Interesting! Your question about whether there can be an underground reminds me of Evan Osnos’s (?) piece in the New Yorker about musicians taking “private gigs,” and the whole idea of selling out (which seems no longer possible). If you haven’t seen it, let me know and I’ll send you a link.
Thanks for the tip. I found it, and it looks like it'll also be in my hard copy next week! I'll stick the article on my list (read the first few paragraphs already).
One of the things that I've been thinking about has been the monetization of EVERYTHING and how modern technologies have splintered communities so that something as simple as "trend" is almost impossible to see, much less "create." I'm not one who thinks that poverty or isolation is a good pathway (unlike, say, the followers of St Francis of old, who used poverty as a means of being "underground," one could say, or monks who isolate and seclude themselves).
Warhol may not have intended it, but his art blurred the distinction between "fine art" and merchandizing enough that the terms of worth and value got reduced to the Almighty Dollar. What does that do for the poor schmuck who thinks that practicing an art has another, perhaps more intrinsic, value?
The W. David Marx book is good, BTW. (I always feel compelled to type out his whole name. He's got no relation to the other Marx, and I doubt they'd get along anyway.)
Interesting! Your question about whether there can be an underground reminds me of Evan Osnos’s (?) piece in the New Yorker about musicians taking “private gigs,” and the whole idea of selling out (which seems no longer possible). If you haven’t seen it, let me know and I’ll send you a link.
Thanks for the tip. I found it, and it looks like it'll also be in my hard copy next week! I'll stick the article on my list (read the first few paragraphs already).
One of the things that I've been thinking about has been the monetization of EVERYTHING and how modern technologies have splintered communities so that something as simple as "trend" is almost impossible to see, much less "create." I'm not one who thinks that poverty or isolation is a good pathway (unlike, say, the followers of St Francis of old, who used poverty as a means of being "underground," one could say, or monks who isolate and seclude themselves).
Warhol may not have intended it, but his art blurred the distinction between "fine art" and merchandizing enough that the terms of worth and value got reduced to the Almighty Dollar. What does that do for the poor schmuck who thinks that practicing an art has another, perhaps more intrinsic, value?
The W. David Marx book is good, BTW. (I always feel compelled to type out his whole name. He's got no relation to the other Marx, and I doubt they'd get along anyway.)