Clearly I don’t pay enough attention. Shows come and go, local, national, I barely notice. So it was by chance that I came across this exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada. With its poster Dali image, I took it at first as old news, the kind of exhibitions you saw, and expected to see, in the big galleries in the 60s and 70s.

But in fact it happened just last year, 2008. The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man” was a classic survey exhibition in the finest traditions of the historical art musuem: conservation and scholarship.

The accompanying book, too big to be called an exhibition catalogue really, is a sumptuous full-colour re-presentation of the exhibition in the context of scholarly essays that further the exhibition’s curatorial goal, to show how art reflected critically on the ideololgy of white suprematism, resisting the inexhorable drift toward fascism that culminated in the second world war.

The fate of such massive tomes on specific exhibitions is interesting. Many, one imagines, end up gathering dust in basement storerooms. After all, how big is the market for such specialized books? They are not intended to serve the general public. They are scholarly achievements that add to our collective understanding of history and culture; they become instruments for future academic study; they add to the credibility and prestige of the institutions that publish them, the directors who champion them, the curators and writers and editors who produce them. And that should be enough.

So how is The 1930s: The Making of The New Man - the book, doing?

It’s available in the Amazon at cover price.

You can get it cheaper at Buy.com.

But check out what they are asking for it on aLibris.

I saw a copy on eBay for US $140. And you’ll find it for anywhere between US $70 and $105 0n Barnes and Noble used. So I’d say the jury’s still out on the fate of this book, whether it ultimately ends up on the remainder table at BookCity for $20 or available only used via Abebooks for $350+.

I found precious little negative criticism of the exhibition, and no criticism at all, positive or negative, of the book; generally everyone was impressed by the depth and quality of the exhibition. You would think someone might have thought it worth considering, or at least noting, that the exhibition and book were presented in the nation’s capital just as political ideology in Canada has been shifting decidedly to the right, closing just a month before a hastily-called election in which Canadians again were made to wrestle over political direction, but I could not find a single article about any of that.

Definitely a enormous career achievement for outgoing National Gallery director Pierre Théberge, one can’t help wondering whether The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man” was pièce de resistance or coup de grâce?

About the exhibition:

Review by Mark Vallen.

Not so much a review as a description by Nigel Beale.

Another description in Canadian Art.

And another.

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

Thus opens Snoopy’s perpetually-in-progress novel, an agglomeration of plot beginnings that Snoopy promises to, but never does, bring together.

Snoopy’s novel is a lot like Twitter, or twitter-ready you might say. Twitter has slim social networking value but is interesting just because it can be done; you never know how these things will develop. Like Snoopy’s novel of beginnings, it’s the promise that delights.

Now we have 3G phones and eBook readers in a race to get the most content to readers fastest and in the best format. It’s hard to say who will get there first but it seems likely that some new combo of hard and software will Usain Bolt past the pack.

Mobipocket seems to be the software of choice for Blackberry users, though there are others, like Wattpad.

You can get books delivered to your phone in short email bursts with DailyLit.

My son and I are in the process of reading the Complete Peanuts, a fantastically beautiful collection by Fantagraphic. In the 1969-70 volume, the November 30th, 1970 strip has as much of the Snoopy novel as I’ve yet come across in one strip:

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out. A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly a pirate ship appeared on the horizon. While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up. End of Part I.

Part II
A light snow was falling and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day. At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery.

With Schulz’s inimitable casual brilliance, he evokes Daschel Hammet, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dickens and Marcus Welby M.D. in the space of nine sentences. Now that’s tweet.

And yes, of course you can get a properly licensed Snoopy theme for your iPhone.

This event was on March 12th, 2009 at the Elgin Hotel, Ottawa.

CCA holds this event, a national cultural strategy workshop, annually.

Many of us are looking forward to hearing from Americans for the Arts, a very effective US representative group.

INTRODUCTION - Allain Pineau, Nat’l Director of CCA

The workshop begins by reporting on cross Canada consultations that took place throughout 2008.

1. What is the current climate within which the arts and culture exist?

six areas were identified 1. economy 2. image problem with large sectors of the population - arts and culture need generally to be repositioned; overcome divisive messaging; make people aware of the presence of the arts in their lives; 3. education - must be addressed in the long run, by working with the education sector; 4. unity - increasing no. of org’s to respond to distinct needs, voice is fractured, question is can we agree on fundamental issues; 5. coordination - advocacy tools and training; 6. information - pressing need for data and analysis. Even Stats Can hasn’t the tools it needs. We need research-based arguments.

2. What can the arts and culture sector do better?

Identify common objectives

Present arguments based on fact

Form coordinated strategies

Make strong alliances with other sectors;

Use structured communication tools

3. What about the CCA, what should it be doing?

Proper representation of the interests of its constituents

A national forum

Information and research

Encourage member involvement

4. More tools needed:

partnerships

inclusion

strategize, short and long term

KEYNOTE by Anne L’Ecuyer, Americans for the Arts

In the US the first ‘arts’ councils appeared in 1949. The National Endowment for the Arts was founded in 1965 as part of the Great Society legislation, which included civil rights, education, infrastructure etc. under the Kennedy/Johnson administrations.

In the NEA legislation it requires taht 40% of federal money given to the NEA flow thro’ to the states, so very quickly all the states founded arts agencies. This infrastructure has continued to develop over the last 50 years. All types of arts are funded, everything from local gardens to “elite” “ladies” clubs.

It is a decentralized system. 75% are private, non-profit organizations, which is good because they are flexible and responsive to their local communities. The state agencies to some extent follow the NEA model and pass through money to more local agencies.

There have been several collaborative organizations over the years, the two most prominent being the American Council on the Arts, which helped found the NEA, and the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, NALAA, a very grassroots focused group, like a professional association. These two merged in 1997 as the Americans for the Arts with a national-state-local mission. Since then it has grown into a 75 person agency.

AA does very different kinds of work, national lobbying in Washington to state and local coordination.

AA represents:

- local and state arts service organizations, e.g. www.philaculture.org, Peggy Amsterdam, President, a Gladwell-esque “maven”, knows everyone, tireless worker, partnership builder, dynamic, centre-point for the city of Philadelphia. Their Portfolio 2008 is an exemplary package of research.

- arts disciplines

- arts education, e.g. Los Angeles County, Arts for All, www.laasrtsed.org, Ayanna Hudson Higgins, Director of Arts Education… whose ambition was to make sure arts education was available K-12 throughout LA. — impact is the most important thing there –

- creative economies

- public art and civic design, e.g. Phoenic Metro Light Rail, M.B. Finnerty, www.valleymetro.org - got cultural community involved early so that it stops at major cultural institutions and neighbourhoods. $6.3 million invested in public art also.

- community development

- emerging leaderships

- diverse cultures, e.g. Louisiana Cultural Economy Initiative - combination of creative economy and diversity, Mitch Landrieu, Lt. Governor, www.crt.state.la.us/culturaleconomy/ - a state wide cultural economy; producing cultural goods revenues from which flow back into the cultural community - “culture is Louisiana’s oil” and needs the skilled workforce and infrastructure to bring it to market.

- arts in higher education

- arts and business partnerships

- philanthropic communities

…. new discoveries, how artists can be advocates in the system…e.g. “teaching artists” as a distinct category of professional, strong advocates for the arts, expert in both the educational system and the arts…

MAIN GOALS of AA

- foster environments in which arts thrive and communities are more liveable

- generate more public and private resources for the arts and arts education (sometimes this might be all you need because artists and others working in the sector know exactly what to do if they have the resources

- build appreciation for the value of the arts

in the US, typically 50% earned revenue, less that 10% federal money, the rest is a combo

ACTION AREAS

research and policy

advocacy

professional development - can’t do everything themselves; train others

visibility - mass media environment

strategic alliances - others who can play key roles in achieving goals

HOW THIS APPLIES e.g. in arts education

research and policy - did a poll, segmented out parents, 80% of parents agree; = Parents influence change, but parents don’t know how to influence the school system; e.g. school board meetings [which are, she says, like your Canadian Parliament; much chuckling]

advocacy - Parents demand more arts; media posters in Spanish, Goya painting with slogan “ask for more”, running in all major papers; e.g. poster, cereal theme “raisin Brahms”

professional development  - Get parents involved; school board level

visibility - Art: Ask for More

strategic alliances - always go to the decision-makers; send them the exact same message, PTAs, NAMM(?), NatAssoc. of School Boards NASB.

POLICY POSItiONS

federal funding for cultural agencies

arts education

cultural funding in comerce, housing, transportationa nd rural dev.

favourable tax policies for artists and cultural orgs

cultural exchange and diplomacy - a lot of this is informal, personal, e.g. teachers, personal travel… support these as well as state/govn’t level

FEDERAL ADVOCACY

CAG - cultural advocacy group, 100+ members, meet annually to hammer out positions, organize around the things they agree on

Annual Issue Briefs - booklet on each issue, used by advocates to structure advocates; gather together in March and present on

Federal Arts Advocacy Day - cannot underestimate the importance of constituents to politicians

Arts Action Center - anyone can sign up, send out alerts and call for action, eg. phone, fax or email response, 100,000+ on list… 85,000 messages delivered to Congress about the $50m for NEA in the economic stimulus package… cultural advocates are very vocal

Campaigns - ARTSVote2008 - approached candidates, asked for statements of position, Obama’s were very detailed, reflective of AA’s own positions; always had somebody on the ground at whistle stops to ask an arts question, e.g. Obama in Pennsylvania spoke about arts education, caught on video, put on website;

Resource Guides - background in areas like commerce, transportation, so people can learn where the funding is, where the opportunities are

State and Local Advocacy - State arts action network; State arts advocacy day; research local funding and policy issues; direct technical assistance; advocacy and visibility support - always adopt the position of the local leaders and NEVER contradict, goal is to advance the authority and visibility of the local people.

SUSTAINING VALUES

arts are alive in every community - large and small;

asset-based strategy - focus on what we can agree about, the strengths, figure out what you do well and do more of it; there are always cultural assets

diverstiy is the core asset of the arts and culture sector - best sector to demonstrate diversity as an asset

authenticity is key to economic value -destroy or undermine and you are left with nothing

art is more than economic value - don’t engage in enquiry about ‘what is art’, we accept it

network of leaders who make a difference

[break]

workshop afterwards

I wonder how France subsidizes translation, e.g. authors like Michel Houellebecq.

Here in Canada there’s an interesting development of the Conservative government’s platform on arts funding; $5m for translation. In fact there is a blizzard of new developments in arts funding; this is just one of them.

The translation money was actually allocated last year as part of the government’s Action Plan for Official Languages. What was decided more recently was who would actually handle the program, the Canada Council for the Arts.

Is the government thinking more books in English will flood the Quebec market diluting the nationalist literary cabal? Or the reverse, seducing Quebecois writers to abandon their nationalist leanings with promises of cracking the enormous Canada-US market?

Actually it’s neither of the above. According to industry sources, this program comes after much lobbying by Quebec publishers for subsidies that will enable them to bid against publishers in France for the translation rights to prominent English-language Canadian books. With the program, Quebec publishers may be able to secure rights and then take the books into distribution not just in Quebec but also in France and throughout francophonie, a very large and potentially lucrative market.

Does it matter that the program is restricted to translation French to English or English to French only? Already the Department of Canadian Heritage has programs to support translation into first nations languages.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia:

Since the QUIET REVOLUTION of the 1960s and the work of the Royal Commission on BILINGUALISM AND BICULTURALISM, changes in the political balance between French and English have caused work [translations] from French to English to increase.

However they happen, it seems that shifts in political balance are always good for translation.

That the funds will be disseminated through the Canada Council for the Arts is also interesting; an important acknowledgement of Council’s artistic and managerial expertise.

On March 3rd, Ed Harris in the UK’s Evening Standard reported that New York’s Metropolitan Opera had put up two Chagall murals to guarantee loans to deal with losses in investment income. [source] Which then, within hours, unleashed Associated Press stories identifying a “trend” of individuals like Annie Leibovitz and Julian Schnabel, and undisclosed others, hawking their art against cash loans.

Have auction houses and specialty loan financiers become payday lenders to the affluent? What good will come of this when it comes time to pay down those loans? Who will end up as custodians of our cultural legacy?

One does what one can. Cash out and head for the hills.

Here at home, are such loan guarantees just over the not-so-distant horizon for Canadian collectors and possibly even institutions?

I attended OCAD’s VizDay a couple of months ago and found it exhilarating. Hearing Sara Diamond, Greg van Alstyne and invited presenters talk about information visualization got me thinking about how books work. Today when most content is digital at inception, the class of work called “writing” is coming to be described as “content generation” with the book, as a physical object, being only one manifestation of that content, the others being things like pdfs (or e-Books), formats for book readers like the Kindle, print-on-demand books, websites, even handheld devices.

DocuBurst (image above) visualizes book content through word searches, prioritizing categories by the incidence of key words. Docuburst is the brainchild of University of Toronto student Christopher Collins. Read more about it in the Toronto Star.

Collin’s research site.

His blog.

Docuburst is about new ways of accessing book text, not a different kind of writing but one imagines that tools like it will eventually change the way books are written as well.

Neither is Docuburst about reading book content online, which will be the subject of a future post, but a taste here:

O’Reilly’s Safari Books Online

Blogdoctor has created a template so you can use Blogger to present book content in a book-like way:  Castle of Otranto

And it’s not about writing books online either, tho’ you can do that too at NaNoWriMo if so inclined, especially in November (?)

And perhaps we should mention Bookcrossing too, for circulating real books in real reality by using real online tools, really.

Finally, I still love the book, the paper portable open it anywhere and know where you are kind, a giant of media that can withstand assaults of every order, including mockery:

“The government of France is taking unprecedented measures to help the ailing French print industries. According to an AP story, French president Nicolas Sarkozy — consistent with recommendations from a 3-month study of the industry’s health released January 8 — announced:

• Free one-year newspaper subscriptions will be given to all French teenagers on their 18th birthdays;
• A nine-fold increase will be made to support for newspaper deliveries; and
• the French government will double its annual print advertising outlay.”

Dramatic innovation is hard to come by in established industries. Perhaps today’s federal government budget will have similar innovations to assist Canadian newspaper publishers?

And what of books? Should all Canadian teenagers be given a free art book on their 18th birthdays? What about no postage required for book shipments? And, books with advertising?

It will be interesting to watch whether French newspaper content will change to appeal more to their emerging young audiences, though that begs the question why newspapers have not been more responsive to younger readers? News in graphic novel form? Pages more cartoons?

[full blog post about the new French  program on Canadian Magazines]

[image from NewDesigner.com]

Whereas most art books are designed for niche markets and are, as I’ve said before, generally under priced, there are exceptions. Limited editions of sumptuously produced monographs of the work of artists who have international stature cater to collectors who will pay handsomely for them. But what happens when mass-market art uses the same niche-marketing strategy?

On today’s CBC’s radio program Q, hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, he’s interviewing the on-set still photographer Steve Schapiro about his new book of exclusive photos taken on the sets of the Godfather movies (1 and 2), which has been published in an edition of only 1000 copies, selling for a robust $700 each. If the book sells out, which it most assuredly will, that’s US$700,000. Now that’s ROI!

But it’s not like this exclusivity means limited access to the book. With that kind of money in hand, a mass market, softcover version is likely to follow in time. And, remarkably, Taschen has made the entire book available for browsing on its website.

The Godfather Family Album is published by Taschen. ISBN: 978-3-8228-3730-6 444 pages. Boxed.

No one begrudges Schapiro or Taschen for trading on the Godfather movies, its stars and cache as an icon of Americana. For Schapiro, who had a stellar career as a Life photographer, one can imagine the book generating welcome income from his career-long investment in still photography.

The book is well-reviewed here by the NYPost, which refers to Mario Puzo’s essay in the book which frankly discusses how he sold the film rights for only $12,500 because he was deep in debt at the time. Another sad story of exploitation perhaps, suggesting that artists need contracts that somehow build in some, even small, consideration for future profits. Then again, Puzo has contributed the essay and so has been included in some way in the substantial legacy he initiated.

… and I’m glad she is.

Brenda Goldstein got the brilliant idea of asking a financial planner to help her figure out what her art career is doing and has published the wonderfully frank and informative results in the latest issue of Fuse Magazine [31:4]. As you might imagine, it’s not a pretty picture, but one that fits the vast majority of artists. Taking Care of My Future is a stunning work of “capitalist realism” for which we should all be thanking Ms. Goldstein.

Of course it used to be the case in the arts that a certain amount of duplicity about finances was common, and perhaps even not unreasonable. Once could say things like, “art (substitute in here any of the arts, publishing, theatre, etc) is a gentleman’s game” and mean it because  there used to be  “gentlemen” who played at “games” like culture. But today “gentlemen” are in short supply and such as we have play less “in” culture than “with” it, in terribly market-driven ways.

No, the days of doing one thing very well for money (or inheriting it from someone who did) and dabbling in the arts, or the sciences even for the passion of it are long gone.

In today’s economy where the MFA is the new MBA and fine arts is among the fastest growing post-secondary programs, more and more people are flocking, mysteriously, to a career that is without economic base, or, for the vast majority, future.

By the way, has anybody else noticed the coincidence between the enormous transfer of wealth from the older generation to the younger that supposed to be taking place right about now and the market meltdown? With savings, stock investments, insurance and pension funds dwindling, that’s just not going to happen now. If the wealth accumulated by the middle classes in the post-WW2 period was blurring the class lines and leveling the playing field, no more.

Of course everyone is talking about money right now, including artists. But still the talk is all tied up in the past. Money evidently can be found to pay presumably wealthy collectors for Titians that should rightly be in the public domain but not for art schools (though they be bursting at the seams). [source]

–

Previous posts on Why Artists are Poor, the exceptional economy of the arts, the book by Hans Abbing: Part 1 Part 2

– some notes –

Not that anyone these days should be begrudged the ability to make a living, but financial planners are an odd lot, for they make their daily bread by channeling away a part of yours. Of course they justify this skimming by the savings they are helping you accumulate, and it is true they will help lay out your financial picture in black and white (and often embarrassing red), bring sobriety to how you think about money, and encourage you to have discipline. But still, the wealthy barber did not retain a financial planner and most business people would not hire one who wasn’t going to capture money that would be otherwise lost and have budgets that are not stretched to the max by the end of the month. Still, in the best of all possible worlds, everyone could afford one and would have one.

“Capitalist realism” is a termed coined by artists Gerhard Richter in the 60s when he was just starting out, related to a performance he did, sitting in a business suit in a shop window. Richter prudently moved on to painting and is now among the highest ranked (and top earning) artists, living or dead.

The MFA is the new MBA is a phrase coined by Daniel Pink in an article of that title in the February 2004 Harvard Business Review. Mr. Pink was refering in particular to a trend among corporations to recruit MFA students right out of school to work in their design and marketing departments, which is to say that the MFA is not the new MBA at all, but a talent feed for MBA driven businesses.  That said, many people have picked up the meme and run with its more prosaic resonance, that creative thinking has become as, if not more, important as business sense. If that were true, it would seem that artists, along with every other upstart with delusions of inhabiting the halls of priviledge, are about to be put firmly in their place.

Then again, maybe we’re just not working hard enough. Between January 1969 and January 1970, Pablo Picasso completed 167 paintings. He was 87 years old. The paintings may be a bit tired, but evidently Pablo was not. Nor was the market for his work.

Canadians, ever a resourceful people, are evidently hunkering down under their duvets, stoked with hot chocolate, to get through these dark economic times.

Perhaps the famous self-help book of 1998 could be re-issued with a new title:

Who Moved My Cheese… to Canada?

“BookNet Canada, which monitors sales, reported that during a four-week period ending Nov. 23, unit sales in Canada were up by nearly 5 per cent over the same period last year, compared to declining sales in the U.S. and U.K. The dollar value of Canadian sales increased 2 per cent during the same period compared to the previous year.” [Toronto Star]

“‘The state of the business here is better (than the U.S.),’ said Carolyn Wood, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers. ‘The risk is different.’ Wood believes the Canadian book industry will fare better than the U.S. because Canada’s economy is stronger, but also because Canadian publishing houses operate on a smaller scale.”[DailyGleaner.com]

“Some in the industry are also counting on the economic downturn to spur sales of educational books, as more people go back to school to upgrade their education or stay in school longer if they can’t find a job upon graduation.” [same article in the Daily Gleaner above]