I'm currently reading Sassoon's Becoming Mona Lisa, a book about how Leonado Da Vinci's most famous painting became... well... his most famous painting, and likely the most famous painting in the world. Aside from the art history component of the Mona Lisa's story, there's a fair amount on the economics of art, production, and re-production:
The unique work of art is, by definition, in a position of monopoly. There is after all, only one Mona Lisa; there will never be another one. In a world dominated by reproducible commodities whose value plummet as technology lowers production costs and makes them available to an ever expanding mass of consumers, to be the “one and only” becomes a major selling point. For this to happen, it is necessary that the producer should be exceptional; better still, a certified artistic genius. A painting by an unaccredited artists, an amateur, someone not previously authenticated, is of little or no met value. Past masters have the advantage over their contemporary rivals of having had their fame repeatedly endorsed by a succession of arbiters of taste. ...
It is, of course, a tautological circle. A museum masterpiece can only have been painted by an established master; an established master is ones whose works are to be found in a major museum. (p. 78)
Which type of artist debuts with obscure experimental work, the genius or the fraud? Kim-Sau Chung and Peter Eso have a new paper which answers the question: it’s both of these types.
Suppose that a new composer is choosing a debut project and he can try a composition in a conventional style or he can write 4’33″, the infamous John Cage composition consisting of three movements of total silence. Critics understand the conventional style well enough to assess the talent of a composer who goes that route. Nobody understands 4’33″ and so the experimental composer generates no public information about his talent.
There are three types of composer. Those that know they are talented enough to have a long career, those that know they are not talented enough and will soon drop out, and then the middle type: those that don’t know yet whether they are talented enough and will learn more from the success of their debut. In the Chung-Eso model, the first two types go the experimental route and only the middle type debuts with a conventional work.
The reason is intuitive. First, the average talent of experimental artists must be higher than conventional artists. Because if it were the other way around, i.e. conventional debuts signaled talent then all types would choose a conventional debut, making it not a signal at all. The middle types would because they want that positive signal and they want the more informative project. The high and low types would because the positive signal is all they care about.
Then, once we see that the experimental project signals higher than average talent, we can infer that it’s the high types and the low types that go experimental. Both of these types are willing to take the positive signal from the style of work in exchange for generating less information by the actual composition. The middle types on the other hand are willing to forego the buzz they would generate by going experimental in return for the chance to learn about their talent. So they debut conventionally.
Now, as the economics PhD job market approaches, which fields in economics are the experimental ones (generates buzz but nobody understands it, populated by the geniuses as well as the frauds) and which ones are conventional (easy to assess, but generally dull and signals a middling type) ?
If you're not familiar with John cage's famous piece, here's a rendition of it:
If you haven't read the Cheap Talk blog before, its worth checking out. Also, Jeff Ely's web page has a great version of the classic Asteroids game.
On a per capita basis, Canada’s music industry dramatically outperforms the US when it comes to the presence of music business establishments (this category includes record labels, distributors, recording studios, and music publishers). Canada has 5.9 recording industry establishments per 100,000 residents, about five times the US figure of 1.2.
However, this appears to really be only on a per capita basis:
Recording industry establishments in the US are slightly larger – they have an average of 5.9 employees each, compared to only 5.7 in Canada. But the difference is dramatically more pronounced when it comes to revenue. US establishments earn average receipts of $4.1 million per establishment, compared to only US$540,000 in Canada.
So Canada has considerably greater per capita musical activity than the United States in terms of record labels, recording studios, and licensing houses. But the data tell us that the United States has much higher-earning businesses that are more heavily clustered in fewer places – especially Nashville, Los Angeles, and to a lesser extent, New York.
While this research is preliminary, we can speculate about what drives these differences. Economic geographers, from Jane Jacobs to Allen Scott to the Martin Prosperity Institute’s own recent analysis, have long noted that growth in creative industries like music tends to be driven by clustering and economies of scope and scale. The concentration of the American music business in a few key cities likely encourages these forces. In Canada, the fact that the music business is more evenly distributed is certainly a positive thing for musicians looking for opportunities in smaller cities. But failure to cluster in a few key centres may be discouraging the Canadian music industry from growing larger and more internationally competitive.
Here's a nice video from the New York Times on the effect of the recession on school music programs. In addition to the "standard" type of pressures the crisis puts on the school (e.g., cutting funds to extracurricular programs like music), there are also pressures on the individual musicians and their families regarding the costs associated with being in the music program. The "standard" cuts force additional expenses on the musicians and their families, like the cost of performing at Lincoln Center. I was particularly struck by the 16 year old who lives in her own apartment, works a job, and participates in the music program.
Over the weekend I was talking with several friends about the effects of economic crises on individuals' well-being (both material and psychological). As part of the discussion, we talked about what images are most salient to us when we think of depression and recession. During the oil crisis and recession of the 1970's, my friends and I agreed that the long lines at gas stations were the dominant image. However, this image (in and of itself) is predominantly one of effect of crisis on material well-being.
When we talked about the crisis of the 1930's (although none of us were around during that one), Dorthea Lange's photo was the image we thought captured the effects of economic crisis psychological well-being. Indeed, this is probably one of them most well-known and important images from the 20th century. It made us wonder what image will be in people's minds when they look back on the current economic crisis.
I just wanted to note on a couple of things going on locally and federally with regards to funding for the arts.
Here in Calgary, there has been a big push by the mayor to get increased provincial funding for law enforcement. A recent letter to the editor in the Calgary Herald ("Get Tough" September 19 2008) states one view on the issue:
Overhaul the justice system so it no longer hugs a thug and starts treating criminals like criminals. They gave up their "rights" when they broke the law, so treat them the way they have treated the good people of our country. Build more jails and get the criminals in them faster and for much longer periods of time. How to pay for that? No fancy bridges, no high-dollar art in government buildings. Funnel all the money that is spent on art, culture and other non-necessary things. In some Caribbean countries, there is no leeway -- you break the law, you go to jail and you serve hard time for a long time. The penalties are too harsh to even consider breaking the law. We need a federal leader who will grow the backbone to seriously shake up the justice system. Come up with a budgeted, realistic and believable promise to do this, and you'll get my vote.
The view espoused here (to put it somewhat mildly) is that the arts should come second to other public goods. Some of this debate (and I believe the piece the author is referring to) has developed with the arrival of "A Device to Root Out Evil" in Calgary.
One of the questions raised by this debate is "What is the benefit of public funding of the arts?" Many have argued that funding of the arts is essential for preserving and developing a group or nation's idea of identity. In this sense, support for the arts supports Calgarians' sense of identity or pride in their city. (As a note, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research research group on Social Interactions, Identity, and Well-Being thinks that discussions of identity are often missing form policy debates and economic analysis. Issues of identity have been important in the Council of Europe's research on social exclusion.) Evidence from psychology and economics is that a shared sense of identity can increase cooperation, well-being, and more generally, social capital. In terms of public policy, increases in feelings of shared identity or community could reduce some criminal activity (through increasing the concern individuals have for others or reducing individuals' desire to eschew the law) and increase the productivity of public goods (by reducing the extent of free-riding problems).
Below is a video which takes aim the cuts to arts funding that have occurred under Stephen Harper's government. The message in this video is, I think, one of the importance of arts in preserving (here) Quebecois culture. A couple of notes on the video:
Michel Rivard is a a Quebecois singer-songwriter. He is one of the founding members of Beau Domage.
The French word for "seal" (the animal) is "phoque". It is pronounced f*ck.
