I had a long, arduous, multi-leg business trip through Europe this week (Stockholm-London-Stockholm-Munich-Paris).   While wiping me out physically, it did give me more than enough airplane time to plow through Tyler Cowen's In Praise of Commercial Culture.

Like the other Tyler Cowen book I read/reviewed, Creative Destruction, this book was laden with long fact-filled anecdotes of in support of relatively straightforward conclusions (for example, a very long diatribe on the economics, roots, and cultural impact of impressionist art).

Consequently, much of the book reads as "a select guide to the history of Western commercial culture for the economically inclined" - for ex., this passage [p 15] could have been put forth in a basic introduction to aesthetics:

Inspired consumption is a creative act that further enriches the viewer and the work itself.   Art works provoke us to reexamine or reaffirm what we think and feel, and consumer and patron demands for artworks finance the market.

The general goal of Cowen's book is laid out early [p1]:

...[I] present market enterprise and productive wealth as allies of cultural production.   I seek to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favorable attitude towards the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity...  This book presents some social mechanisms that link markets, wealth, and creativity, examine how these mechanism have operated throughout cultural history, and attempt to account for the widespread perception that modernity suffers from a cultural malaise.

In examining the positive relationship between capitalism and cultural products, Cowen's core arguments boil down to:

• Capitalism creates wealth which enables full time / part time artists of all stripes -- the vast majority of artists over the eons have been part-timers who pursued other full time careers (from hunter-gatherers, to literature professors).   Simpler, more predictable lifestyles, shorter working conditions, greater leisure time, etc. directly feed these artists.   Similarly, the full time artist benefits from the dramatically larger number of people with the wealth to appreciate their products.
• Capitalism creates wealth which enables full time / part time patrons of all stripes.   More people adorning themselves with art and more sources of funding (foundations, commissions, public works, etc.) for the artist. This creates support structures which helps "discover" important art [p 121]

  Intermediaries have strong pecuniary incentives to spot the under appreciated in advance. Large numbers of galleries, auction houses, museums, art magazines, and professional and part-time critics search for the best works and publicize them. Buyers at the top end of the market have a better eye for quality than ever before. The case of van Gogh, who was largely unknown for most of his artistic career, has become increasingly unlikely in today's art world.

• Wealth allows longer time horizons in recognizing the merits of great artists.  Even if the mass market "isn't ready" yet for a particular artist's brilliance, there is simply less sacrifice today to be such an artist
• The product of capitalism + modern science, Technology reduces the cost of creating & consuming art.   It also enables new forms of art (dating back to new paint technology for the impressionist up to computer graphics today) and increases the accessibility of most types of art (traveling painting exhibitions flying across the world;  movies / TV distributed electronically)
• A larger market sustains greater diversity of Art -- an artist can more and more easily sustain himself pitching to a niche rather than being slave to the patron / mass market;   It is precisely these "outsiders" who regularly drive new artistic expression [p 29]

  Much of the dynamic element in American culture, for instance, has been due to blacks, Jews, and gays, as Camille Paglia has noted.

  ..  They deconstruct the detractors, reexamine fundamentals, and explore how things might otherwise be.   They tend to bring the upstart, parvenu mentality necessary for innovation.

There are, of course, some artists who do explicitly recognize wealth and the signalling function of $$$ as a component to their craft [p 18] --

British "punk violinist" Nigel Kennedy has written: "I think if you're playing music or doing art you can in some way measure the amount of communciation you are achieving by how much money it is bringing in for you and for those around you"

However, this is a decidely minority view in light of the sweeping "cultural pessimism" alive in most corners of the artistic community.   Cowen examines various artistic markets such as:

• books (intellectual property like dynamics;  deep consumption/commitment; relatively low material costs)
• paintings / sculture (rare item dynamics, shallow consumption)
• television / movies  (intellectual property, shallow consumption, very high fixed / material costs up front)

As a result of the particular dynamics of these markets, Cowen persuasively argues, we see different styles of "productivity".   The movie business, with it's inherently massive production and marketing budgets tends to err on the side of "safe" films that are exportable to a wide variety of markets / locales.   Hence, Hollywood emphasis on action flicks with happy endings which "scale" to other markets & cultures more easily than subtle verbal banter.

In the book business, by contrast, lower production and distribution costs, tend to lead towards wider diversity of product and less reliance on the "mega hit" to pay for budgets [p47]:

...in 1990 alone, over two billion book copies were sold in the United States.  The number of copies sold fo the fifteen best-selling books throughout the entire 1980s accounts for less than one percent of this figure.   In today's book superstores, best-sellers account for no more than three percent of sales. 

The reduced cost of distribution has been accompanied by the expected increase in consumption [p 51]

In 1947 the average American bought a little over three books;  in 1989, slightly more than eight.  Since the late 1940s, the number of book stores has jumped nearly tenfold, and their average size has increased. 

Cowen presents detailed descriptions of the criticisms from "cultural pessimists" towards these industries which are illuminating to aesthetically un-studied folks like me.   An example as he recounts the commercial history of art [p 107]:

In the early seventeenth century, the baroque art of Peter Paul Rubens represented the peak of Flemish prominence.   Rubens synthesized the artistic contributions of Italy, Germany, France, and the Low countries into a coherent whole.   For the first time, a truly European style had emerged.  Rubens's cosmopolitan style enabled him to sell his pictures through Europe, thereby reaping riches and reknown without precedent for an artist of his time.

So, in the face of evidence which generally correlates capitalistic success with broadening artistic distribution channels, why the "cultural pessimism" possessed by so many?   Cowen presents some excellent, well-reasoned theories:

• Cognitive illusions -- it's easier to identify de passe cultural forms that have fallen by the wayside (polka) than identifying newly emergent ones (rap). 
• Generation gap -- parents & elderly do their best to bestow their notion of cultural ideals (along with other ideals) upon their children.   Hence, mass market culture is viewed as a competitive threat
• The artists themselves -- because artists and distributors are different people, they have different motives [p 187]

  Artists' dissatisfaction with capitalism often springs from bitter experience. Creative artists rarely see eye-to-eye with distributors and other participants in the artistic world.

  ...Creators often dislike the commercial compromises that they mst make [in the short term] to achive and maintian market access. It is thus no surprise thta so many atists turn against the market and the cultural networks of their day

• Religious authorities -- since the dawn of time  ;-)
• Politics on both the right and the left -- the socially conservative right wing sees the decadence and sensuality of modern cultural forms as an affront to more puritan sensibilities.  The elites of the Left disdain the middle-classness of it all.   I'd provide the example of Jerry Springer as a modern example of both reactions.

A particularly interesting set of passages from Cowen's book outlined the disagreements between the erstwhile Libertarian and the mass market for cultural goods [p 199]

Libertarians hold a dynamic, positive view of markets and capitalism close to my own, yet they often embrace cultural pesssimism.  Their strong desire to criticize government leads them to place politics above beauty...  Given that libertarianism has not succeeded in becoming a political majority, libertarians instinctively feel that something must be wrong with our culture and our art.

... They would rather have their negative view of government confirmed than enjoy a great public mural.  

The idiosyncratic aesthetic writing of Ayn Rand have exercised a particuarly strong influence on libertarian attitudes towards art.   According to Rand, art ought to reflect how individuals should be, rather than how they actually are.  Art is a metaphysical statement that should communicate a positive sense of life....  Rand saw modern culture as a "sewer," created by "enemies of the mind" to enslave the heroic individual.  She had argued eloquently that wealth supports creativity, but she rejected the modern climate of ideas without recognizing its essentially capitalist nature."

This passage very strongly echoes the recognition of aesthetics as a motivator in human nature and thus politics that David Brooks captures in Bobo's in Paradise and Francis Fukuyama in this article:

[Fukuyama] It was quite revealing in Afghanistan after the Taliban were defeated that the first thing the people in Kabul did was to do dig up their VCRs and television sets and watch these corny Indian soap operas. Like virtually every other human being on the planet, they like that sort of thing. You can't say that watching cheesy Indian movies is a universal characteristic of human beings, but beneath that there are certain tendencies that are given by nature, and if you try to restrict them too much you are going to run up against some real political problems.

Beauty vs. Politics / Economics is also perhaps one of the central albeit unstated sources of discord between Europeans and Americans.   The Schiphol airport in Amsterdam is a marvel of both efficiency and beauty.   The Houston George Bush Intercontinental airport is merely a display of efficiency.  

At a local level, this battle plays out very clearly in American BoBo communities that fiercely advocate aesthetic issues like "growth management", "zoning", and "beautification" while at the same time presenting a somewhat apathetic response to the latest national initiative du jour.