More on New York as the Center of Arts

Terry Teachout has responded in a very reasoned and reasonable way to my shot accross the bow.

First, I find it interesting that he points out that he was not born in New York. The late Herb Caen (two guesses as to where he was from, and if Sacramento wasn't one of them, you lose) often referred to people as "true San Franciscans, which means that they weren't originally from here." The same goes for New York. To voluntarily choose life in a big city is a much bigger step towards citizenship in that Imperial City (hat tip to Gray Brechin) than being from there and staying put.

Second, he notes that New York is where folks came to be validated. In bullfighting it is similar. A novillero can take the alternativa anywhere, but it must be confirmed in Las Ventas in Madrid. In many ways New York functioned that way for the art world, but...

It wasn't nearly as all-powerful as it thought. My counter-examples run in two categories: first, the darlings of the New York art world who are running deeper and deeper into obscurity (and mark my words, Warhol will be less known as an artist than as the father of some daft ideas that the art world took years to recover from) and second, artists like Wayne Thiebaud or Richard Diebenkorn who never did a significant stint in New York (Diebenkorn's few months in an upstate artists' colony don't count).

Certainly it took longer for Diebenkorn to be recognized as THE major American painter of his era (and there is still some resistance from the New York establishment), but in the long run he will be seen as a much greater painter than de Kooning, Pollock, or even Rothko (all of whom I think are first rate painters).

It is good to remember that Cezanne remained in Provence, and that his art reflected a terroir, to borrow an oenology term, that went hand-in-hand with his greatness as a painter. Similarly with Diebenkorn, Thiebaud, Kondos, Staprans, Arneson, and Park.

The jazz world that Terry cites, well, New York was and is the place to make a living at it. I might note that the bass player of a band that he mentioned on his blog a while back was from San Francisco (and a classmate of mine at UC Santa Cruz), and is living and thriving in New York. I also would note the departure of Charlie Hunter, a great Berkeley guitar player, a few years back, one who only a year prior was saying that he would never go to New York.

This is more a matter of pure economics. New York has more opportunities for gigs. However, there are jazz musicians (like the extremely talented Sonny Simmons), who have found that even New York doesn't offer enough and have found Europe to be a better bet.

One thing to remember is the role that other cities used to have. Philadelphia, for instance, was the headquarters of many great jazzmen (still is. I think Kenny Barron still lives there). Then there was Boise (har har har. I never could figure out why Gene Harris lived there. Certainly he wasn't working every night at the pay that his talent deserved).

As Terry notes, it is all changing, partly due to the Internet, but I suspect also because cities like New York have the habit of getting smug and stale. It certainly happened to Paris, as well as Rome (although Rome has come back and fallen and come back and fallen more times than should be possible). On the West Coast, San Francisco certainly goes through this (although San Francisco has a whole other set of issues regarding its artistic identity).