RE: Art movements and commercialism

["L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>]

The problem here is when commercial success becomes the goal of the artist.  
It's when an artist takes a cynical look at what they're doing (or wanting 
to do), and decides that the product will NOT sell, and that they should 
produce something else that WILL sell, instead.

It's very common for an artist to study what's selling and to tailor a 
product to meet the requirements.  This is the real definition of "selling 
out," not the use of a few songs in TV commercials, or on the soundtracks of 
a few movies.  It's when an artist gives up his or her own unique voice to 
copy a formula provided by a marketing consultant (or a record label) that 
they get to be rich and successful, but they've pretty much sold their soul 
to do it.

When you get down to specifics, Andy Warhol doesn't meet the definition for 
commercialism.  You'd gather that soup cans was his particular choice for 
self-expression--he started this fairly early in his career, and persisted 
until the idea caught on.  It's low-brow popular art, accessible by the 
masses, but it's not commercialism.

Performers such as N'Sync and individual artists like Britney Spears do meet 
the definition of commercialism, as they are marketed according to a 
particular formula that the managers know is a proven winner.  Cute guys + 
dance numbers + visual show = success.  Take out "cute guys" and put in 
"sexy gal" and you've got another winning formula.  Notice I said 
"performers" here instead of "bands."  The faces are pretty much 
interchangable, as long as they look good and can move to the music.  The 
performer's individual voice or what they would prefer to do has nothing to 
do with it at all.  They are told what to do by the marketing team.

There are artists that seem to have straddled the line.  It's a little more 
difficult to decide whether Madonna is entirely a commercial product, for 
example.  This is a woman who has moderate talent as a singer and dancer and 
a very large talent for marketing.  You'd gather that what she does is, 
therefore, her particular voice as an artist.

There are also artists who seem to have an excellent product, but not much 
in the way of marketing talent who could benefit from a good production 
team.  I'd put Santana's recent SUPERNATURAL in this category.  Santana has 
always provided a good product, and it's undeniable that he has a unique 
voice as an artist.  This album was no exception, and I have no problems at 
all with the campaign that sold the album.  The videos were gorgeous, and 
even though they had all the trappings of commercialism, it was secondary to 
the artistic result.

This concludes my basic definition, but it's getting pretty long, so I'll 
continue with specifics in the next post.

;)
keets


>I think it's important for the artists to know why they oppose
>commercialism; i.e., what about commercialism is wrong for art? Originally 
>anti-commercialism came from art being thought as "avant-garde." It was put 
>in opposition to the hated bourgeoisie and their supposed mercantile 
>values. If the shopkeeper liked it, it couldn't be art.
>
>Before this (mid 1800's) art was the expression of the aristocrats. This 
>sense of a rarefied taste that the peasants couldn't understand carried 
>over to the new class, the bohemians. As time went by all sorts of excuses 
>were made for opposing commercialism in art. One of the chief ideas came 
>from Marxist theory that the bourgeoisie ruling class would never allow any 
>art that opposed their values to become popular. Therefore, if it was 
>popular, it was "kitsch" by definition.
>
>It was in the 1960's that this idea began to develop cracks. Andy Warhol, 
>of course, putting pictures of soup cans on the wall and calling it art, 
>French highbrow film critics praising the works of commercials filmmakers 
>like Hitchcock and Hawks, etc. The Who are allied with this movement 
>through two of their album covers; the pop-art "The Who Sell Out" and "Face 
>Dances" whose cover is drawn by the leading lights of Britain's pop-art 
>movement.
>
>However, the idea of anti-commercialism is so ingrained that for most 
>people it's knee-jerk. Even people who consider rock music an art, an idea 
>antithetical to anti-commercialism, have begun to think the only good rock 
>music is anti-commercial.

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