Co.Design | business + design: What does it mean to be an Art City? Rittenbach, the book's editor, reserves the term for the urban areas that offer something beyond even prestigious museums and a thriving gallery culture: “I mean a creative economy within a small place,” she tells Co.Design. “It’s a city that has its own critical feedback system.”
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The thing that struck me most about this article was that the author said that a up and coming city for contemporary art because “It’s a city that has its own critical feedback system.” It is interesting to me that a city having critique and lively discussion about art really fuels the city's art scene.
I have to agree with Michael. The part about the feedback system resonated with me most too. Now that I think about it, it sounds essential that a city has a community that's willing to give and take from each other creatively in order for there to be any kind of arts scene in that city. A place may have plenty of great artists with great work, but if none of them talk to each other, then the work can not grow or change or develop into a movement. So maybe a close knit and smaller city would be able to best carry out communication among its artists, who can more directly make their art known.
I was definitely intrigued by this article. I've been trying to find places that would open my eyes to a more contemporary and avant-garde world. As for right now, my true love is Berlin. However, I did find the article very short and lacking in some areas. Naturally, I'm not going to spend $80 on this book, so I looked at the New York Times review. Although this book gives some good advice as to which cities are growing artistically, the review mentioned how "the selected cities are 'places which host biennials and where numerous artists have settled, but not centers for museums or the art market." It stated that cities like Glasgow, Warsaw, Shanghai, and Stockholm could also be part of this list. So after looking at both articles, I wonder why the book chose certain cities over others with the same credentials. The New York Times review also had an interesting perspective on Singapore and Istanbul. Although the book states there is support for the art communities in all of these cities, it was noted that there is a certain undermining of Singapore's art universities, and in Istanbul, only a small portion of government funding went to the art institutions. Although there are many new up-and-coming artists in these cities, I would question the book's final decision.
I understand that there are a lot of cities where art is now growing and thriving, but I don't think people should need to buy a book to tell them where inspirational artistic places are. I think people should go out and find their own place. Pittsburgh, for example, has such a big art scene but a lot of people don't know about it because they don't go out on their own and find it. People expect to find a book that tells them where to go to see art, that's not being an artist or looking for inspiration, that's being a pawn in someone's scheme to make money. Why isn't Pittsburgh on that list? Why isn't New York City on that list? We are asking the people to judge on their art scene? Well, I don't know how many business men in NYC actually know about the art scene there. NYC is one of the fashion capitals in the world, it has Chelsea, an area dedicated to getting struggling artists work out for everyone to see, Brooklyn is known for it's multitude of crafters, etc. NYC, a place that people always think of as a steal jungle is thriving with artistic people. There is art all around us. Museums, no museums, it doesn't matter, it's the people that matter. I don't want some stupid book telling me where I need to go if I want to see real artsy people because art is everywhere, people just need to open their eyes and take a look for once in their life.
*typo: steel
This article was very interesting and also a little worrying, seeing as how no American cities made the list. I think that these "new artistic cities" have always been there and have always been places of artistic ingenuity, but now that globalization is ever growing and expanding the breath of where people live and create art people are beginning to notice these places more than ever before. I think all large cities have the potential to be hubs of artistic talent, it just depends on the trends of the time.
Color me biased, but I'm also surprised that Berlin was not on this list. It was the first place I thought of when it comes to cities with vibrant "art scenes". But this article mentions that such a survey would challenge our assumptions about "what quantifies an art scene". I think it would also challenge our assumptions about what is art and who proclaims it thusly--even though these questions aren't new. And I don't mean to sound too political, but there is no way that this would be a "fair contest", and therefore an "accurate survey". This is because not everyone in the world lives under the same conditions of freedoms in expression and censorship (or lack thereof). So, no matter the case, we are comparing apples to oranges.
It is definitely interesting to see that no American cities made the list but at the same time I think each city has it's own way of being artistic. there are different cultures everywhere you go and I don't think artists or even tourists should base their decision to work in or visit a place because of it's said standard. I still think these places might be interesting to visit though.
Berlin didn't make the list because it is currently a thriving art city. If we were talking about artsy cities than things would be different, New York probably should have made the list along with Seattle, Austin, Chicago, but that is not what they are discussing. An art city is somewhere that is "a creative economy within a small place” or “a city that has its own critical feedback system.” It is somewhere that has lots of artists that are constantly creating work and critiquing work and reproducing work and has an economy that centers around creation and art.
Creativity is funded more by collaboration than by galleries or museums. Like the article points out, the great arts movements in history have occurred at times and in places where a critical mass of artists found themselves in close contact with one another and were able to feed off each other, both negatively and positively, to better their work. It's not unlike what our environment here in this "conservatory" is supposed to be like. Therefore I am unsurprised that no American cities make the list. We have become a very isolated culture. We don't even know our neighbors any more, let alone what art project someone on the other side of the block might be working on. It's ironic to me that in this supposed age of connectivity with social media driving a "revolution" in the way we communicate and interact, we seem to know less and less about our immediate communities. How could a truly innovative collective emerge from that type of obscurity?
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