Category: The Arts

Should we refrain from consuming the cultural products of those producers who hold morally objectionable views, when our consumption of such products will benefit said producers?

I think of this as a Ramsey tax problem: we are willing to sacrifice a certain amount of goods and services to do the world some good, how can we do so at minimum damage to our utility?

Just as lump sum taxation is efficient, so should we give away money, rather than distort the MB=MC ratios on our consumption decisions.  So my inclination is to avoid boycotts.  It is better to just send money to the people or groups you wish to help. 

Sometimes boycotts are motivated by the wish to hurt other people  — the target of the boycott – rather than by desires to help some oppressed group.  Or punishing  a group’s critics may be the best way to help that group.  Then boycotts make more instrumental sense, especially if the target of your hate has a declining MC curve, as would a movie star or music star with an easily reproducible product.  There is less point in boycotting someone in a relatively competitive industry, who is earning little on selling extra units of the product.

Note that if you are facing a monopolist with a durable good, boycotts can make that monopolist better off by helping him to restrict quantity.  In other words, boycott rock stars, not painters or sculptors.

A boycott also might be preferable to sending money if your action has a snowball effect on the behavior of others, but that will not be the general case.  In fact boycotts often give more publicity to the person or cause you are trying to oppose.   "You opposing X" is not, in the eyes of the world, always a negative signal about X.

Sorry.

#21 in a series of 50.

Addendum: See also my post on fair trade.

Being from New Jersey, this is a tough post for me to write, but I recognize many virtues in our mirror enemy to the north:

Composer: Charles Ives, most of all Central Park in the Dark and The Unanswered Question, plus some of the piano music.  The Concord Sonata is wonderful to hear live, but he often loses his bearings in the longer pieces.  Bernstein or Michael Tilson Thomas are the best conductors for his music.

Popular music: There is Moby (the early stuff), Liz Phair (more consistent than her reputation), and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth ("Daydream Nation" is amazing, but most of their CDs leave me cold), and that’s not counting the rich rock stars who have moved in, like Keith Richards or Diana Ross.

Poet: Wallace Stevens worked for an insurance company in Hartford for many years, but the people in his office did not know he was a poet.  "He was an imaginative claims man," later opined one colleague.

Artist: Chuck Close (here is the portrait of Philip Glass), honorary mention to Maya Lin.

Writer: I enjoyed Philip Roth when I read him, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.  Mark Twain lived in Hartford a while, but that answer doesn’t feel right.  Harriet Beecher Stowe I could not finish.

Food: CT has the best pizza in the USA, most of all in New Haven but not only.

Movie, set in: I hated Mystic Pizza, nor can I imagine Christmas in Connecticut could have been any good.  Help!

The bottom line: The state is close to having a Grand Slam.

While I am here, I hope to see the new Howard Hodgkin exhibit, there is an excellent slide show within the link.

Donne and Marvell get the beloved into bed, but lavish all their lyricism on reassuring her that she remains as attractive as she was when she played it coy.

That is from Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, a series of fascinating biographical vignettes.  Thanks to Slate.com for the pointer to this book.

David Galenson gets out his measuring stick:

A survey of the illustrations of the work of women artists contained in
textbooks of art history reveals that art historians judge Cindy
Sherman to be the greatest woman artist of the twentieth century,
followed in order by Georgia O’Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and
Frida Kahlo.

We need to distinguish between fame in books and fame in the art world, not to mention fame with the general public.  Textbooks pass through a "least common denominator" filter, which includes the need to appear balanced and representative.  Cindy Sherman is unique and memorable, and her work reproduces well on the printed page.  Frida Kahlo was of course Latina.  O’Keeffe, Hesse, and Susan Rothenberg are better candidates for the top slots., with the German Hesse as my personal favorite  I’m also a fan of Rachel Whiteread, Agnes Martin, and Kiki Smith (this one too).  Quiltmakers, as a category, deserve top recognition, although there is no dominant name linked to the field.  If we are talking about the general public, Grandma Moses (overrated), Yoko Ono, O’Keeffe and Kahlo all do well.

Perhaps the more important observation is that women have done best in the arts (and, for that matter, in economics) precisely when we left the era of "The Great Artist."

My column from today offers my latest thoughts on globalization and culture, drawing on the very interesting work of Omar Lizardo, a sociologist at Notre Dame.  We are often interested in culture for its symbolic value, and its ability to signal where we stand in local hierarchies.  The more egalitarian a society, the less important this signaling function becomes.  Here is one bit:

Hollywood movies are popular in Europe in part because of the successes
of European welfare states and of European economic integration. 
Western Europe has become more equal in its treatment of citizens, it
has moved away from an aristocratic class society, and it has strong
global connections.  All those factors favor an interest in American and
global popular culture; Hollywood movies often capture 70 percent or
more of a typical European cinematic market.  Social democracy, which
the Europeans often hold up in opposition to the American model, in
fact aided this cultural invasion by making Europe more egalitarian.

Here is Omar’s home page.  Here is Omar’s essay which I drew upon.  Here is one further bit:

…the data supplied by Professor Lizardo show that the poorer a country,
the more likely it will buy and listen to its own domestic music.  This
makes sense given that music is a form of social networking and the
relevant networks are primarily local.

I found the following in my email a few days ago:

I regularly surf in google, and I came across The Marginal Revolution, where there is a painting and a nice comment of yours about Pedro Figari [TC: the link is mine].  This is enough motive for me to write, but more precisely because the painting is a Figari fake (coincidentally I own the legitimate one!).  My current life and whatever is left of it you can appreciate in www.pedrofigari.com.  If you have any doubts, suggestions, questions, feel free to email me, and I will be only too pleased.

The man is a descendant of Figari, but most of all a lover of art.

Or rather of Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding, my last book.  Here is the review, taken from The Art Newspaper, mentioned below.  I like this sentence and its mixed metaphor:

One of most compelling aspects of the book is its ruthless evenhandedness.

Three
Death Row inmates say the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections have
not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for executions and want a
federal judge to issue an injunction to stop the state from using the drugs
until it complies with federal drug laws.

According to sources at the Allstate Insurance Company, CIA
Director Michael Hayden purchased nuclear-attack insurance Wednesday, paying a
$100,000 monthly premium for his homes in suburban Washington, Pittsburgh, and
near Cheyenne Mountain, CO.

Thanks to Monique van Hoek and Daniel Rothschild for pointers.

1. Literature.  Here is my previous post on Garcia Marquez; I forgot to mention Love in the Time of Cholera.

2. Painter: Fernando Botero.  Most of the Boteros you are likely to see are very weak, but his early work can be stunning; at ArtFair in Miami I saw a watermelon still life from the 1950s.  Rest assured, he was once a painter of genius, but I cannot find a convincing reproduction on-line.  I don’t think he sold out, rather he felt compelled to paint as much as possible, I don’t know why.

3. TV show: Betty La Fea, I have yet to see the U.S. "Betty the Ugly."  Here is what the actress really looks like, or try this one.

4. Music: I don’t feel ready to judge Aterciopelados until I see them live.  Yana has played plenty of Juanes for me, it is good Latin pop with hooks.  Afro-Colombian music is noteworthy, here are some styles.  I’ve never found a really good CD of Cumbia.

5. Movie: I thought Maria Full of Grace was overrated — too predictable, yes cocaine mules run great risks — but it is the only one I know.

6. Continental Liberator: Simon Bolivar.

7. Blogger and sociologist: Fabio Rojas, occasional guest-blogger here at MR.  Here is his page on art and music, recommended.

8. Random category: Sofia Vergara ought to count for something.  Often she dyes her hair dark to look more Latina for U.S. roles.

The bottom line: My knowledge here is patchy, and that is one reason why I am visiting.  By the way if you live in Bogota, do drop me a line.

Here is a Slate.com feature; here is my response:

In January and February 2006, Lincoln Center presented a festival of
live music called The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov.  Golijov, an
Argentinian Jew, is the first breakthrough composer of the new
millennium.  His Ayre (song cycle), Passion According to St. Mark, and Aindamar (opera) make classical music passionate and popular and theatrical once
again.  In particular, I am amazed that a mix of tango, klezmer music,
gospel, Cuban music, and the classics can bear so many repeated
listenings.  Golijov also reflects the growing role of Latin America in
North American high and popular culture.

David Morris, New York City theater artist and long-time reader of MR, is one of the creators of Routine Hearing: Exercises for the Body Politic.

Exercises for the Body Politic
moves to the beat of an original score featuring the luminaries of
political oratory.  From the golden oldies of Goldwater and
McGovern to the modern sounds of Limbaugh and Moore, your headphones
will set the stage for this auditory grand ballet.  Enjoy a glass
of wine, a game of cards and the company of your fellow citizens as one
of HERE’s favorite design teams–David Evans Morris & Juliet
Chia–hit shuffle on the political soundtrack of 21st century.

The lastest installment of Exercises will feature selections from Tyler’s paper Self-Deception as the Root of Political Failure.  Alas, no selections from your truly but if Nixon going to China can become an opera I have high hopes for the musical, Believe in Pascal’s Wager?  Have
I got a deal for you!

You can get tickets to Routine Hearing which plays Jan. 2-3 at the above link.

Addendum: Here are Tyler and I on An
Economic Theory of Avant-Garde and
Popular Art, or High and Low Culture (JSTOR link).

The British Museum is one of the world’s premier arts institutions.  But last year it spent less than a million pounds on new acquisitions.  Compare this to the more than 55 million pounds spent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, or the more than 20 million pounds spent by MOMA.  The Met figure is inflated above normal levels because of the purchase of an expensive Duccio painting but the comparison remains.  The Louvre spent 16.8 million pounds in the same year, coming in third internationally.  The Getty was fourth and the Rijksmuseum fifth.

That is from The Art Newspaper, December 2006, p.25.  Here is a good article on a Frenchman who has realized the power of decentralized philanthropy.  Here is a good article on NYU’s obsession with philanthropy.