
bronze, and therefore were melted down and destroyed. The market for
cultural preservation was not fully revived until the spur of Renaissance
wealth supported the markets for old artworks, manuscripts,
and artifacts. Many of the Greek and Roman manuscripts that did survive
came to the West through Islamic civilization, the wealthiest and most
market-oriented region of its day.
Is modernity an age of mass culture?
Many commentators see the modern age as the age of mass culture, where
large numbers of individuals unthinkingly consume the same products. But
the mass culture model applies, at most, to the fields of television and
sports. These areas are highly visible and therefore easy to focus on. I
see television and sports are special cases where competitive pressures
have been partially stifled. They do not represent the vanguard or the
high points of modern culture.
Post-war American television, by and large, has not provided cultural
riches. Television programs entertain us and present appealing characters,
but a canonic list of the best television programs would not, in this
author's opinion, stand up to a comparable list from music, painting, or
literature. My personal and purely idiosyncratic nominations for the best
television products ever - Britain's Monty Python troupe and Ingmar
Bergman's The Magic Flute - both were produced for government-owned
stations, rather than for the market-based American system. I concur with
Robert Hughes, who notes that several hours of American television provide
the best argument against market-supplied culture.
The influence of the television market also has had some consequences for
other cultural media, such as motion pictures. Today a considerable
percentage of the profits from a movie come from the sale of television
rights. Moviemakers, to some degree, have shifted their attention away
from more specialized moviegoers to the more general television audience.
Television helps fund movies which would otherwise not be made, but it
also exerts a negative influence on movie quality.
I do not intend the above remarks as an anti-television polemic.
Television - even its lower brow forms - provides a useful medium for
presenting social issues and showing audiences by example how people can
deal with their personal problems. The rapid and healthy increase in
social and sexual openness, which blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s, is due
partly to television. Television also provides a variety of other
non-artistic services, ranging from news to Sesame Street in Spanish to
nature documentaries.
Legal restrictions on cable television are partly to blame for the
cultural shortcomings of television. For many years the American
government gave monopoly power to the three major networks and certain
privileged local stations. The Federal Communications Commission also
holds the power to revoke the licenses of stations that do not broadcast
in the so-called "public interest." Television has not been able to
develop the diversity necessary to support innovative and visionary
cultural products.
The quality of television is especially vulnerable to restrictions on
competition because TV programs have no other outlet. Music, in contrast,
has been less affected by the limitations of radio. Live performance,
phonographs, and juke boxes have provided alternate marketing outlets.
There are also more radio stations than television channels.
If mass taste had controlled other genres as it has controlled television,
they too would fare little or no better. A society with three major
outlets for books, distributing common products for all who wish to read,
would not have produced Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita or Franz Kafka's
Metamorphosis. The virtues of cultural markets lie not in the quality of
mass taste but rather in the ability of artists to find minority support
for their own conceptions. Even Michael Jackson, an unparalleled cultural
phenomenon whose Thriller album has sold fifty million copies worldwide,
has never commanded the allegiance of most Americans.
With the widespread advent of cable and satellite television, the reign of
mass taste in television programming has begun to decline. The competitive
rivalry of market forces tends to "de-massify" the media, to borrow a
phrase from Alvin Toffler. The television audience is fragmenting as
special interest stations proliferate on cable. In the last fifteen years,
the three major networks have lost thirty million viewers - a third of
their audience. Diverse products appealing to market niches can exploit
the vulnerability of bland products aimed at mass audiences. Cable
subscriptions frequently give individuals access to 150 stations or more,
and the number is growing steadily.
It nonetheless remains an open question how much cultural inspiration
television will produce in the future. The American experience with cable
television has disappointed many expectations. Many cable channels focus
on repackaging traditional network programs; we now can view reruns of
situation comedies at all times of the day. Much of cable's diversity has
supported evangelists, Home Shopping Network, personal advertisements in
search of romance, ongoing weather reports, airline schedules, and soap
operas in various languages. These products are useful to consumers but
they are unlikely to provide cultural products that will stand the test of
time. Cable channels have produced fewer new programs that many observers
had expected. Even when the number of available channels is large,
creators still must cover their production and marketing costs by bringing
in a sizable audience.
On the brighter side, cable now offers a smorgasbord of the world's
greatest movies, the modern drama of sporting events, MTV, and a
smattering of the high arts. The Discovery channel provides quasi-cultural
services through photography and portraying the beauties of the natural
world. The educational functions of cable bring indirect cultural
benefits. Individuals can now take a class in Shakespeare without leaving
their living rooms, or can use foreign language channels to improve their
linguistic skills, thereby enlarging their access to the world's cultural
treasures.
It remains to be seen whether the failures of cable TV will prove
temporary or permanent. The advent of digital compression will bring the
number of cable stations to at least 500 in the near future. The future
may bring interactive cable systems that will allow each viewer to choose
the program that he or she prefers from a large program menu. It is
possible that cable television, like the printing press, radio, and the
phonograph in their early days, is just beginning to realize its
potential. The introduction of the video cassette and laser disc have
expanded viewing diversity further. Viewers can now choose what will
appear on their screen, drawing on a wide range of video stores and tape
producers. In addition to movies, these outlets offer tapes of travel
footage, music, dance, paintings, opera, and video art. Today's video
stores are treasure chests of modern cultural achievement, following along
the lines of the ancient Ptolemiac library in Alexandria, but far more
successful in their preservation and distribution.
Sports remain the primary arena where mass culture will survive in the
future. Sports mix entertainment with live drama and a smattering of
performance art and dance. Rather than hiring actors and actresses to
pretend that staged events matter, we fund events whose reality does
matter to the participants. Consumers are wealthy enough to create real
drama with fame, money, and ego on the line. Sports - although they do not
qualify as art in the narrow sense - provide a commonly observed stage onto
a world of many diverse and specialized performances.
Sporting leagues are a natural market monopoly rather than a monopoly
created by government. Many sports fans prefer the drama of seeing a
well-defined "best," such as the Super Bowl, or they prefer seeing the
game that others are seeing. By following well-established sports,
individuals have something they can discuss and share with others, even
strangers. In both basketball and football we have seen upstart leagues
(the ABA and the AFL) but the eventual result was consolidation and
cooperation.
Minor leagues and college teams show that sporting natural monopolies are
far from absolute, but the established major leagues nonetheless possess a
strong incumbency advantage. Yet even the natural monopoly of incumbent
sports leagues has not shut down diversity and innovation. Spectators can
watch a greater number of sports than ever before, either in live
performance or on cable television. We have round-the-clock coverage of
the Olympics. Soccer and tennis can now be viewed on a regular basis, and
followed on the Internet. Professional NBA basketball had been thought on
the verge of extinction in the 1970s, but today acrobatic moves and slam
dunks are capturing the imagination of youth around the world.
GOVERNMENT AS CUSTOMER: WHAT ROLE DOES THE STATE PLAY?
Music and the arts have been moving away from government funding since the
Middle Ages. The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the nineteenth century
Romantic movement, and twentieth century modernism all brought art further
into the market sphere. Today, most of the important work in film, music,
literature, painting, and sculpture is sold as a commodity. Contemporary
art is capitalist art, and the history of art has been a history of the
struggle to establish markets. These trends will not be reversed in any
foreseeable course for the current world, regardless of our opinion of
government funding for the arts. Most countries in the world are not
contemplating reversions to socialism. The arguments of this book, taken
alone, cannot determine which side is correct in the American political
debates over government funding of the arts. Rather, I wish to challenge
the common premise of cultural pessimism behind both sides. Funding
critics argue that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is corrupting
American culture, while funding advocates claim that eliminating the NEA
would critically damage American culture. I see American culture, and the
culture of the free world, as fundamentally healthy in any case.
The real choice today is between two alternate optimistic
visions of our cultural future. In one vision, government funding plays a
minor but supportive role by creating niches for artists who might
otherwise fall between the cracks. Government serves as one of many
entrepreneurs in the cultural marketplace.
In the second vision, even small amounts of government funding will more
likely corrupt the arts than improve them. The costs of politicizing art
might outweigh the benefits from additional government funding of art.
Governments, even democratic ones, tend to favor the cultural status quo
that put them in power, or to shape a new status quo that will cement
their power.
Contrary to the claim of Alexis de Tocqueville, democracy need not prove
an inferior system for the arts, compared to aristocracy. At most
democratic government might be inferior for the arts, compared to
aristocratic government. Democratic systems as a whole do extraordinarily
well when they allow an accompanying capitalistic market to fund most of
its artistic activity. The cultural rise of the American nation, which
occurred after largely after de Tocqueville wrote, provides the strongest
argument against his thesis. After the second World War, America has been
a clear world leader in film, painting, and popular music, and has had a
strong presence, arguably second to none, in literature, poetry, and music
composition. Among other factors, de Tocqueville overlooked the rise of
the steamship, which brought American in closer touch with Europe in the
late nineteenth century, and facilitated beneficial cultural exchange.
The state does best in promoting the arts when it acts as simply another
customer, patron, or employer, rather than as a bureaucracy with a public
mandate. Direct government funding works best when it serves as private
funding in disguise, such as when Philip IV hired Velazquez to serve as
his court painter. In similar fashion, the royal court of Louis XIV
supported Moliere and the German municipalities of Weimar, C_"_then, and
Leipzig hired Johann Sebastian Bach to serve as town musician. We can find
many cases where monarchs, Popes, municipalities, guilds, and other
governmental or quasi-governmental institutions commissioned or otherwise
supported notable works.
We should not, however, overestimate the successes of government funding.
For every Velazquez, governments have supported hundreds of unknown court
painters. Autocracy will sometimes place substantial resources in the
hands of an artistic superstar, but, more often than not, will promote
mediocre hacks. The purse strings are in the hands of politicians who seek
personal power for themselves, and flattery and obedience from others. For
this reason aristocratic government does not guarantee artistic success,
even though we can point to some inspired aristocratic buyers.
Whether government funding for the arts should be discontinued,
maintained, or extended brings two sets of incommensurable values into
conflict. On one hand, the case against funding makes two valid points.
First, tax-supported funding forces consumers to forgo goods and services
which they would prefer more than art. Second, many individuals believe it
is unjust to force conservative Christians to support an exhibit of Robert
Mapplethorpe, to draw an example from the U.S. context. On the
other hand, funding supporters point out that more money will support more
artists, more art, and, if done with reasonable care, will improve our
artistic heritage. Neither side has succeeded in showing that its favored
values are more important than the values favored by the other side.
Public choice theory suggests that government arts funding cannot be
restructured to avoid this clash of artistic vs. non-artistic values.
Artistic buyers must be liberated from account ability to the masses, if
they are to have a chance of influencing the market in a positive
direction. Art and democratic politics, although both beneficial
activities, operate on conflicting principles. In the field of art new
masterpieces usually bring aesthetic revolutions, which tend to offend
majority opinion or go over its head. In the field of politics we seek
stability, compromise, and consensus. This same conservatism, so valuable
in politics, stifles beauty and innovation in art.
The current American political debate has confronted the NEA with an
impossible task. The NEA is supposed to deliver the benefits of privileged
spending while receiving its funding from a democratic system based on
political accountability. The result is an agency whose best and most
innovative actions - such as funding exhibits of Robert Mapplethorpe and
Andres Serrano - are precisely those that offend its taxpaying supporters.
Ironically, the massive publicity generated by NEA critics may have done
more for the arts than the NEA itself. Jesse Helms, with his virulent,
prejudiced attacks on Robert Mapplethorpe, did far more for that artist
than the Washington arts establishment has. Mapplethorpe's name is now a
household word.
In his lifetime, Mapplethorpe did not need government assistance; he
became a millionaire by selling his photographs in the marketplace. Jesse
Helms, however, did bring Mapplethorpe his current fame. The American
government has done a good deal to support the arts, but most of the
successes have come from outside of the NEA. The entire NEA budget, at its
peak, fell well short of the amount of money required to produce Kevin
Costner's Waterworld epic. NEA expenditures have never exceeded seventy
cents per capita, and the NEA has never been vital to American artistic
success. Before 1965, when the NEA was created, American culture - even
the preservation of high culture - flourished. The best American symphony
orchestras and museums were created well before 1965 and without NEA
involvement.
The bulk of American governmental support for the arts has come in two
other forms. First, the tax deduction for contributions to artistic
non-profits has greatly benefited museums, opera companies, and other
artistic activities that rely on private donations. Government also
exempts not-for-profit institutions from income taxation. Tax
deductibility allows government to support the arts without making
judgments about the relative artistic merits of different projects. Just
as tax deductibility has succeeded in supporting American religion or the
American housing market, so has it improved the quantity and quality of
American culture.
Second, federal and state governments provide massive indirect support to
the arts through subsidies to higher education. Many of today's
cutting-edge composers and writers rely on university positions for part-
or full-time support while they pursue their craft. While the number of
writers and composers in university jobs may have overly academized
American culture, professorships have been the only available source of
support for many of these creators. Whether American higher educational
policies have been a good thing, all things considered, falls outside the
scope of this book. But seen as cultural policy, government subsidies for
higher education are far more significant than the small sums spent by the
NEA.
Governments often support creativity most effectively by providing a large
number of jobs where individuals are not expected to work very hard. Many
leading eighteenth century writers, for instance, worked for the
government bureaucracy. These individuals pursued their creative interests
either in their spare time or while "on the job." John Gay, Daniel Defoe,
and Jonathan Swift, to name but a few examples, all received substantial
income from government employment. Goethe spent much of his life working
as a government administrator while writing in his spare time. The
university has now stepped into the role once provided by the bureaucracy
- teaching posts give talented individuals financial security with a
relative minimum of daily responsibilities.
The funding model of Western Europe differs from that of the United
States. Germany and France, for instance, deliberately sacrifice
contemporary popular culture to both older, high culture and to the
contemporary avant-garde. These governments restore old cathedrals and
subsidize classic opera and theater, while simultaneously supporting the
extreme avant-garde, such as Boulez, Stockhausen, and Beuys. Yet European
popular culture, especially in cinema and music, is largely moribund and
lacking in creativity. Germany and France have not escaped the
bureaucratization of culture. The French Ministry of Culture,for instance,
spends $3 billion a year and employs 12,000 bureaucrats. Yet France has
lost her position as a world cultural leader, and few other countries
embrace American popular culture with such fervor.
Government involvement in cultural preservation involves costs beyond the immediate tax burden - state support makes the arts more bureaucratic and less dynamic. Government, when it acts as customer on a very large scale, often pushes out beneficial market influences. The American market has less government funding but receives much more funding from consumers and private donors. As in the American debate, European arts funding brings a clash of potentially incommensurable values and does not admit of resolution through positive analysis alone. One alternative (minority) vision suggests that government funding can create a useful target for radical artists. American painter John Sloan said "Sure, it would be fine to have a Ministry of the Fine Arts in this country. Then we'd know where the enemy is."
HIGH AND LOW CULTURE
Sometimes we distinguish between "high" culture, the items achieving
greatest critical acclaim, and "low" culture, the most popular cultural
items. Economic incentives support this split between high and low
culture. Capitalism supports product diversity and gives many artists the
means to work outside of the popular mainstream. The resulting split
between high culture and low culture indicates the sophistication of
modernity, not its corruption or disintegration. A world where high and
low culture were strongly integrated would be a world that devoted little
effort to satisfying minority tastes. Genres that rely heavily on
equipment and materials, which I describe as capital-intensive, tend to
produce popular art. Genres with low capital costs, which I describe as
labor-intensive, tend to produce high art. The movie spectacular with
expensive special effects is likely to have a happy ending. The low-budget
art film, directed and financed by an iconoclastic auteur, may leave the
viewer searching.
Basic financial and economic reasons support these tendencies. Ongoing
artistic endeavors must cover their costs - through sale, subsidy, or
donation - if they are to persist. To the extent that costs are high, the
influence of the funders increases and the artistic freedom of the
creators decreases.
Painting and poetry, highly labor-intensive solo activities, offer
especially large room for the avant-garde. Creators in these areas can
eschew the mass public and pursue creative self-expression without
receiving complaints from shareholders. Capital-intensive movies, in
contrast, reflect middle-class tastes more closely. Most movies must pull
in large sums of money to cover their production and distribution costs.
Movie makers are therefore impelled to appeal to a relatively broad
audience.
Hollywood provides an ongoing battleground for opposing high and low
culture forces, as the differing goals of the participants build artistic
conflict into the system. Artists are motivated by creative
self-expression, fame, and money, but owners of capital goods are usually
motivated by profit alone. Consider the film Blade Runner. Actor Harrison
Ford sought fame and stature, director Ridley Scott sought creative
self-expression, but the shareholders of Warner sought profit alone.
Warner forced Scott to add a happy ending to his masterpiece, even
though the resolution was unconvincing and diminished the quality
of the picture. Only later, when the movie was reissued (Blade Runner: The
Director's Cut), was Scott able to restore the original, and far superior,
ambiguous ending. Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott are renowned and
worshipped for their talent but the shareholders of Warner are not.
Finding no other reward, the shareholders pursue profit maximization and
push for mass audience appeal.
High and low culture usually appear to be diverging. New genres tend to
have initially high capital costs; otherwise they would have been
previously feasible prior to innovation. The new art of film appealed to a
broad public with popular themes. At the same time painting and
literature, with falling capital costs, moved away from mass taste.
Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, two
versions of the modernist aesthetic pitched at different audiences,
reflect these varying economic constraints. Some parts of capitalist
culture move in the direction of popular taste while, at the same time,
others become more esoteric.
Falling costs and growing demand enabled the movies to grow more rapidly
in the 1920s than did other cultural media. Popular culture appeared to be
gaining at the expense of high culture. But in fact such growth eventually
transforms popular culture into high culture. As popular culture genres
lower their costs, they achieve the potential for greater diversity and
exoticism.
Art films, documentaries, and avant-garde movies have expanded since the
early days of the medium. Artistic genres or sub-genres sometimes will
move back in the direction of popular taste and away from the esoteric.
Even if the cost of artistic production is falling, the costs of
distribution may be rising, making an apparently labor-intensive endeavor
in fact highly capital-intensive. Publishers of best- selling novels, in
their attempt to reach larger audiences, spend more on advertising than
ever before. Publishers need to recoup these expenditures through high
sales volume. The need to hit the bestseller lists helps explain why plot
has achieved greater emphasis over subtlety and elegance of language.
Literature as a whole has become more diverse, and provided greater room
for the esoteric, but media expenditures have caused the bestseller list
to emphasize mass appeal to increasing degree.
The decreasing economic importance of the family has reinforced the split
between high and low culture. In previous eras individuals tended to learn
job skills from older family members. Many of the most renowned creators
of the past - including all of the best known classical composers and some
of the leading painters - received extensive familial training at very
young ages. These family mentors were often good artists and musicians,
but they tended to lack creativity and hold tastes well within the
mainstream. They taught their sons and daughters to produce accessible
creations. Today increased wealth and division of labor have allowed
expert trainers to replace family mentoring. Budding composers now seek to
please genre specialists rather than a general audience.
Increasing ease of reproducibility, a fundamentally healthy market
development, drives a further wedge between high and low culture.
Reproducibility gives critics the option of embracing relatively unpopular
creations from the past. Eighteenth century musical audiences, for the
most part, knew only the music that they could hear in live performance.
Recordings did not exist and the music of earlier composers was difficult
to obtain in manuscript form. High and low musical culture had to be drawn
from the same limited set of options, increasing the likelihood that they
would coincide.
Today's critical listener can draw his or her high culture from the music
of many centuries. We can applaud the merits of Palestrina and Mahler
while Top 40 plays REM and Madonna. The increased number of past creations
and our superior access to them support a greater diversity of taste. The
most popular music is usually drawn from current styles, whereas the
accumulation of passed time increases the likelihood that critics will
favor works from the past.
High culture, however, has never been a static concept. Reproducibility
and preservation allow today's low culture to evolve into tomorrow's high
culture. Shakespeare, in his day, enjoyed great popularity with the
masses, but he had not yet entered a cultural pantheon. Many critics had
never seen the plays, considered him "low brow," or simply ignored his
work.
The later growth of a mass market in books allowed readers and critics to
study and debate Shakespeare at their leisure. By the eighteenth century
some critics were suggesting that he was one of the greatest Western
writers. Drawing upon accumulated centuries of textual study and exegesis,
Harold Bloom now tells us that "The Western canon *is* Shakespeare..."
By the time a new high culture has evolved through critical debate,
however, popular culture has left it far behind. Critical opinion changes
slowly, only after much discussion, debate, and soul-searching. The
masses, in contrast, often change their fickle tastes overnight. The
turnover in Top 40 radio far outpaces the turnover in the Penguin Guide to
classical music recordings. Many buyers deliberately seek out the new, but
many critics seek to develop evaluations that will stand the test of
time.
OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS AND TOPICS
Taking the cultural pessimists as an intellectual foil, I seek to present
a more persuasive framework for understanding the past, present, and
future of our culture. The next four chapters examine some aspects of the
evolution of culture, consider the criticisms of the pessimists, and argue
for an optimistic attitude more favorable to a capitalistic market
economy.
The topics of the chapters are as follows. The second chapter focuses on
the economics of literary production since the Western advent of the
printing press in the fifteenth century. Books are easier to reproduce and
store than most artworks and can therefore reach larger audiences. The
professional author faces a larger middle class market than most
professional artists do; this may prove either a blessing or a curse. I
consider how and when professional authorship became possible, whether
fame incentives have misfired in literature, and whether today's literary
world is plagued by excessive commercialization.
The third chapter, on the visual arts, provides a selected overview of
Western painting and sculpture from the Italian Renaissance up through the
present day. Most of the narrative focuses on critical periods in art
history, including the Florentine Renaissance, the Dutch Golden Age of the
seventeenth century, the French Impressionists, and the rise of New York
as a world art center in this century. For reasons explained in that
chapter, the visual arts have been especially dependent upon the rise of
cosmopolitan urban centers, the growth of wealthy merchant classes, and
innovations in the physical materials of production.
The fourth chapter examines the role of markets in supporting the
development of Western music. The chronology stretches from the rise of
Baroque and classical music up through blues, rock and roll, rap, and
contemporary classical composition. Music, at various times, has been
marketed through church settings, live concert performance, sheet music,
and recordings and radio. The different methods of selling musical ideas
help account for the diversity of music and for the especially pronounced
split between high musical culture and low musical culture.
Literature, music, and painting have developed at different times, in
different locales, and under different market conditions. Yet these arts
also provide an integrated picture of the evolution of artistic
achievement. A similar logic of creativity - innovators seeking to free
themselves from external constraints to pursue internal goals - pervades
artistic work in all forms and genres. The diverse paths of the various
arts can be partially accounted for by differences in costs of production,
durability, reproducibility, capital-labor ratios, and means of marketing.
The fifth and concluding chapter examines the sources and motivations
behind cultural pessimism in more detail. Who are the cultural pessimists
and why do they adopt such skeptical attitudes? The pessimists, who also
partake in creative activity, are influenced by internal and external
artistic forces just as cultural producers are. If we embrace cultural
optimism for the production of art, what hopes ought we hold for the
criticism of art? I treat criticism, including excessively pessimistic
criticism, as a form of diversity favored by market mechanisms, and as
part of the discovery mechanism which supports cultural refinement and
progress.