Hey JW, Lots of fun points, thanks.

I think we're getting at many of the same things but may be tripping over terminology, "excess wealth" (or "surplus wealth") specifically. Maybe it'd be a good idea to chuck the term, or tweak it, or kick it around a bit.

There's a distinction that I find useful to be made between folk cultures and modern cultures where the arts are concerned, however fuzzy the line between them can sometimes be shown to be. Tibetan yak herders, for instance, (assuming there are such people) no doubt have their own arts and culture. They doll their food up with a spice or two; they tell stories; they decorate their clothes; they do some throat singing (or something). Yet I'm not sure that talking about the cultural goods created by Tibetan yak herders as functions of "surplus wealth" gets us very far. I mean, it's useful (as far as I'm concerned, anyway) to make a distinction between the kinds of things yak herders make and the creations of bohemians living on trust funds.

The best way out of this corner that I've run into comes from some anthropologists, who make the point that people in every culture create art -- every culture, that is, whose every last bit of energy and time isn't being taken up with the struggle for survival. The only people, in other words, who don't produce "culture" are those just a millimeter this side of death.

Yet I can't imagine many people would speak of hillbillies or yak herders as having a lot of surplus wealth. So how to discuss what they're up to? Maybe their cultural goods are a function of having "leisure time"? And people in such cultures are often said to "work" only four or five hours a day. So maybe that's a little better. But even so ... Baby-raising, hut-repairing, fish-hook-making -- I dunno, seems to me like that'd eat up a lot of time. And some anthropologists argue that people in such cultures often don't have a concept of "leisure time" as opposed to "work" (or of "culture" as a product of "leisure time.") Instead, these people are doing what, so far as they're aware, people do: busying themselves decorating clothes, plaiting the kids' hair, amusing each other with stories while killing woodchucks, whatever. The decorations, heighteners, entertainments, and rituals are woven into their very full lives. (It's we who go in there and see these things as "culture.")

So, mistakenly or not, I tend to find it handy to set aside concepts like "surplus wealth" and "leisure time" for use in discussing aristocratic, or modern, or modern-ish, life. You may disagree.

There's another distinction to be drawn that I find handy too, which is between "surplus wealth" and "leisure time" as they affect the individual, and as they affect the larger society. There's a big diff between whether or not Person A has enough money and time to indulge some artistic interests, and whether or not the society around him has a fizzy economy and a willingness to spend money on leisured or cultivated pursuits. The '80s in NYC, for instance, were interesting because there seemed to be a lot of money around, and it was loose and showy and self-conscious enough money that ambitious and lucky artists could hope to grab some as it floated by. It was a very particular environment, and it wasn't a function of whether any artist had a trust fund or not. Florence during the Renaissance, for instance: banking was booming, money was around, people wanted statues and paintings and palaces. As far as I'm aware, most of the Renaissance artists we remember were skilled tradesmen hustling up jobs, basically, and not trust-fund kids loafing around trying to figure out how to make an impact on critics and friends.

I know I'm being pedantic, but it's fun to go to the trouble of sorting these things out.

So, when I'm talking about rich kids, self-expression and today's fine art world, I find it useful to make a distinction between that phenom and folk art, as well as between that phenom and a fizzy economic environment that offers lots of business possibilities for artists.

Just between us, I've got nothing against rich kids or trust funds, or rich kids with trust funds going into the arts. May the rich be more, and not less, generous towards the arts. What does burn me a bit is that the pervasiveness of the phenom isn't more widely acknowledged and discussed. It's helpful to know about it when thinking about the art world's products: Knowing, for instance, that a lot of radical art has been made by rich kids does help put the radicalism of it in a little bit of perspective. (Ie.: "Easy for you to take that stance. You don't have to make a living.")

Another thing that can gripe me a bit is the way many people leap to conclusions: that, because fine art is above commercial art on the hierarchy, for instance, it necessarily follows that the people in fine art are there because they're better (more talented, better trained, more sophisticated, whatever) than the people in commercial art. Or that a literary writer is a literary -- and not a pop or commercial -- writer because he/she is a better/finer/smarter/more-talented writer.

Now, you don't make these mistakes, I don't, and the savvy people who visit this blog don't. But many people still do. (I do happen to think that there are differing degrees of potential formal complexity between the various arts. And I do think that the commercial world puts a lot of unfortunate, distorting pressures on people and their talents. But that's a whole different discussion.)

As a handy hierarchy, it may make sense in a centralized, old Euro country. In the States, it seems to me to be about 90% a kind of sentimentality. So it can be tonic to remind ourselves occasionally that one of the most important diffs between fine artists and commercial artists is something as simple and basic as: many fine artists don't have to make a living, and nearly all commercial ones do.

I often wonder why the profs, critics, and art historians don't make more of this. I also marvel (silly me) at the way that most of the ones who do have a boringly Marxist and deterministic point of view.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 17, 2003 1:03 PM

Thanks for sharing your interesting discussion. I was flipping through recent X-Men comics and was struck by the cruelty and sadism, the lack of common humanity compared to the comics I collected when I was a kid. To me the latest X-Men comics weren't about anything, just sound and fury signifying nothing. I could imagine a spoiled rich kid being the culprit behind this, but why would this type of person be given the writing duties in the first place ? Lack of better alternatives, a position of privilege ? Or are they just the tool of a master force bent on destroying Western civilization ?

One thing I considered during this discussion was whether significant, meaningful art had ever been produced by someone from a privileged background. If the answer is no, never, then obviously there is something intrinsically incompatible about being wealthy and producing art. But I suspect there have been important artists from wealthy backgrounds. So the question becomes, what is wrong with the children of priveledge these days ? What type of child rearing produces someone so alienated from the trials and tribulations of everyday people ? Spoiling your kids is popular among middle and lower class people as well. I think it may also be a factor of age. As I have gotten older and seriously considered aging, illness, marriage, it's been humbling and I feel more connected with humanity. Surely something similar must happen to the wealthy without it having to be a Buddha-like transcendence.

Posted by: Matt Leonard on May 17, 2003 4:59 PM






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