First of all the painters always complain when they aren't being bought. But America had 66,000 opera houses in 1900. The precursor to the New York Philharmonic traveled so often across country concertizing in the late 19th century that the route was dubbed the Theodore Thomas Orchestral Highway. Of course they had their stories about my people at the same time in the pulp fiction and later in Hollywood. The same old prejudice about Indians as today even though we sang in those opera companies. Read Ohiyesa's story. His daughter was an opera singer.
Writers and painters often made their livings at other things, Melville worked in the Customs House, Whitman was an opera critic for the pulp Literature. But there was money made and too be made in the Arts with Art as a profession up until the wealthy got involved in "owning" the Arts beginning in the 1880s and culminating in their ridding themselves of all of the Arts that they didn't directly use after 1929. (98% of the arts disappeared after 1929. After all why would the upper 2% of the population need more than 2% or the "very best" of the artists. They called it "upholding quality" and they discouraged any but the "most" talented even attempting it. Of course it killed the market and created Vaudeville and the cheap movie business. Before that, there was enough live art for everyone. Charles Ives writes about it and advocates artists making a living in business so that they can create OUTSIDE the market so crass commercialism will not destroy the quality. But Ives called America before the crash, a paradise for the Arts, especially during his childhood as the child of a bandmaster in Danforth, Connecticut. For a real description of this, you must read the Lawrence Levine Massey Lectures at Harvard published under the title: "Highbrow/Lowbrow, The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America" Harvard Press and be sure to collect the two volume "Strong on Music, The New York Music Scene In the Days of George Templeton Strong" edited by Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Chicago Press. Less good but still useful is "Opera in America" by John Dizikes, Yale. Dizikes can't quite put all of those Opera houses together with the theme of his story which is more generic as the one you were quoting. You can also find hints of it in the Robert Frank book "The Winner Take All Society" but Frank and his co-author Cook do not put together than the "Live" Art was reserved for the wealthy after 1929. What he does get right is that there were 1300 opera houses in the farm state of Iowa before the crash. Today there is one part time. Yes boys and girls, Artists are both entrepreneurs and workers. We have been for a long time and every European who came here before 1880 knew that. After that, we got myths and the idiotic stories about Art as correlative to wealth and taste but not for the people who struggle to Exist. Modern Neurology has put a lie to that tale as they have proved and I have a whole bibliography of recent research that shows the Arts to have compartments in the brain dedicated to the Arts alone. It seems that it is a biological evolutionary tool and far from being correlative it is Foundational to human intelligence. Check out the conservative DANA Foundation. They went into this with a prejudice and came out on the other end a convert. That's one of the reasons you have big conservative money going to the Arts. William Safire the late conservative columnist for the New York Times became the CEO of The DANA Foundation up until his death. But like only Nixon could go to China for America only conservatives can prove that Art is important since they are the villains in this story. Only in America:>)) REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sandwichman Sent: Friday, July 23, 2010 11:26 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] "Are Artists Workers?" "A glance back to the 1930s shows that many New Deal programs were innovative, even radical, in treating artists, writers, and playwrights as workers deserving of support. This was new in America, where artists since colonial times had been considered marginal "extras" in our society. John Singleton Copley (1738--1815) complained that he was regarded as "no better than a cobbler." Thomas Eakins (1844--1916) lamented that "My honours are misunderstanding, persecution, and neglect, enhanced because unsought." John Sloan (1871--1951) famously said, "The artist in America is regarded as the unwanted cockroach in the kitchen of a frontier society."" http://www.gilderlehrman.org/historynow/03_2009/historian6.php -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
