HomeMy WebLinkAboutAgenda_ARTAB_01.20.2015Notice of Meeting for the
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
of the City of Georgetown
January 20, 2015 at 4:30 PM
at Small conference room, 2nd floor, Georgetown Public Library, 402 W. 8th Street
The City of Georgetown is committed to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If
you require assistance in participating at a public meeting due to a disability, as defined under the ADA,
reasonable assistance, adaptations, or accommodations will be provided upon request. Please contact the
City at least four (4) days prior to the scheduled meeting date, at (512) 930-3652 or City Hall at 113 East
8th Street for additional information; TTY users route through Relay Texas at 711.
Regular Session
(This Regular Session may, at any time, be recessed to convene an Executive Session for any purpose
authorized by the Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code 551.)
A Citizens who wish to address the Board. As of the deadline, no persons were signed up to speak on
items other than what was posted on the agenda.
B Announcements of upcoming events.
C Consideration and approval of minutes of December 16, 2014 Arts and Culture Board meeting.
D Introduction of Dana Hendrix, Fine Arts Librarian. --Eric Lashley
E Report regarding the operation of the Georgetown Art Center for the month of December -- Eric
Lashley
F Consideration and approval of grant applications and funding for 2015. --Eric Lashley
G Report on meeting with the Main Street and Convention and Visitor Bureau managers concerning
Austin Monthly advertising. --Amanda Still.
H Report on Texans for the Arts conference call concerning the Texas Commission on the Arts budget
request. --Eric Lashley.
I Local artist perspective and report on The Atlantic Monthly article, The Death of the Artist- and the
Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur. --Gary Anderson
J Report and possible action regarding expenditure of funds from the Arts and Culture Board budget --
Lawren Weiss, Eric Lashley
K Consideration of dates of coming meetings -- Eric Lashley
CERTIFICATE OF POSTING
I, Jessica Brettle, City Secretary for the City of Georgetown, Texas, do hereby certify that this Notice of
Meeting was posted at City Hall, 113 E. 8th Street, a place readily accessible to the general public at all
times, on the ______ day of __________________, 2015, at __________, and remained so posted for at
least 72 continuous hours preceding the scheduled time of said meeting.
____________________________________
Jessica Brettle, City Secretary
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Citizens who wish to address the Board. As of the deadline, no persons were signed up to speak on
items other than what was posted on the agenda.
ITEM SUMMARY:
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Announcements of upcoming events.
ITEM SUMMARY:
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Consideration and approval of minutes of December 16, 2014 Arts and Culture Board meeting.
ITEM SUMMARY:
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
ATTACHMENTS:
Description Type
Minutes December 2014 Backup Material
Minutes of the meeting of the
Arts and Culture Board
City of Georgetown, Texas
December 16, 2014
The Arts and Culture Board met on Tuesday, December 16, 2014 at 4:30 p.m. in Classroom 211 of
the Georgetown Public Library, 402 W. 8th Street
MEMBERS PRESENT: Gary Anderson, Philip Baker, Shana Nichols, Betty Ann Sensabaugh,
Amanda Still and Melissa Waggoner
Regular Session
A. Citizens who wish to address the board. – None were present.
B. Announcements of upcoming events. – Lawren Weiss reminded the board members who are
eligible and wish to continue being a member of the Arts and Culture Board, to turn in their
Boards and Commissions applications by the January 9, 2015 deadline. Weiss also asked
board members to notify her if they wish to attend the Texas Commission on the Arts’ State of
the Arts Conference, January 28-30. Philip Baker presented the board two thank you notes
from Vice President of Georgetown Art Works, Micki Avery, one thanking the board for
contributing to the Georgetown Art Center’s success in their first year. The second note
thanked the board for funding an ad in Community Impact newspaper promoting the Benini
exhibit. This is the Art Center’s best attended exhibit to date. Weiss passed out a thank you
letter from Doug Groves of the Chisholm Trail Communities Foundation, thanking the board for
the grant for the Festival of the Arts Fund.
C. Consideration and approval of minutes of November 18, 2014 Arts and Culture Board meeting.
– Melissa Waggoner moved to approve the minutes as distributed. Shana Nichols seconded
the motion, which passed unanimously.
D. Report regarding the operation of the Georgetown Art Center for the month of November. –
Eric Lashley, Gary Anderson. Diane Gaume sent a revised edition of the report for September
2014, as well as new reports for October and November for the board to review. Weiss
provided a hard copy (attached to these minutes) of the reports to the board. The board
discussed the reaction from Georgetown Art Works regarding the Board’s decision to withhold
funding for the month that reports are not submitted. After discussion, Eric Lashley told the
board that the monthly report would be included in the agenda packet, if it’s received on time.
Discussion moved on to the happenings at Georgetown Art Center. Lashley reported that the
door count was lower than the previous month. Jeffrey Dell and Cassidy White will display their
art from December 19 - January 24. The artists’ reception will be held on Saturday, January
10, from 7 - 9 p.m. and the artist talk will be on Sunday, January 11 at 1:30 p.m.
E. Report and possible action regarding expenditure of funds from the Arts and Culture Board
budget. – Lawren Weiss, Eric Lashley. Weiss noted the expenses that had been paid the
previous month: $900 to Terry (Tunes) Parks, for three pieces displayed at the library for the
Sculpture Tour, $290.75 to Williamson County Sun for the Call for Grant Proposals, and $600
to Michael Epps for 2 pieces displayed on the Sculpture Tour. Looking for feedback from the
board, Amanda Still explained her ideas to create a stable donor base for the arts in
Georgetown. One of Still’s plans includes teaming up with Austin Monthly Media to promote
events such as Gallery Georgetown. Still also hopes to create a special committee where
members pay a certain amount to join and then receive perks throughout the year for being a
member. After some discussion, the board expressed their approval for Still to move forward
with her plans and to keep them updated through the process.
F. Report on Fine Arts Librarian position. – Lashley reported that he hopes to hire a Fine Arts
Librarian in the beginning of 2015. Lashley also hopes that he/she will be able to attend the
Texas Commission on the Arts’ conference at the end of January.
G. Update on Utility Box Art Project. – Lashley reported that he would soon take pictures of the
utility box on 8th street, so the call for artist can be sent out. Lashley hopes to send out a call
for entries as soon as possible with a deadline of mid-February, so the board can make an
artist selection at the February meeting.
H. Consideration of dates of coming meetings. – Eric Lashley. All members present said they
would be able to attend the regularly scheduled January 20, 2015 meeting.
Chair Baker adjourned the meeting at 5:25 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Liz Stewart, Secretary Philip Baker, Chair
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Introduction of Dana Hendrix, Fine Arts Librarian. --Eric Lashley
ITEM SUMMARY:
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Report regarding the operation of the Georgetown Art Center for the month of December -- Eric
Lashley
ITEM SUMMARY:
Per the Operating Agreement, Georgetown Art Work will provide a monthly report to the Arts and
Culture Board for review. This allows the Board to review exhibit and event information at the Art
Center as well as finances/expenses for the previous month.
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Consideration and approval of grant applications and funding for 2015. --Eric Lashley
ITEM SUMMARY:
The Arts and Culture Board sent out a call for proposals from local nonprofits on December 5,
2014. The deadline for proposals is 5 pm on January 16, 2015. The Board has up to $20,000 to
award applicants, however the maximum funds given to a single organization is not to exceed
$3,000.
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
Funding for this project will come from the Arts and Culture Board's regular $20,000 budget for
scholarships/grants.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Report on meeting with the Main Street and Convention and Visitor Bureau managers concerning
Austin Monthly advertising. --Amanda Still.
ITEM SUMMARY:
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Report on Texans for the Arts conference call concerning the Texas Commission on the Arts
budget request. --Eric Lashley.
ITEM SUMMARY:
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Local artist perspective and report on The Atlantic Monthly article, The Death of the Artist- and
the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur. --Gary Anderson
ITEM SUMMARY:
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
ATTACHMENTS:
Description Type
The Atlantic article Backup Material
White Flight
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WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ DEC 28 2014, 7:43 PM ET
P RONOUNCE THE WORD ARTIST, to conjure up the image of a solitary genius.
A sacred aura still attaches to the word, a sense of one in contact with the
numinous. “He’s an artist,” we’ll say in tones of reverence about an actor or
musician or director. “A true artist,” we’ll solemnly proclaim our favorite singer
or photographer, meaning someone who appears to dwell upon a higher plane.
Vision, inspiration, mysterious gifts as from above: such are some of the
associations that continue to adorn the word.
Yet the notion of the artist as a solitary genius—so potent a cultural force, so
determinative, still, of the way we think of creativity in general—is decades out of
date. So out of date, in fact, that the model that replaced it is itself already out of
date. A new paradigm is emerging, and has been since about the turn of the
millennium, one that’s in the process of reshaping what artists are: how they
work, train, trade, collaborate, think of themselves and are thought of—even
what art is—just as the solitary-genius model did two centuries ago. The new
The Death of the Artist—and the
Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has
changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as
we have known it?
Javier Jaén
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paradigm may finally destroy the very notion of “art” as such—that sacred
spiritual substance—which the older one created.
Before we thought of artists as geniuses, we thought of them as artisans. The
words, by no coincidence, are virtually the same. Art itself derives from a root
that means to “join” or “fit together”—that is, to make or craft, a sense that
survives in phrases like the art of cooking and words like artful, in the sense of
“crafty.” We may think of Bach as a genius, but he thought of himself as an
artisan, a maker. Shakespeare wasn’t an artist, he was a poet, a denotation that
is rooted in another word for make. He was also a playwright, a term worth
pausing over. A playwright isn’t someone who writes plays; he is someone who
fashions them, like a wheelwright or shipwright.
A whole constellation of ideas and practices accompanied this conception.
Artists served apprenticeships, like other craftsmen, to learn the customary
methods (hence the attributions one sees in museums: “workshop of Bellini” or
“studio of Rembrandt”). Creativity was prized, but credibility and value derived,
above all, from tradition. In a world still governed by a fairly rigid social
structure, artists were grouped with the other artisans, somewhere in the middle
or lower middle, below the merchants, let alone the aristocracy. Individual
practitioners could come to be esteemed—think of the Dutch masters—but they
were, precisely, masters, as in master craftsmen. The distinction between art
and craft, in short, was weak at best. Indeed, the very concept of art as it was
later understood—of Art—did not exist.
ALL OF THIS began to change in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the
period associated with Romanticism: the age of Rousseau, Goethe, Blake, and
Beethoven, the age that taught itself to value not only individualism and
originality but also rebellion and youth. Now it was desirable and even
glamorous to break the rules and overthrow tradition—to reject society and blaze
your own path. The age of revolution, it was also the age of secularization. As
traditional belief became discredited, at least among the educated class, the arts
emerged as the basis of a new creed, the place where people turned to put
themselves in touch with higher truths.
Art rose to its zenith of spiritual prestige, and the artist rose along with it. The
artisan became the genius: solitary, like a holy man; inspired, like a prophet; in
touch with the unseen, his consciousness bulging into the future. “The priest
departs,” said Whitman, “the divine literatus comes.” Art disentangled itself
from craft; the term fine arts, “those which appeal to the mind and the
imagination,” was first recorded in 1767.
“Art” became a unitary concept, incorporating music, theater, and literature as
well as the visual arts, but also, in a sense, distinct from each, a kind of higher
essence available for philosophical speculation and cultural veneration. “Art for
art’s sake,” the aestheticist slogan, dates from the early 19th century. So does
Gesamtkunstwerk, the dream or ideal, so precious to Wagner, of the “total work
of art.” By the modernist moment, a century later, the age of Picasso, Joyce, and
Stravinsky, the artist stood at the pinnacle of status, too, a cultural aristocrat
with whom the old aristocrats—or at any rate the most advanced among them—
wanted nothing more than to associate.
It is hardly any wonder that the image of the artist as a solitary genius—so noble,
so enviable, so pleasant an object of aspiration and projection—has kept its hold
on the collective imagination. Yet it was already obsolescent more than half a
century ago. After World War II in particular, and in America especially, art, like
all religions as they age, became institutionalized. We were the new superpower;
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we wanted to be a cultural superpower as well. We founded museums, opera
houses, ballet companies, all in unprecedented numbers: the so-called culture
boom. Arts councils, funding bodies, educational programs, residencies,
magazines, awards—an entire bureaucratic apparatus.
As art was institutionalized, so, inevitably, was the artist. The genius became the
professional. Now you didn’t go off to Paris and hole up in a garret to produce
your masterpiece, your Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or Ulysses, and wait for the
world to catch up with you. Like a doctor or lawyer, you went to graduate school
—M.F.A. programs were also proliferating—and then tried to find a position.
That often meant a job, typically at a college or university—writers in English
departments, painters in art schools (higher ed was also booming)—but it
sometimes simply meant an affiliation, as with an orchestra or theater troupe.
Saul Bellow went to Paris in 1948, where he began The Adventures of Augie
March, but he went on a Guggenheim grant, and he came from an assistant
professorship.
The training was professional, and so was the work it produced. Expertise—or,
in the mantra of the graduate programs, “technique”—not inspiration or
tradition, became the currency of aesthetic authority. The artist-as-genius could
sometimes pretend that his work was tossed off in a sacred frenzy, but no self-
respecting artist-as-professional could afford to do likewise. They had to be seen
to be working, and working hard (the badge of professional virtue), and it helped
if they could explain to laypeople—deans, donors, journalists—what it was that
they were doing.
The artist’s progress, in the postwar model, was also professional. You didn’t
burst from obscurity to celebrity with a single astonishing work. You slowly
climbed the ranks. You accumulated credentials. You amassed a résumé. You sat
on the boards and committees, collected your prizes and fellowships. It was safer
than the solitary-genius thing, but it was also a lot less exciting, and it is no
surprise that artists were much less apt to be regarded now as sages or priests,
much more likely to be seen as just another set of knowledge workers. Spiritual
aristocracy was sacrificed for solid socioeconomic upper-middle-class-ness.
ARTISAN, GENIUS, PROFESSIONAL: underlying all these models is the market.
In blunter terms, they’re all about the way that you get paid. If the artisanal
paradigm predates the emergence of modern capitalism—the age of the artisan
was the age of the patron, with the artist as, essentially, a sort of feudal
dependent—the paradigms of genius and professional were stages in the effort to
adjust to it.
In the former case, the object was to avoid the market and its sullying
entanglements, or at least to appear to do so. Spirit stands opposed to flesh, to
filthy lucre. Selling was selling out. Artists, like their churchly forebears, were
meant to be unworldly. Some, like Picasso and Rilke, had patrons, but under
very different terms than did the artisans, since the privilege was weighted in the
artist’s favor now, leaving many fewer strings attached. Some, like Proust and
Elizabeth Bishop, had money to begin with. And some, like Joyce and van Gogh,
did the most prestigious thing and starved—which also often meant sponging,
extracting gifts or “loans” from family or friends that amounted to a kind of
sacerdotal tax, equivalent to the tithes exacted by priests or alms relied upon by
monks.
Professionalism represents a compromise formation, midway between the
sacred and the secular. A profession is not a vocation, in the older sense of a
“calling,” but it also isn’t just a job; something of the priestly clings to it. Against
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A contact is not a
collaborator. Coleridge,
for Wordsworth, was not
a contact; he was a
partner, a comrade, a
second self.
the values of the market, the artist, like other professionals, maintained a
countervailing set of standards and ideals—beauty, rigor, truth—inherited from
the previous paradigm. Institutions served to mediate the difference, to cushion
artists, ideologically, economically, and psychologically, from the full force of the
marketplace.
Some artists did enter the market, of course, especially those who worked in the
“low” or “popular” forms. But even they had mediating figures—publishing
companies, movie studios, record labels; agents, managers, publicists, editors,
producers—who served to shield creators from the market’s logic. Corporations
functioned as a screen; someone else, at least, was paid to think about the
numbers. Publishers or labels also sometimes played an actively benevolent role:
funding the rest of the list with a few big hits, floating promising beginners while
their talent had a chance to blossom, even subsidizing the entire enterprise, as
James Laughlin did for years at New Directions.
THERE WERE OVERLAPS, of course, between the different paradigms—long
transitions, mixed and marginal cases, anticipations and survivals. The
professional model remains the predominant one. But we have entered,
unmistakably, a new transition, and it is marked by the final triumph of the
market and its values, the removal of the last vestiges of protection and
mediation. In the arts, as throughout the middle class, the professional is giving
way to the entrepreneur, or, more precisely, the “entrepreneur”: the “self-
employed” (that sneaky oxymoron), the entrepreneurial self.
The institutions that have undergirded the existing system are contracting or
disintegrating. Professors are becoming adjuncts. Employees are becoming
independent contractors (or unpaid interns). Everyone is in a budget squeeze:
downsizing, outsourcing, merging, or collapsing. Now we’re all supposed to be
our own boss, our own business: our own agent; our own label; our own
marketing, production, and accounting departments. Entrepreneurialism is
being sold to us as an opportunity. It is, by and large, a necessity. Everybody
understands by now that nobody can count on a job.
Still, it also is an opportunity. The push of institutional disintegration has
coincided with the pull of new technology. The emerging culture of creative
entrepreneurship predates the Web—its roots go back to the 1960s—but the Web
has brought it an unprecedented salience. The Internet enables you to promote,
sell, and deliver directly to the user, and to do so in ways that allow you to
compete with corporations and institutions, which previously had a virtual
monopoly on marketing and distribution. You can reach potential customers at a
speed and on a scale that would have been unthinkable when pretty much the
only means were word of mouth, the alternative press, and stapling handbills to
telephone poles.
Everybody gets this: every writer, artist, and
musician with a Web site (that is, every writer,
artist, and musician). Bands hawk their CDs online.
Documentarians take to Kickstarter to raise money
for their projects. The comedian Louis CK, selling
unprotected downloads of his stand-up show, has
tested a nascent distribution model. “Just get your
name out there,” creative types are told. There
seems to be a lot of building going on: you’re
supposed to build your brand, your network, your
social-media presence. Creative entrepreneurship is spawning its own
institutional structure—online marketplaces, self-publishing platforms,
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nonprofit incubators, collaborative spaces—but the fundamental relationship
remains creator-to-customer, with creators handling or superintending every
aspect of the transaction.
SO WHAT WILL all this mean for artists and for art? For training, for practice,
for the shape of the artistic career, for the nature of the artistic community, for
the way that artists see themselves and are seen by the public, for the standards
by which art is judged and the terms by which it is defined? These are new
questions, open questions, questions no one is equipped as yet to answer. But
it’s not too early to offer a few preliminary observations.
Creative entrepreneurship, to start with what is most apparent, is far more
interactive, at least in terms of how we understand the word today, than the
model of the artist-as-genius, turning his back on the world, and even than the
model of the artist as professional, operating within a relatively small and stable
set of relationships. The operative concept today is the network, along with the
verb that goes with it, networking. A Gen-X graphic-artist friend has told me
that the young designers she meets are no longer interested in putting in their
10,000 hours. One reason may be that they recognize that 10,000 hours is less
important now than 10,000 contacts.
A network, I should note, is not the same as what used to be known as a circle—
or, to use a term important to the modernists, a coterie. The truth is that the
geniuses weren’t really quite as solitary as advertised. They also often came
together—think of the Bloomsbury Group—in situations of intense, sustained
creative ferment. With the coterie or circle as a social form, from its
conversations and incitements, came the movement as an intellectual product:
impressionism, imagism, futurism.
But the network is a far more diffuse phenomenon, and the connections that it
typically entails are far less robust. A few days here, a project there, a
correspondence over e-mail. A contact is not a collaborator. Coleridge, for
Wordsworth, was not a contact; he was a partner, a comrade, a second self. It is
hard to imagine that kind of relationship, cultivated over countless
uninterrupted encounters, developing in the age of the network. What kinds of
relationships will develop, and what they will give rise to, remains to be seen.
No longer interested in putting in their 10,000 hours: under all three of the old
models, an artist was someone who did one thing—who trained intensively in
one discipline, one tradition, one set of tools, and who worked to develop one
artistic identity. You were a writer, or a painter, or a choreographer. It is hard to
think of very many figures who achieved distinction in more than one genre—
fiction and poetry, say—let alone in more than one art. Few even attempted the
latter (Gertrude Stein admonished Picasso for trying to write poems), and
almost never with any success.
But one of the most conspicuous things about today’s young creators is their
tendency to construct a multiplicity of artistic identities. You’re a musician and a
photographer and a poet; a storyteller and a dancer and a designer—a
multiplatform artist, in the term one sometimes sees. Which means that you
haven’t got time for your 10,000 hours in any of your chosen media. But
technique or expertise is not the point. The point is versatility. Like any good
business, you try to diversify.
What we see in the new paradigm—in both the artist’s external relationships and
her internal creative capacity—is what we see throughout the culture: the
displacement of depth by breadth. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? No doubt
some of both, in a ratio that’s yet to be revealed. What seems more clear is that
the new paradigm is going to reshape the way that artists are trained. One
recently established M.F.A. program in Portland, Oregon, is conducted under
the rubric of “applied craft and design.” Students, drawn from a range of
disciplines, study entrepreneurship as well as creative practice. Making, the
program recognizes, is now intertwined with selling, and artists need to train in
both—a fact reflected in the proliferation of dual M.B.A./M.F.A. programs.
The new paradigm is also likely to alter the shape of the ensuing career. Just as
everyone, we’re told, will have five or six jobs, in five or six fields, during the
course of their working life, so will the career of the multiplatform,
entrepreneurial artist be more vagrant and less cumulative than under the
previous models. No climactic masterwork of deep maturity, no King Lear or
Faust, but rather many shifting interests and directions as the winds of market
forces blow you here or there.
WORKS OF ART, more centrally and nakedly than ever before, are becoming
commodities, consumer goods. Jeff Bezos, as a patron, is a very different beast
than James Laughlin. Now it’s every man for himself, every tub on its own
bottom. Now it’s not an audience you think of addressing; it’s a customer base.
Now you’re only as good as your last sales quarter.
It’s hard to believe that the new arrangement will not favor work that’s safer:
more familiar, formulaic, user-friendly, eager to please—more like
entertainment, less like art. Artists will inevitably spend a lot more time looking
over their shoulder, trying to figure out what the customer wants rather than
what they themselves are seeking to say. The nature of aesthetic judgment will
itself be reconfigured. “No more gatekeepers,” goes the slogan of the Internet
apostles. Everyone’s opinion, as expressed in Amazon reviews and suchlike,
carries equal weight—the democratization of taste.
Judgment rested with the patron, in the age of the artisan. In the age of the
professional, it rested with the critic, a professionalized aesthete or intellectual.
In the age of the genius, which was also the age of avant-gardes, of tremendous
experimental energy across the arts, it largely rested with artists themselves.
“Every great and original writer,” Wordsworth said, “must himself create the
taste by which he is to be relished.”
But now we have come to the age of the customer, who perforce is always right.
Or as a certain legendary entertainer is supposed to have put it, “There’s a sucker
born every minute.” Another word for gatekeepers is experts. Lord knows they
have their problems, beginning with arrogance, but there is one thing you can
say for them: they’re not quite so easily fooled. When the Modern Library asked
its editorial board to select the 100 best novels of the 20th century, the top
choice was Ulysses. In a companion poll of readers, it was Atlas Shrugged. We
recognize, when it comes to food (the new summit of cultural esteem), that taste
must be developed by a long exposure, aided by the guidance of practitioners
and critics. About the arts we own to no such modesties. Prizes belong to the age
of professionals. All we’ll need to measure merit soon is the best-seller list.
The democratization of taste, abetted by the Web, coincides with the
democratization of creativity. The makers have the means to sell, but everybody
has the means to make. And everybody’s using them. Everybody seems to fancy
himself a writer, a musician, a visual artist. Apple figured this out a long time
ago: that the best way to sell us its expensive tools is to convince us that we all
have something unique and urgent to express.
“Producerism,” we can call this, by analogy with consumerism. What we’re now
persuaded to consume, most conspicuously, are the means to create. And the
democratization of taste ensures that no one has the right (or inclination) to tell
us when our work is bad. A universal grade inflation now obtains: we’re all
swapping A-minuses all the time, or, in the language of Facebook, “likes.”
It is often said today that the most-successful businesses are those that create
experiences rather than products, or create experiences (environments,
relationships) around their products. So we might also say that under
producerism, in the age of creative entrepreneurship, producing becomes an
experience, even the experience. It becomes a lifestyle, something that is
packaged as an experience—and an experience, what’s more, after the
contemporary fashion: networked, curated, publicized, fetishized, tweeted,
catered, and anything but solitary, anything but private.
Among the most notable things about those Web sites that creators now all feel
compelled to have is that they tend to present not only the work, not only the
creator (which is interesting enough as a cultural fact), but also the creator’s life
or lifestyle or process. The customer is being sold, or at least sold on or sold
through, a vicarious experience of production.
Creator: I’m not sure that artist even makes sense as a term anymore, and I
wouldn’t be surprised to see it giving way before the former, with its more
generic meaning and its connection to that contemporary holy word, creative.
Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Powers of Two, last summer’s modish book on creativity,
puts Lennon and McCartney with Jobs and Wozniak. A recent cover of this very
magazine touted “Case Studies in Eureka Moments,” a list that started with
Hemingway and ended with Taco Bell.
When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor
becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and
artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly
popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all?
So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like
me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.
ALL POSTS
WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ is the author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to
a Meaningful Life.
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Jump to Comments (274)
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Report and possible action regarding expenditure of funds from the Arts and Culture Board budget
-- Lawren Weiss, Eric Lashley
ITEM SUMMARY:
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss
ATTACHMENTS:
Description Type
Budget Summary Dec. 2014 Backup Material
Budget Breakdown Dec. 2014 Backup Material
Date Item Amount Balance
Opening Balance 49,625.00
10/16/2014 plaques for Tour sculptures (GTX Awds)30.00 49,595.00
10/16/2014 sculpture honorarium Pokey Park x2 600.00 48,995.00
10/21/2014 Community Impact ad (1/3 share)1,116.66 47,878.34
11/5/2014 Letters of Sacrifice memorial- Jenn Hassin 1,200.00 46,678.34
11/18/2014 sculpture honorarium Terry Tunes x3 900.00 45,778.34
12/4/2014 Wilco Sun ad- Call for grant proposals 290.75 45,487.59
12/8/2014 sculpture honorarium Michael Epps x2 600.00 44,887.59
12/18/2014 plaques for Michael Epps sculptures (GTX Awds)25.50 44,862.09 Art Center expense
12/22/2014 invoice-Letters of Sacrifice promo materials 800.00 44,062.09 Marketing/promo
Public art/Sculp Tour
Scholarships & Grants
Training & Administration
Arts & Culture Board Expenses FY 2014-15 Account # 100-5-0218-51-335
Art Center Marketing/Public Art/Scholarships/Training &
Balance Promotion Balance Sculpture Tour Balance Grants Balance Admin Balance
Starting $3,000.00 Starting $10,000.00 Starting $15,000.00 Starting $20,000.00 Starting $2,000.00
$3,000.00 $1,116.66 $8,883.34 $30.00 $14,970.00 $20,000.00 $2,000.00
$290.75 $8,592.59 $600.00 $14,370.00
$800.00 $7,792.59 $1,200.00 $13,170.00
$900.00 $12,270.00
$600.00 $11,670.00
$25.50 $11,644.50
City of Georgetown, Texas
Arts and Culture Advisory Board
January 20, 2015
SUBJECT:
Consideration of dates of coming meetings -- Eric Lashley
ITEM SUMMARY:
Consideration of whether the dates of future meetings are agreeable to the Board.
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This item has no direct financial impact.
SUBMITTED BY:
Lawren Weiss