Smith, the “godmother of punk,” told an audience in 2010 to “find a new city” as New York had “closed itself off to the young and the struggling.” Byrne, co-founder of the new wave rock band Talking Heads, wrote last year that too many neighborhoods had become “pleasure domes for the rich” with “no room for fresh creative types,” in contrast with when he arrived in the 1970s....If you have to be creative to stay, why can't you be creative and go? And isn't it odd that the phrase "it begins to feed on itself" is proffered as a recommendation?
People in like trades often cluster for commerce.... In New York, it’s artists who cluster.
“The critical mass becomes a gravitational force and also a marketing force,” said Muro. “New York becomes famous for having art and it begins to feed on itself.”...
“You still can’t beat the amount of resources that you have in NYC in terms of critical feedback from writers and curators,” said Peter Fankhauser, 33, who moved from Nebraska in 2005. He now makes art in his bedroom in Manhattan’s East Village when not working at a nearby museum and teaching art in Harlem. “People who want to be here will find a way to stay.”
May 21, 2014
Rejecting the advice of oldsters Patti Smith and David Byrne...
... artists continue to gravitate to New York City. Why won't they congregate in Detroit?
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New York is the most dynamic city in the US, so of course young artists want to go there. And they should. Byrne is just saying that it is too bad you missed the good old days when NY was really hip. Sour grapes from an old dude who forgets it is the same as it ever was.
Old artists in their native countries say the same about Panama City and Bogota, about Toronto and buenos Aires, Tokyo, prague, London and Barcelona.
Same as it ever was.
"If you have to be creative to stay, why can't you be creative and go?"
Because, once you go, you're surrounded by people who say things like:
"Nothing can happen in Utah."
That becomes self-fulfilling prophesy.
OR
"You're going to RULE this town!"
This is usually said by a jealous someone, who can't hold other's interest, before they sabotage your efforts.
Squelching true creativity:
It's a damned good reason for the phrase "flyover country",...
"Itself" is the always-growing draw (if it be feeding on itself per the quotee's intention) of the Big City. Or, The Big City if New York weren't so shitty. They brag of eating poo because the poo is fresh. But the point stands: many places have no poo and New York has abundances. They got more pleading and, sometimes fatally spiritually, idolism than they can abuse.
These little punks living high on the hog off off Rudy's legacy will see, like with tobacco, you Act God enough and predicted disasters will prove even the American Digest's view apropos.
That said I know nothing of New York except they refused a potential George Washington as Mayor in the mid-sixties.
That alone -and two time Super Bowl Champion QB Eli Manning if I were pressed- is reason enough to disregard their products like stocks, media, and droll blithering.
States aren't boring people (potentially allow themselves to be).
Horrible weather, with long, cold winters and short, harshly-humid summers, can cause Ed Gein and Dahmer and whatnot, yet brought us Orson Welles and Senator McCarthy.
I just mainly wish the art was better, but I'll concede that maybe I just can't see how good it is because I got old.
Go ahead. Bite the Big Apple.
Don't mind the maggots.
Michael is on the right track.
It's a generational thing.
The old was bygone days.
The young "flush the fashion".
"And so it goes".
Shadoobie, my brain's been battered...
"The old WANT bygone days".
I've got to get a new keyboard that doesn't stick!
"SHANDOOBIE"…Sinatra, the Stones…all these must pass, Althouse (and have, even if they're not letting go)…even us.
It's our job to be ready, to step up to ALL challenges while we're above ground.
Even the "new" will pass.
We're just wise and have lived long enough to know it.
Living on the edge, or living with the knowledge that certain sections of town are 'tread at your own risk' areas can certainly make for interaction with more colorful personalities who can in turn stimulate creativity. But living in relative safety also has its perks.
The grunginess of New York in the 70s -- where it was only eight blocks from CBGB's or Max's Kansas City to the street where De Niro shot it out to rescue Jody Foster in "Taxi Driver" -- certainly had its appeal to alternative music artists, or anyone who vicariously gets off on the idea of potentially violent street theater and poverty all around. But many others don't have to have the feeling of perpetual danger to be inspired (and for those who do and still want to live in the Big Apple, there remains sections of the city, like East New York, that can fulfill your edginess requirements).
we still think of paris as a major art hub even though their heyday was in the early 20th century. i think ny's time has passed, but that doesn't mean that city isn't still a vital part of the art world. i've been to detroit and people out there are doing really cool stuff that you couldn't get away with in ny for various reasons.
Patti Smith?
Great cover of "Gloria."
Great album cover photo of her by Robert Mapplethorpe.
Is there more?
It's a damned good reason for the phrase "flyover country",...
Tell me again how you are a Republican.....
As someone who lives in NY let me say don't try to be a
Struggling artist in ny.maybe an actor if you don't mind waiting on tables. You will be a struggling artist working at McDonald's complaining about living wages. It's too expensive for people who haven't made it yet.
One of the hidden truths about blue states. Despite
All the talk about the gap between the rich and poor you usually find that gap most extreme in blue states like NY or CA.
I'm not too aware of any burgeoning music scene in NY. Then again I haven't seen a village voice around in a while.
Back when punk started a lot of bands were NY bands.
Now a lot of bands come to NY to play at one of the few remaining venues.
Patti Smith lived in Detroit (Madison Heights, where M&M is from) for nearly two decades while married to Fred Smith of the MC5. After Fred died in 1994 she moved back to NYC shortly thereafter, so her advice could stand more explanation if she cares to head off hypocrisy accusations. The most recent decently successful band from Detroit the Detroit Kobras have moved to NOLA. Detroit is nice place to be from rather than to be.
Bad art is everywhere. And most art is bad.
There are also bad critics, bad gallery owners, bad buyers, all with a tolerance for derivative crap.
But New York makes reputations and fortunes. So your bad art is potentially more ego satisfying and lucrative in New York.
There are also great artists in New York, and people with great fortunes who will pay for art, good and bad.
Wikipedia lists 2543 20th Century American painters and 1282 21st century American painters. How they compiled the list is not immediately apparent. Nor is who made the list. Nor is location.
People who make lists like this used to be from New York mainly. The internet may change that. But the money is still in New York.
Follow the money, artists.
V. V., it also helps to be great looking and wear really long fake nails. You will do fine wherever you are.
Quotes from two musicians but all the people in the story are painters or sculptors. New York is where the money is to buy art. Don't think the people in the greater Detroit area fork over money for this stuff.
Do that many musicians flock to New York? I though Austin and Nashville were better spots for musicians.
Because most creatives are inspired to even higher levels by a good city, not to mention the opportunity for mass success. NY has lost something compared to the NYC of the last century, but no replacement yet dominates, although there are alternatives.
That is one of the reasons it can be harder to be creative in a big way as you get older. Even if you make it through w creativity intact, your peers do not and you often can't merge with younger, more thriving groups in an ideal way. You are cut off from the bigger waves and guided to smaller, safer rivulets and gullies.
Otoh, if you achieved position, you are likrly riding on the force of that position, just like a rock has more impact if it is dropped from a cliff than if it is dropped from a table.
NY is leaning on its position.
If I weren't limited.
Again, by God I'd be doing some unlimited
I'm some one who sees NYC as a place which produces things I gladly consume but have no real interest in how its produced. Just because its art doesn't mean its much different than any other consumable. If the circumstances make it "better" somehow, that's good for everyone, even if somebody is interested in why David Byrne wrote Life During Wartine, or not.
I got three passports, a couple of visas, you don't even know my real name
NYC is for the old and the young. For people in their middle years? Not so much.
They are beginning to move. Look at Marfa. It may be the new NYC!
People, like businesses, cluster. Supply and demand for limited real estate make it harder for lower economic level people and business clusters to remain in an area. Artists can't afford SF and NYC. Textile can't afford the northeast.
Postmodern Jukebox! Check it out to see what musicians are doing in New York. Be sure to view the Psy cover, Fire cover, and Puddles Pity Party doing Royals. It's worth the ten minutes, believe me.
Gahrie,
"Tell me again how you are a Republican….."
Um, I'm black, not a racist, and fight for right over wrong.
What makes YOU one?
I thought Brooklyn was where all the hipsters/"artists" were hanging out these days...but then I read where even it is being "gentrified", so I guess it's up the Turnpike for the creative types, n'cest-ce pas?
NYC cannot die fast enough. Thank God those idiots elected a communist as mayor. Watch. It. Burn.
One of the hidden truths about blue states. Despite
All the talk about the gap between the rich and poor you usually find that gap most extreme in blue states like NY or CA
Not super hidden as economists have noted that a huge problem Dems have with their income inequality campaign is that the inequality is really bad in Democrat run areas and far less bad in Republican run areas.
If you're a creative type, it's nice to be in a city where creative types--or even people who aren't creative themselves, but appreciate people who are--are part of the scene. I used to live in Manhattan, but circumstances caused me to maroon myself in a sprawling Sun Belt "Edge City" that is pretty much a big suburb surrounding a big ghetto. It's a place where, for example, being well-read is considered an eccentricity; and if you reveal to the average resident that your ambitions are artistic rather than conventional, they look at you (to use the classic Jean Shepherd phrase) "like you have lobsters growing out of your ears."
The irony is that where once this city's boast (if you can call it that) was, "Sure, we're a cultural wasteland, but the rents are cheap!" now the rents are getting higher by leaps and bounds all the time, thus squeezing out the creative class as they were squeezed out of Manhattan.
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