Can Artists Afford to Live and Work in New York?

Over the weekend, my wife and I attended an artist's opening in a culture-conscious New Jersey suburb of New York. The inexpensive exhibition area, with its awkward geometry, odd seating area, and marble-like floors, felt out of sync with the contemporary preference for airy, raw spaces. Doors of psychologists' offices and small-time consultancies alternated with the art work on the walls. The lighting, surprisingly, helped the art work's better qualities emerge without struggle.

Hmmm...was the space suitable for the event? The gallerist and artist made the best of the situation. However, the setting was far from ideal, and that's being generous.

The artist's and the gallerist's minimal financial resources most likely dictated the venue selection. It's hardly an unusual scenario for a visual artist. More and more painters, sculptors, photographers, and hybrid artists (e.g., the "multi-media" crowd) find themselves in locations as far from New York's big-time as Earth is from Jupiter. They will find better spaces at prices they can actually, maybe afford in fly-over states than they would in the American art capitals.

Alan Feuer
(Image: Twitter)

New York Times writer Alan Feuer precisely considered this point in his December 2014 defense "They Say Art Is Dead in New York. They're Wrong.":

You hear a lot these days about Detroit, New Orleans, Minneapolis -- fresh new meccas where the rent is cheap and the cops don't hassle you, man. They have that vibe, people say, that edge that New York used to have. There's a real community think going on.

But then, the community in New York, especially in the D.I.Y. arts underground, is pretty robust...

The problem with Feuer's approach is few can afford to stick around for the "robust" activity. A quick look at Lena Dunham Brooklyn shows art-centric neighborhoods rapidly transforming into playgrounds for the affluent. Where are less than prosperous artists going to go? Some painters I know are seriously considering moving their studios to neighborhoods adjacent to Kennedy Airport. That's Siberia.

The one-percenter art world just doesn't care about this issue. (Neither does "the voice of my generation" Ms. Dunham, who was born into the one-percent world.) The elite believes it is the only art world that counts. The remaining ninety-nine percent can eat cake, or move to some grim, distant metropolis. The message from New York's art world power brokers is a blunt one: If you don't have the money, take your artistic ambitions elsewhere.

Tyler Brule
(Image: Wikipedia)

Interestingly, the Canadian journalist Tyler Brule offered a similar observation in his recent Financial Times piece about Montreal:

For the moment Montreal remains an interesting place because a depressed economy allows creativity to flourish (think Berlin) as low rents mean it's easier to try out a new retail concept or start a restaurant.

You could easily add the art community to the mise en scene Brule depicted. The catch is whether such low-rent communities are sustainable without the attention and the sanction of the art capitals and their influential mandarins. How do scattered artists maintain, explore, and expand the energy and ideas that inform their activities? If social media were the answer, why do so many visual artists show up in the flesh in New York or London?

Once upon a time, New York was rightfully considered a place where artistic endeavor was encouraged and valued. Struggle toward achievement, recognition, and reward was accepted as part of the deal. The outsourcing of creative activity to the lower-rent provinces or a capital's outer fringes reduces artists' opportunities for impact, growth, and ferment. Little good can emerge from that "brain drain" scenario, and no number of quasi-exile art openings can change that outlook.