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NYTimes.com: Last week The Guardian published an essay by the singer-songwriter David Byrne, which received a fair amount of attention online, arriving under the headline “If the 1% Stifles New York’s Creative Talent, I’m Out of Here.”
4 comments:
Sydney Remson
said...
I thought this article was really interesting. I knew that it was hard to live in New York as an artist, but the idea that as more projects to encourage artists have been appearing , it has become harder for artists to support themselves enough to live in New York, was new to me. What is maybe considered more authentic New York culture is disappearing as artists are forced to leave the city and it is being replaced by projects that work to produce culture. These projects, like BRIC house, sound really cool though. And I don't think its necessarily a bad thing for artists to end up in cities other than New York. I know that a lot of us think that making it in New York is the way to be successful, but there are lots of other cities that are up and coming arts cities, like Pittsburgh or Providence. The way for these places to grow is with more artists.
I agree that there is a cultural paradox happening in the arts, and I think it is represented to a large scale in theater, and specifically theater attendance. It seems like local and regional theaters don't have the draw to the general public as they once did as an evening of fun and entertainment, not as a night of thoughtful artistic representation. I hope that this trend does not continue, as it is accompanied by diminishing audiences
I found this article incredibly interesting, especially since I took a class last year about gentrification and the creative class. The arts play a huge part here at CMU and I myself will eventually be a part of the creative class. It will be important to know where and how to live in cities around the world for that day in the future when I graduate from the Carnegie Mellon bubble. New York city has been transformed within the last twenty years and areas that young artists used to live are now inhabited by members of the upper middle class. Increasingly wealthier classes are moving in to creative neighborhoods and pushing out the original members of the community. This is not only true for New York, but for many cities around the country.
The paradox that this author points to is that it is easy to consume art in New York, but hard to make a living creating it. Okay, I can believe that. I'm not certain how much that has to do with the anonymity of arts philanthropists in Brooklyn, but that's alright.
It seems like this paradox isn't anything new. There aren't enough people that prioritize seeing and donating to the arts, so that leaves plenty of accessibility for the few who do. There are too many people who want to make it as an artist and not enough demand because the arts are not need or service driven, so most people cannot make a living off of art. Those two sides of the coin, artists and audiences, affect and are affected by this age-old paradox which is, essentially, an imbalance of supply and demand due to the nature of the arts.
4 comments:
I thought this article was really interesting. I knew that it was hard to live in New York as an artist, but the idea that as more projects to encourage artists have been appearing , it has become harder for artists to support themselves enough to live in New York, was new to me. What is maybe considered more authentic New York culture is disappearing as artists are forced to leave the city and it is being replaced by projects that work to produce culture. These projects, like BRIC house, sound really cool though. And I don't think its necessarily a bad thing for artists to end up in cities other than New York. I know that a lot of us think that making it in New York is the way to be successful, but there are lots of other cities that are up and coming arts cities, like Pittsburgh or Providence. The way for these places to grow is with more artists.
I agree that there is a cultural paradox happening in the arts, and I think it is represented to a large scale in theater, and specifically theater attendance. It seems like local and regional theaters don't have the draw to the general public as they once did as an evening of fun and entertainment, not as a night of thoughtful artistic representation. I hope that this trend does not continue, as it is accompanied by diminishing audiences
I found this article incredibly interesting, especially since I took a class last year about gentrification and the creative class. The arts play a huge part here at CMU and I myself will eventually be a part of the creative class. It will be important to know where and how to live in cities around the world for that day in the future when I graduate from the Carnegie Mellon bubble. New York city has been transformed within the last twenty years and areas that young artists used to live are now inhabited by members of the upper middle class. Increasingly wealthier classes are moving in to creative neighborhoods and pushing out the original members of the community. This is not only true for New York, but for many cities around the country.
The paradox that this author points to is that it is easy to consume art in New York, but hard to make a living creating it. Okay, I can believe that. I'm not certain how much that has to do with the anonymity of arts philanthropists in Brooklyn, but that's alright.
It seems like this paradox isn't anything new. There aren't enough people that prioritize seeing and donating to the arts, so that leaves plenty of accessibility for the few who do. There are too many people who want to make it as an artist and not enough demand because the arts are not need or service driven, so most people cannot make a living off of art. Those two sides of the coin, artists and audiences, affect and are affected by this age-old paradox which is, essentially, an imbalance of supply and demand due to the nature of the arts.
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