Artistic Lives

A Study of Creativity in Two European Cities

Kirsten Forkert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409450009
• eBook ISBN: 9781317178231
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

Artistic Lives examines cultural production as a non-standard, self-directed, and frequently unpaid activity, which is susceptible to developments that affect the availability of unstructured time. It engages with discourses which have historically had little to do with the arts, including urban sociology and social policy research, to explore the social conditions and identities of ordinary artists, revealing the importance of the cost of living or access to housing, benefits or employment in determining who is able to become an artist or sustain an artistic career. The book thus challenges recent policy discourses that celebrate the ability of cultural producers to create something from nothing, and, more generally, the myth of creativity as an individual phenomenon, divorced from social context. Presenting rich interview material with artists and arts professionals in London and Berlin, together with ethnographic descriptions, Artistic Lives engages with debates surrounding Post-Fordism, gentrification and the nature of authorship, to raise challenging questions about the function of culture and the role of cultural producers within contemporary capitalism. An empirically grounded exploration of the identity of the modern artist and his or her ability to make a living in neoliberal societies, Artistic Lives will be of interest to students and scholars researching urban studies, the sociology of art and creative cultures, social stratification and social policy.

Chapter 1
Capitalism and the Figure of the Artist

Introduction

This first chapter will explore our most basic understanding of the role of the artist and the art field. Why do we think of the artist as an exemplary individual who produces unique works, and who embodies a degree of freedom – freedom to do what he or she wants, free from the pressures to conform to certain social conventions, particularly the routines of the ‘day job’? How has this concept developed historically to become a certain kind of norm and how has it changed – or remained the same as capitalism itself has transformed? Furthermore, why, in our consideration of the artist, are we so accustomed to ignoring the material conditions; and why do we assume that artists are always able to create, regardless of economic circumstances? When artists experience poverty or inequality, why is it assumed that this is not ‘real’ as when it is experienced within other fields?

The following two chapters (this and the next one) are essentially about the creative subject: they explore how this subject is constituted and its changing role in relation to capitalism. This first chapter will attempt to answer the above questions by focusing on developments within the art field, and the second will concentrate the perception of the role of the creative subject within the wider society. The chapter will begin with an exploration of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of the nomos and the illusio, then will trace the historical development of the concept of artistic autonomy and the artist as an exemplary individual, focusing on the Renaissance, nineteenth-century bohemia and the 1960s as moments when these concepts underwent particular transformations. Art’s autonomy and the role of the artist in relation to the cultural industries will then be examined, particularly in relation to Post-Fordist economic developments. Neo-avant-garde movements, such as Conceptual Art and the development of alternative spaces will be particular areas of focus – as these challenged conventional ideas of the artist did they also cause the artist to professionalise? More fundamentally, has the avant-garde now adopted aspects of commercial culture, whilst simultaneously maintaining a claim to autonomy? The chapter will end by considering whether art today is now any different from other cultural industries, and whether the processes of standardisation highlighted by authors such as Adorno now might function in a very different way than was originally imagined In addition to Bourdieu’s work, both these chapters reflect the influence of Foucault’s theories of the subject as formed through discourses, power relations and institutions (1972; 1982). This also means that more thinking about the creative subject not as an emancipated figure, but as implicated within capitalism.

The Development of the Concept of Artistic Autonomy

Pierre Bourdieu has developed a useful framework for understanding artistic autonomy – or culture’s separation from the rest of the society. It is a framework which is still relevant today, despite culture’s integration into capitalism, and goes some way to explain why social/economic conditions tend to be ignored within the arts. According to Bourdieu, the artistic field, like other fields, is historically constructed and contingent, but also involves fundamental laws, which he terms nomos: principles of ‘vision and division’ that separates one field from another (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 95). The nomos permits the division between art and non-art, and between legitimate and non-legitimate artists (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 230). For the cultural field, one of the most important of these principles is that of autonomy. In the most autonomous fields there is a ‘systematic inversion of the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies: that of business…, that of power… and even that of institutionalised cultural authority’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 39). The avant-garde or what Bourdieu calls the ‘restricted field’ is where producers’ audiences tend to be limited to other producers (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 169). The avant-garde, more than other aspects of the cultural field, operates according to the principle of the ‘economic world reversed’ (Ibid). This principle should not be confused with an anti-capitalist politics, as it fits within an economic logic: an investment in one’s reputation and visibility, or a trade-off of immediate sacrifice for future gain. For example, early economic success can be a career risk, as being labelled ‘crassly commercial’ can damage one’s chances at future success. However, forgoing a stable income at the beginning of one’s career may ‘depend to a large extent on possession of substantial economic and social capital’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 67). Those without these resources must make compromises in order to earn a living. Writers, such as:

some of the Parnassians, all from the petite bourgeoisie, either had to abandon poetry at some stage and turn to better-paid literary activities… We also find that the least well-off writers resign themselves to ‘industrial literature’, in which writing becomes a job like any other (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 68).

As the successful writers were those who were able to put up with the financial difficulties until their work was consecrated, rather than having to take on industrial literature this made financial sacrifice a norm. As financial sacrifice came to be seen as a norm, the poverty or economic hardship experienced by artists was not perceived as unusual. This may contribute to the sense that the poverty artists experience is not ‘real poverty’, but rather the price that one must pay for a life in art. Because hardship is ultimately seen to be a choice rather than a necessity, this then makes it more difficult to engage with inequalities in the arts – that those from less privileged backgrounds might be more likely to experience poverty for example.

Related to nomos is the concept of the illusio: ‘the acceptance of the fundamental premise that the game, literary or scientific, is worth being taken seriously’ (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 333) which marks one as a member of a given field. Belief in the illusio of the artistic field means identifying with its fundamental principles, internalising and naturalising them so they become ‘second nature’. The term illusio does suggest ‘illusion’, and there are similarities with ‘false consciousness’– although there is not an obvious ‘true consciousness’ that can be opposed to the false one. Bourdieu feels that one cannot found a ‘genuine science of the work of art without tearing one’s self out of the illusio, and suspending the relationship of complicity and connivance which ties every cultivated person to the cultural game’ (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 230). In other words, one cannot critically examine the art field and still belong to it, because to belong to it is to believe in its autonomy and other related principles. This makes it very difficult to be an artist and to still be critical, or self-reflexive. This could perhaps be seen as reflecting traditional definitions of the artist, which could even be contradicted by Bourdieu’s collaboration with the artist Hans Haacke (1995). The interview material which follows later on does in fact involve the artists in self-reflexive discussion. However, this self-reflexivity also had its limits and boundaries, reflecting the strength and persistence of disciplinary codes, and the commitment to the illusio.

Bourdieu traces the development of the principle of artistic autonomy beginning with the Renaissance. Drawing on Michael Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (1988), Bourdieu describes how art purchasers increasingly attributed value to painting technique as ‘visible manifestations of the “master’s touch”’ over the value of the materials (1996, p. 316) thus foregrounding the virtuosity of their authors. Bourdieu saw this shift in taste and perception, which he termed ‘the Quattrocentro eye’, as the development of habits and cultural practices which he saw as the foundation of the ‘charismatic ideology which describes the love of art in the language of being love-struck’ and which ‘passes over in silence the social conditions of the possibility of this experience’ (1996, p. 320). In other words, artists were starting to be defined as individual creators and the aesthetic experience was becoming understood as detached from the social. In The Craftsman (2008), Richard Sennett also identifies the Renaissance period as a time when the artist came to be distinguished from the craftsman. He also characterises the Renaissance period as a time when individual subjectivity took on greater cultural importance within Western society, and where creativity came to be seen as an activity to be developed within isolation. Artists were seen to be particularly susceptible to the brooding and introspective ‘Saturnine temperament’, thought to be the product of a glandular secretion stimulated by isolation (2008, p. 66). In reality, most Renaissance artists did not work in isolation; however, individual artists, as ‘masters of the studio’, began to place greater value on the originality of their work (Ibid).

These tendencies increased through the Romantic reaction to the Industrial Revolution, a period when the ‘movement towards artistic autonomy accelerated abruptly’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 113). Bourdieu attributes this to several changes within culture and education. The divisions between intellectual fields (such as economics, law, or art) were also becoming more distinct (Ibid) and the fields were becoming more autonomous. The result was the development of the ‘ideology of free, disinterested creation founded on the spontaneity of innate inspiration’, which was seen to be irreducible to the commodity status of creative works (Ibid). The development of the press and literature encouraged the mass production of works, such as serialised melodrama; this coincided with the expansion of primary education which led to new sections of society into consumers of culture (Ibid). This diversity of publics meant that producers began to target their products at specific audiences. According to Elizabeth Wilson, artists were ambivalent towards the development of mass culture (Wilson, 1999, p. 14), although Mary Gluck has argued that particular forms of popular culture, notably the melodrama, were actually popular with artists as they romanticised artists as anti-establishment heroes (2000, p. 361). We can see the nineteenth-century melodrama as a precursor to those aspects of twentieth-century mass culture that would continue to romanticise the figure of the artist.

Simultaneously, the era of the aristocratic patron and direct commissions was coming to an end, to be replaced by the market for artistic and literary goods; artists’ work was no longer regulated by guilds; in France, this contributed to the perception of artists as embodying post-revolutionary ideals of freedom (Siegel, 1999, p. 26). For artists, this shift did in fact more freedom, but ‘this liberty [was] purely formal’ as they also became subjected to the laws of the market, and the pressures exercised by publishers, art dealers, sales figures, etc. (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 114). The considerable success of certain artists and poets also confirmed the perception that the new regime allowed artists to gain eminence through their individual talents and abilities alone (Siegel, 1999, p. 15), contributing to the broader understanding of artistic careers in terms of individual, rather than collective achievements – an understanding which would continue to be very prevalent for a long time.

The division of labour associated with the development of the art market – in which the artist produces the work but is not involved in promoting or selling it – served to reinforce the charismatic ideology. According to Bourdieu, the ‘“charismatic ideology”… directs attention to the apparent producer, the painter, writer or composer’, allowing the ‘cultural businessman’ to ‘consecrate a product which he has “discovered” and which would otherwise remain a mere natural resource’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 76). In other words, the authenticity of the unique genius is necessary in order for it to be ‘discovered’ and marketed by the cultural broker, and success depends, to a certain extent, on the ability to embody and perform this authenticity, in the eyes of dealers or collectors. Both this division of labour and the charismatic ideology would continue to persist for a long time within the cultural field.

The Ambivalences of Bohemia

The wider context of the development of artistic autonomy and the figure of the artist as genius was the emergence of the bohemian lifestyle. Both artistic autonomy and the bohemian lifestyle bore an ambivalent relationship to class: 19^th century bohemia encompassed both the ‘delinquent or downgraded bourgeois possessing all the properties of the dominants’ except for money, and also ‘destitute young people’ from working class or provincial origins, who were ‘often obliged to live off a second skill (sometimes with no direct relation to literature) in order to live an art cannot make a living’ (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 57). Jerrold Siegel’s Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (1999) is an important text on the history of bohemia. Siegel explored bohemia as a phenomenon that developed when bourgeois society was being formed and shaped (1999, p. 6), and which, in many ways, can be seen as laying the foundations for present-day artistic identities. Bohemia played out many of the conflicts of bourgeois society, and tested its limits ‘where the borders of bourgeois existence were murky and uncertain’ (Siegel, 1999, p. 11). Its adherents acted out these conflicts of bourgeois character within their everyday lives as bohemia was both ‘a form of life and a dramatised interpretation, both of itself and of the society to which it was a response’ (Siegel, 1999, p. 12).

One of these central tensions was between the dissolution of restrictions on personal development, required by bourgeois progress, and the establishment of new and different limits, required for the maintenance of the post-revolutionary social order (Siegel, 1999, p. 10). This tension was played out through the refusal to take on a stable and clearly defined social identity, and, related to this, ambivalence towards bourgeois social norms (seeking neither to accept them nor to abolish them) (Siegel, 1999, p. 12). There were many similarities, of course, with the detachment of the flâneur, who saw everything as though for the first time and experiences the pleasures of the city but who does not engage with anything or anyone long-term.

Bohemia included artists and poets, but also those who were attracted to a subversive lifestyle (outlandish behaviour and dress, hanging out in cafes, etc.) and wanted to associate with artists and poets (Siegel, 1999, p. 46). Because of this, the claim to be a serious artist, and the authenticity of that claim, was one of the important tensions of the time, and would continue to be so (Wilson, 1999, p. 14). This was significant because bohemia represented a ‘move from art to identity’, so that the creative individual’s role was no longer primarily to produce aesthetic works, but to act as a representative figure for the tensions, contradictions and limits of bourgeois society (Wilson, 1999, p. 13).

There are certain aspects of bohemia which would continue to be significant, and which have implications for the research. One is the ‘refusal to take on a clearly defined identity’ (Siegel, 1999, p. 12), which would shape the ambivalence, and even reluctance within the art field to engage with wider social issues. Another is the importance of the artistic identity both as a representative figure for the contradictions of bourgeois society, and also as an object of self-fashioning: the move from art to identity described by Wilson. This presented the idea that it was one’s individual life, rather than membership of a larger collective, where the most important issues were played out. Another important development was the shift from the patronage system to the apparent meritocracy of the market system. As the market allowed a few individuals to experience relatively high levels of success, this created the perception that artistic success was solely a question of individual talent. Bohemia thus appeared to reconcile what were ultimately unresolvable contradictions between art and industry (Wilson, 2000, p. 3). If artistic success was a question of individual talent, then material conditions and social inequality did not really matter. The conceptions of individual genius, affirmed by the apparent meritocracy of the market, ‘militated against solidarity’ (Wilson, 2000, p. 87). Elizabeth Wilson’s Bohemians: The glamorous outcasts examined how women were perceived as objects of male desire rather than as fellow artists with their own creative and erotic needs, or comrades against the philistines (Wilson, 2000, p. 97). At a time when many women were financially dependent on their husbands, the only women who actually enjoyed the freedom offered by bohemia tended to be those from wealthy families (Wilson, 2000, p. 86). These inequalities would be challenged by politicised avant-gardes much later on, as well as by social movements in the arts.

Artistic Autonomy and the Cultural Industries

Throughout the twentieth century, these tendencies – the centrality of the figure of the artist; the principles of artistic autonomy, and the disavowal of material conditions – continued to intensify in response to the growing power of the cultural industries. Other authors have engaged more extensively with the work of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Jarvis, 1998; O’Connor, 2007; Raunig, 2011). However, I would like to emphasise the significance of their influential text, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, as a pointed critique of the standardisation of culture, which the authors termed ‘an insatiable uniformity’ and a ‘unified standard of value’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 2002, p. 97). For Adorno and Horkheimer the novelty and fascination associated with the products of the cultural industry were endlessly disappointing (O’Connor, 2007, p. 9). This consolidated culture into an industry dominated by major firms leading to the loss of individual artistic expression, and the standardisation and banalisation of popular tastes. The newly industrialised scale of cultural production in the twentieth century was seen to be an integrated part of the new monopoly capitalism, so that the modern worker was controlled both during work and also during leisure time. It was thus the cultural equivalent of the Fordist factory system, as well as a powerful ideological tool (Ibid).

Adorno saw art as existing in a dialectical relationship to society, whereby artistic autonomy is a product of the specialisation which is itself a product of the culture industry, but it was precisely this autonomy that gave it a freedom from the instrumental rationality governing everyday life. In Aesthetic Theory Adorno argued that:

Art’s double character as both autonomous and fait social is incessantly reproduced on the level of autonomy. It is by virtue this relation to the empirical that artworks recuperate, neutralised, what once was literally and directly experienced in life and what was expulsed by spirit (1998, p. 5).

It was thus artistic autonomy which held the potential to resist the standardisation of the cultural industries. This autonomy existed within individual artworks, as well as the essentially individual nature of art production which countered the corporate scale of the firm, or the ‘culture factory’ (O’Connor, 2007, p. 12). However, Adorno, despite the indictment of the cultural industry, did not advocate a return to l’art pour l’art. As artistic autonomy was the result of a historical process – the development of the cultural industry – cutting art out of this process ‘liquidates the conditions for its own autonomous, critical relation to the empirical world’ (Jarvis, 1998, p. 123). Nonetheless, if resistance to commodification was based in artistic autonomy, then engaging directly with the social conditions of cultural production would run against this very principle.

The post-war US art critic, Clement Greenberg, went further in explicitly arguing that artists should not engage with politics (Guilbault, 1985, p. 88), tasking the avant-garde as preserving bourgeois high culture from kitsch, which he associated with both the mass production of the Industrial revolution, and worse, totalitarian tendencies (Guilbault, 1985, p. 35). According to Greenberg, art’s criticism should not be turned outward toward society, but inward, towards the work of art and the medium of art, engaging in a specialist and self-referential discussion which would promote artistic quality (Ibid). The avant-garde must thus walk a tightrope between kitsch and the political dogmatism, particularly Stalinism – and it was specifically this delicate balancing act which gave the avant-garde its creative tension and vitality (1985, p. 188). Above all, artists must be anti-Communist in order to preserve bourgeois high culture and stop the spread of totalitarian ideology (Ibid). This was a departure from more politically engaged art movements such as Futurism, Productivism or Dada; Surrealism was suspect as its representational qualities risked its slipping into kitsch (1985, p. 82). Instead, American abstract expressionism was championed. According to social art historian Serge Guilbault, this had the effect of laying the foundations for an elitist and depoliticised conception of the avant-garde (1985, p. 36). Greenberg’s lasting influence could also be understood in terms of the further institutionalisation of culture’s separation from wider social issues – and that furthermore, any discussion of social issues or conditions was outside the field of art.

The Avant-garde and Corporate Sponsorship

The development and institutionalisation of conceptions of artistic autonomy and the figure of the artist as an exemplary individual have been explored as ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Artistic Autonomy and Material Conditions
• 1 Capitalism and the Figure of the Artist
• 2 The Creative Subject and the State
• 3 The Loss of Space and Time for Creative Activities in London
• 4 Shortened Careers and Pressures for Instant Success
• 5 Berlin: An Economy Based on the Marketing of Creativity
• 6 Does Berlin Present an Alternative Model for Cultural Production?
• Conclusion: Why Material Conditions Matter
• Bibliography
• Index