Reading recently in New York Times Magazine excerpts from Susan Sontag's journals. Which were fascinating for several reasons one of which were that she was hanging out with lots of different kinds of artists. the Beats were like that too and I remember also Hemingway's Moveable Feast.
I don't know about you but I basically only know theatre artists. I also don't really see much art besides theatre which I see lots and lots of. I don't know if I am a very good case study but I wonder if there is less mingling of media than there used to be.
And perhaps this is partially caused by how grad school has taken over. The people I know are the people I studied theatre with and the people I work with and a couple of other people. In undergrad I knew a lot of visual artists but now all i really know are theatre people and I think grad school definitely contributed to this.
Not that it is to blame for how small my world is. It's partially my own creation. I wonder if the audiences for other media are lacking because I'm not there. I can't complain that people aren't going to the theatre because I'm not really going anywhere else. I would like to see more visual art if I could but i would have no idea where to even start (and at the moment have no idea when I could do it). I would like to see more dance and hang out with novelists and go to poetry readings but I am consumed by theatre. And my Time Out NY subscription has lapsed.
Really all i wanted to say is that I wish we still lived in the bohemia of the 50s and 60s instead of in this sprawl. The internet has spawned all these subcultures and changed the nature of what was already there. Here is an online community and we can talk and talk about theatre till we die and never run out of people to talk to. And i suppose I could find some blogs from different sorts of artists with a quick google search but really I want to find the real coffeehouse where all these people are stting thinking about art and i want a discourse. Not that i have the time right now. Because I have a full time job to pay for grad school.
I need to quit and let the debt mount and live on scraps of bread stolen from pigeons. But will there be a bohemian community there starving along with me? I don't know.
And what would my cat do without me bringing home the cat food? She's an indoor cat and couldn't catch a pigeon. Also i hear sleeping on a park bench is not much fun when you're 29.
I can totally relate to your thoughts here. Totally.
ReplyDeleteLet me sort out what I think about this....Hmmmm...
Surprisingly - living in LA of all places I come across many visual artists of many different mediums. There's quite the little underground art scene out here.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Laura. interested to hear your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteAnd Mandi, we probably have that here. I just don't know about it. or maybe we don't. I'm in a small small cave
I know advertising is supposed to be a corrupt thing to make a living at, but I've got to say, it's one of the few things you can do in this world that puts in contact with almost all the different artistic mediums (and the artists who work in them) that there are.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, the fundamental creative unit in adveristing is a writer and an art director.
Then, once you have an idea, you work with illustrators, photographers, directors, actors, film producers, web people, flash experts, etc.
It's quite amazing. And one of the reasons I like working in it. (There are many reasons I don't like advertising, but that's for another time and another post.)