Morning Ed: Society {2016.10.25.T}

Saul Degraw in reply to Richard Hershberger says:

@richard-hershberger

I think 4:33 is an interesting experiment in questioning the nature of music and I think Philip Glass does great stuff. I’m fond of the compositions he did for Mishima.

In terms of Classical music, I love Mozart and Ravel and many others. I am not fond of Baroque music very much. Nor do I like a lot of the composers who were popular along with the pre-Raphelites. I basically think art took a nose dive from the time of Turner’s death until the late 19th century with the rise of the Impressionists and post-Impressionist and in theatre, people like Chekhov.

The biggest issue with classical music is that it could not compete with jazz, pop, and later rock music for young audiences. It all seemed stuffy and old-fashioned compared to listening to Benny Goodman, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Satchmo, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, Ledbelly, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, and then the Beatles, etc. On an old usenet thread, I remember a guy talking about how he was in middle school when the Beatles were first on Ed Sullivan. He and his fellow geeky friends could not figure out why their classmates would rather listen to the Beatles over say Gilbert and Sullivan. Whereas I can perfectly understand preferring the Beatles to Gilbert and Sullivan but I loathe Gilbert and Sullivan as much as I loathe Hollman Hunt.

FWIW when I was in grad school, I was the director who was more interested in working with playwrights like Beckett, Brecht, and Chekhov over doing musicals. One of the directors who loved musicals told me that I “get Beckett” whereas he did not get Beckett and just wanted to do musicals. I generally dislike musicals with some exceptions and usually the edgier ones like Fun Home or Cabaret or Caroline, Or Change.

Modern Art museums seem to have much larger audiences than classical performances or the ballet (modern dance has smaller audiences than classical ballet though).

And sometimes I do think some of the sneers against modern art are because rich people prefer to collect modern and contemporary art over stuff that many people find “pretty.”

The problem with the crowd that goes against Beckett or Glass or Motherwell is that they seem to want everything locked and the same. I am bored by the umpteenth million peformance of the Sound of Music. Yes there is plenty of really bad experimental theatre or artists who try and experiment and fail but I would rather deal with failed art than everything staying the same always.

“I am mostly not one of them, but that is no one’s problem but my own. But when you have works of art that go from the artist’s studio to the gallery to the secured warehouse, and this is considered success, then there is a problem.”

I am not sure about the last step here. Art going to the secured warehouse is an issue of a nature of a certain part of the art market and the fact that there are lots of rich people who can buy more art than they have space to display. Art is a seen as another way to store wealth just like real estate. What would you rather happened to the art?

There are also a lot of people who buy art and display it. I’ve bought small pieces and gotten some art from my parents as well as they were downsizing. I think the idea of art as investment is way older than the contemporary market. It started in the late 19th century with the first wave of American business fortunes who would buy all of the old Masters of Europe on huge shopping expeditions. This gave us the Met, the Frick, the Gardener, and other museums. The same thing happens today with the Broad in LA but with modern art. I don’t see the difference in Gardener and others buying Rembrandts by the boatload from Joe Duveen over today’s 1 percent buying pieces by Damien Hirst.

I would say that one interesting issue is that certain artists seem more likely to appreciate than others based on whether they sell to the 1 percent or not. You can buy some smaller Arsham’s for a few hundred or thousands dollars. This is not affordable to most people but is in the realm of possible for an upper-middle class family that is willing to save and make a large purchase. But he is collected by really rich people too so this few hundred can be an appreciated investment. There are lots of artists who make work in the range of pieces for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars whose works will probably not appreciate and I am not talking Kincade but artists with gallery shows in places like NYC or SF or LA.

*FWIW I have also gotten into conversations here and elsewhere about whether furniture above Ikea is worth it with people of similar income levels and backgrounds and whether it is too privileged too purchase original art.Report