Inside Culture
by David Halle
Published in 1993
Cover price $29.95
Today’s price, about $5
There’s gold in them thar cheap book sites! They are cheap but offer insights into how we live.
“Inside Culture” is a fine intellectual nugget. Halle’s wisdom is as valid today as it was in 1993.
Good non-fiction book are written for a purpose, to explore new concepts, or to explore new frontiers of knowledge. The ideas and concepts may be timeless commentary on the human scene, but the book world is a marketing phenomenon. Books race through the marketing cycle from hot marketing, author on the appearance/interview circuit to … the rusty dusty files of eBay/Amazon, basements and bargain stores.
Where does your art go when it leaves the gallery? Halle examines art in the homes of various economic neighborhoods in the New York area. He actually entered the homes, with permission, and recorded the type of homes of varying economic status.
Consider this. Art is created for many reasons. The garret artist creating for him/herself still exists. In what we call the art world, art is created for appreciation by others, preferably buyers.
If artists are successful at this, the honor and posterity of museum recognition may follow.
Halle reminds us, individuals are individuals, with varying taste. As you read, you learn that tastes vary by income and social status. It’s much more complex than rich people display originals and poor people display Wal-Mart kitsch, with in-betweens displaying art from starving artists factories.
Halle’s presentation is precise, adhering to academic research standards. Halle is an academic, living in the “publish or perish” academic environment.
Don’t let this scare you. His writing is for a popular audience. You will come away with some neatly packaged concepts.
Concept #1, Landscapes are the overwhelming choice of subjects, across the economic spectrum.
Concept #2,Abstracts do not just rest on a nail in a wall, they project into the room.
Concept #3, “Restful” translates into art that recedes into the background, visually and psychologically.
He sites other authors in passing, giving one reason the Impressionists succeeded. Many of the Impressionists painted leisure forms, the object of the bourgeois leisure. They saw themselves and their lifestyle in Impressionist paintings. It was a meeting of free spirit creativity meeting a market.
Good artists create first for themselves. “Inside Culture” should help you understand where the products of your psyche go.
Tom Hubbard
See my video (4 minutes.)
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