Kathy, that’s so great – I just love “My friends work with rich people in development and hunt for designer bags for princesses of other countries in order to get their artwork. At the same time they talk about how selfless they are to work at a non profit.” And “true political viewpoints are far too abrasive.” I’d add that one does not have to be politically overt or simplistically political in one’s artwork – that’s what artists always think when one starts talking about how depoliticized everything is, and they get very edgy (quite rightly, actually). But artists occupy a unique location in society and can, in their personal lives if not always their work, function as social observer and even conscience. After all their job is to point out the elephant in the room, or make evident what we’re all blindly taking for granted (at our community peril), or reminding us all of what we’ve conveniently forgotten, or however you want to put it. All of this – and it clearly includes politics and justice – is inherent to the artist’s job as we have conceived it in the 20th C and beyond. A hatred of conflict and of even commenting on the actions of large institutions (govt, banks) is not consistent with this role. Unless artists are now just decorators.

It really rang true that its not even perceived possible to “sell out” anymore. Beyonce can endorse Mc Donalds, Iggy Pop can sell car insurance (I want to forgive him I really do…) We are so saturated with commercial ideals that we seem to have forgotten how to be rebellious…

Hi Luke, I think one of the elements that bothers Deresiewicz is that hipster culture trades on appearing countercultural but is not only not countercultural, it’s passively entrepreneurial. That would be a major distinction with Bloombury and a number of other groups you mentioned. I’d also say that in terms of intellectual fashionableness, Deresiewicz is swimming against the current by trying to re-mobilize the idea of the (artistic or otherwise) avant-garde. Or any kind of opposition to “the large actors,” which hipsters have conveniently mocked as a naive stance. Because they hate conflict. I guess I’d also point out that hipsters aren’t “artists,” though the groups may overlap a little on a Venn diagram.

This reminds me a lot of my thoughts on living in a city amongst people I went to school with who studied art history. It seems that there is this pervasive coolness to studying a cultural thing, but also a close close cultural tie to really consumer driven thoughts and activities. My friends work with rich people in development and hunt for designer bags for princesses of other countries in order to get their artwork. At the same time they talk about how selfless they are to work at a non profit.

I liked how he talked about avoiding conflict. I keep running into the statement “that is so depressing” in relation to works of art in the realm of Felix Gonzales Torres or work that speaks to pressing social issues. It feels like people recite historical information to get brownie points or feel like they are using their university education but true political viewpoints are far too abrasive.

At the same time, universities pump out tons and tons of MFA candidate artists in the USA. These people are supposed to be top creative artists in their fields. The students are either incredibly well off financially or toppling with debt and many have the same highschool-university-MFA program experiences of peers and despite all the professionalism and career moves, one could argue that there are not too many interesting things happening within these droves of graduates. Sometimes I feel bad for not pursuing an additional degree and then I read an interview with Ai WeiWei or Duchamp or any number of artists with a slower (at least compared to the MFA timeline) but incredibly strong artistic and radically political activities. This video hit on some issues worth thinking about within the art school institution as well.

They were also apolitical, while they may have been pacifists and enviormentalists of a sort they never agitated as a group. Other examples may be the pre-war French avant garde of the art noveau and deco eras, people like Eileen gray with strongly artistic influences but very much tied to bourgeois commerce for her commissions and livelyhood through her furniture shop or even tolouse lautrec whose finest work has turned out to be his commercial posters.

The other thing I question is the idea that artists are not salesmen, this is new and possibly brief phenomenon, what are modern artists today if not at least to some extent (and in others like damien hirst a great extant) marketeers of their work, which is frequently not even touched by them but worked on by an army of assistants, art was considered a craft for much longer than it was considered a seperate esoteric calling.

I’m in that same generation as both Hodgkinson and Deresiewicz – mid 40’s — not a boomer and not a hipster, and am not comfortable with either generation/model of living. I have disliked the commodification inherent in hipster towns/enclaves (you can tell a place is a hipster place because of the shops) and this talk really helped me put a finer point on why that bothers me.

I waiver between embracing Hodgkinson’s idea of dropping out of political life completely (you’ll never change the system, so just get off the grid and sit and think) and Deresiewicz’s idea of confronting the system to make changes (or to get it to enforce the laws that exist). I know that small groups of citizens can absolutely make local changes and do get involved in my own city, but I despair of ever being able to make a larger political/systemic impact.

Lots to think about — and good to know others are out there thinking about the same things.