curators, creators and consumers pl jones

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Leonardo

Curators, Creators and ConsumersAuthor(s): Peter Lloyd JonesSource: Leonardo, Vol. 20, No. 4, 20th Anniversary Special Issue: Art of the Future: TheFuture of Art (1987), pp. 353-360Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1578531 .Accessed: 17/08/2011 15:21

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Curators Creators n d onsumers

Peter Lloyd Jones

Abstract-The author discusses the way in which the reward-systems or the professions of artand architecture influence practitioners' perceptions of their respective roles. Status isconsidered o be an important actor in this relationship. Following the ideas of Thorstein Veblenon the so-called 'trickle effect', the role of status in determining he perceptions of consumers ofart and architecture s considered. Consumers are little interested n the issues, invariably ormaland abstract, that concern professionals. Artists and architects are urged to address hemselvesto these realities and engage in a genuine attempt to create for the marketplace f they wish toinfluence the character of the environment.

I. UTILITY AND DECENCYIn July 1986, a major conference on thetopic of Art and Architecture [1] tookplace at the Royal Institute of BritishArchitects. It focussed on two issues: theneed for a campaign to further the causeof new legislation in the United Kingdom(the 'X%' law) that would require that a

certain percentage of construction costsof new buildings be devoted to art, andthe need to reform education so that theseparation between artists and archi-tects-which begins at college-could belessened. Sadly, the conference was longon worthy sentiment but short onpractical ideas, and it was left to FrancisMorrell, socialist Chairperson of theInner London Educational Authority(ILEA) [2], to focus on the real issues andto touch, albeit inadvertently, some rawartistic nerves.

She prefaced her remarks by givingassurances that the support of the ILEAcould be taken for granted in imple-menting any 'X%' law; however, she thenwarned that politicians, as the electedrepresentatives of the people, would neveragain be prepared to give professionals ablank cheque-especially when thoseprofessionals were artists and architects.She cited mass housing in inner cities as ahorrendous example of the way in whichthe people's tribunes could be misled byzealous and mistaken professionals; thiswould never be allowed to happen again.Nevertheless, she saw the

present-dayILEA as carrying on the tradition of theold nineteenth-century London School

Peter Lloyd Jones (artist, designer, teacher),Kingston Polytechnic, School of Three-DimensionalDesign, Knights Park Centre, Kingston uponThames, Surrey KT1 2QJ, U.K.

Abridged version of a paper presented to the Art andArchitecture Society at the Institute of Contem-porary Arts, London.

Received 25 July 1986.

Board in wanting the 'school' to be anexample in the community, a visibleexpression of the higher values of society,an assertion of at least a modestgenerosity of spirit in the face of theuniversal meanness of the surroundingstreets. Like her predecessors, she believedthat school buildings should enhance their

neighbourhood and not disfigure it.Quoting an old School Board report, shenoted its observation that "the differencebetween the properly decent and basicallyutilitarian was less than 5%".

This contrast between the 'basicallyutilitarian' and the 'properly decent',which the old School Board felt soimportant, preoccupied many nineteenth-century reformers and philanthropistswho, though appalled at the squalor inwhich the poor were forced to live, wereanxious lest any superfluity of expense beused for hedonism or extravagance thatwould give the lower orders ideas abovetheir station. In making the distinction inthis way, they were alluding unconsciouslyto the indecent opulence all too evidentamong members of the bourgeoisiesuddenly enriched by manufacture orspeculation. Clearly, it was both im-practical and improper to set this as anexample to the poor. But who was todecide what should be considered anappropriate amount of excess expenditureover and above the basic and utilitarian?And what was to count as a suitable andproper enhancement, an enhancementthat would set the poor a good example ofright living but would not give themdangerous aspirations?

Matthew Arnold [3] was the first topronounce publicly on these sensitivematters by asserting the right of theconcerned intelligentsia to stand outsideof all social groups and to criticise theirvalues in light of what he saw as 'higher'values-so-called 'sweetness and light'.Here, for almost the first time, we are

listening to the voice of the professionalbureaucrat. And if Arnold seems anisolated crackpot, one need only considerRuskin, Henry Cole (Dickens's 'Govern-ment Inspector') and many anotherconfident Victorian who rode the tide ofeducational reform that led to the GreatExhibition, the museums, the Schools of

Design and, ironically, some decadeslater to the first system of primaryeducation which spawned the LondonSchool Board.

I shall call all such figures 'curators',since what they are asserting is their rightto act as custodians-in this case,custodians of social values. In using theword in this way, I am borrowing a termcoined by the sociologist Erving Goffman,who first wrote about the activities ofsuch groups in the 1950s [4]. I shall comeback to the role of the professionalcultural bureaucrat later.

For the moment, I want to concentrateon that magic 'X%'-the differencebetween the basic and utilitarian and theproperly dignified. The trouble, ofcourse, with formulating a reformistprogramme in this way is that everyonethinks that the particular X% that he orshe allocates to activities beyond the basicnecessities is the right amount and theway in which he or she decides to spend itentirely proper. At the limit, not even themost fantastic extravagances of theVictorian rich (where X = 99.9%) wereconsidered in any way

improper bythose

who indulged in them. This universalperception of normality in the disposal ofthe X%-even when, as so often, Xreached grotesque proportions-was atopic that occupied the attention of anas-yet-unknown American academic whowas writing at the same time as theLondon School Board was ponderingthese matters. I refer to Thorstein Veblenwhose influential book The Theory of theLeisure Class was published in 1898 [5].

@ 1987 ISASTPergamon Journals Ltd.Printed in Great Britain.0024-094X/87 $3.00+0,00

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Fig. 1. Art exhibited n the railings of St. James Park, London. Eachweekend mall ortunes re made .. but never nyreputations.

Fig. 2. A 'recognized' allery. Reputations an be made here but largefinancial ewards re rare .. and he public t large s conspicuous y ts

absence.

II. THE TRICKLE EFFECT AND THECIRCULATION OF SYMBOLS

Veblen's field was economics and inparticular the operations of the financialsystem in relation to the needs ofindustry. His economics were of a verypractical kind, and his work was neithermathematical nor in the least abstract.One of his editors, C. Wright Mills, saidthat Veblen's whole life was an attempt tounderstand the curious and often bizarrerelationships between the institutionsthat made things (an activity Veblen heldto be self-evidently important) and theinstitutions that made money (an activitythat he very firmly did not). He himselfwas almost exaggeratedly frugal, makinghis own furniture from old packing casesand living in the cellar of a friend's housewhen on hard times.

His explanation of the cruel andfantastic operations of the social systemthat brought riches to the few and povertyto the many-even in a land of plenty-put the emphasis not on money but onstatus. His account, both savage andfunny, posited that the mainspring of theindustrial system was not what everyonesupposed to be obvious-the production

of necessities, the 'basically utilitarian'-on the contrary, it was precisely thatmagic 'X%', 'the properly decent' or whatVeblen called more succinctly 'waste'. InVeblen's view, what counted above all insociety was status. And demonstrableability to waste was directly expressive ofstatus: the greater one's ability to waste,the higher one's status.

Veblen's theory has at its base apeculiarly personal version of socialevolutionism. Modern social life began,according to Veblen, with a primalconflict in which marauding horsemenswept into settled agrarian communities,subjugating the farmers into slavery and

plunderingtheir goods. From this first

clash came the aversion of both parties towork. Work under these conditions was,mere toil, and toil was the lot of the slaveand hence to be despised as undignified.So it was with possessions. Possessionswere in the nature of booty or plunder.But with the advent of more peaceabletimes, warfare was no longer available asa means of honorific exploit. Plundertherefore came to be in short supply. Sothe honorific character of goods hadperforce to be incorporated in some other

way. However, the essence of booty lies inits factitiousness and its uselessness. (Theexpropriation of the merely useful is thereverse of honorific, since it argues thatthe plunderers themselves have need of itsoffice.) Therefore honorific goods, oncethese are manufactured and not merelyexpropriated, have to incorporate themaximum of uselessness in as obvious away as possible in order to avoid theimputation of mere necessity. This is thetheory of conspicuous consumption.Conspicuous consumption serves thepurpose of maintaining one's distinctionfrom the masses, an assertion ofsuperiority that Veblen called 'an in-vidious pecuniary comparison'. He calledthe aesthetic and moral standards whichderive from this perception 'pecuniarystandards of decency'.

The trouble with this arrangement inmodern societies is that everyone desiresa pecuniary standard of decency. This iseasy for contemporary members of theupper class whose jobs are confined to thedisplay of embodied idleness or waste inas conspicuous a way as possible. (That iswhy Veblen called them the 'leisureclass'.) In modern industrial societies,

Lloyd Jones, Curators, Creators, Consumers54


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however, the universal availability ofcheap artefacts of every kind means thatthe decencies of the leisure class can beimitated by anyone. All that is needed isthe money to purchase, if not exactly thereal thing, then at least a fair imitation ofsuitably honorific goods. Naturally,members of the leisure class try to re-establish an invidious comparison byadopting new symbols of exclusiveness intheir purchases of honorific goods.Meanwhile, below the first layer ofimitators is a second layer imitating them,and so on. Thus the status symbolsproper to the leisure class are said to'trickle down' the social hierarchy. This isthe so-called 'trickle' or 'Veblen' effect.

It was left to another Americaneconomist, Dusenberry, to developVeblen's insight that utility was in essencea social matter [6]. Dusenberry took upVeblen's basic position but stripped it ofits moral indictment. He was able to putVeblen's ideas of emulation and imitationinto a neutral, technical form basedaround what he called the 'demonstrationeffect'. His argument admitted the realityof all the strange activities Veblen haddescribed; however, it focussed attentionnot on their behavioral aspects but on the

implications for the way in which goodsthemselves are perceived.

Dusenberry accepted as fact that, forwhatever reasons, all goods can beranked into hierarchies of desirabilitywithin each particular kind. The assump-tion of economic rationality merelyamounts to the claim that people knowwhat these rankings are and would preferto consume goods from as high up aparticular rank as possible. What preventspeople from constantly bankrupting hem-selves in attempting to move up thesehierarchies are psychological restraintsacquired through training and habit. Andwhat breaks these restraints down onoccasion is the sight of other people'sindulgences. This is what Dusenberrycalled the 'demonstration effect' which,in his account, is entirely free frompejorative overtones. Once the demon-stration effect is in operation, theprobability that an individual's barriersto a higher level of consumption would bebroken depends on one's chances ofknowing about the consumption behaviorof others as well as on their behavioritself.

Veblen's legacy was most notablytaken up in the 1950s by the sociologist

Lloyd Fallers who pointed to the crucialrole of the Veblen effect in motivatingand stabilising competitive industrialsocieties [7]. For its success, a society ofthis kind depends on its ability tomotivate its members into a life ofunremitting toil in the processes ofproduction. This is done by constantlypraising the value of 'effort' above allother values. ("If at first you don'tsucceed, try, try, and try again ") Sopervasive is the injunction to strive forsuccess that such societies are sometimescalled 'effortocratic'.

This approach, however, has a funda-mental flaw. Because the institutions ofsuch societies are invariably hierarchicaland, moreover, ones in which thehierarchies are pyramidal, the chances ofactually achieving the success that isconstantly promised as the reward forstriving are usually vanishingly small.While there are indeed much-publicisedexamples of individuals who have risenthrough the ranks to become presidentsof corporations or whatever, the numberof such individuals is statistically quiteinsignificant. So how do effortocraticsocieties persuade people to pit their livesin a race in which the chances of winning

Fig. 3. Modern ormalist rt ooks best n a large empty pace.

Lloyd Jones, Curators, Creators, Consumers 355


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* MR1::*. ;..

1.;.-i,i^4

Fig. 4. In the ordinary consumer environment modern ormalist art looks out of place and incoherent.

are so low? In part, the strategy is todivert attention onto the size of the prize.If this is mesmerisingly large, then theinfinitesimal chances of gaining it areforgotten. More important, though, is thepart played by the operation of theVeblen effect. It operates in two wayswhich I call the 'cushion' and the'gearing' effects. Fallers pointed out thatwhat was important for most people wasnot the achievement of some ultimategoal but the sense of making headway,that things were getting better, over somereasonable period of time. And here theconsumption of symbolic status em-bodied in honorific goods enabledeveryone to have the illusion of havingmade a gain in status even when in realityit may have remained unchanged or evendeclined.

The trickle effect is the 'cushioning'agent which enables someone who hasachieved no absolute gain in status todeclare, "See, things are not so bad. I amnot a failure for I am now able toconsume goods that in an earlier timewould have only been available tosomeone from a higher station of life."On the other hand, the descending flow ofstatus-symbolic goods enables thesuccessful strivers, those who have

actually achieved some real gains, toenjoy, through the operation of thegearing effect, the illusion that theirsuccess is greater than it in fact is. Ineffect, the enormous productivity ofmodern industry has enabled whatVeblen called 'waste' to be democratised.Everyone can share it, or at least a littlebit of it.

The most precious symbols of thehigher ranks of society are endlesslyrecycled in the so-called kitsch (or 'low-brow' goods of poor quality) consumedby the lower ranks. This is as true in theirarchitecture as it is of their consumptiongoods. There are, of course, somefundamental problems with this system.Not the least is the fact that it depends onsociety's ability to deliver a continuouslyexpanding supply of new status-symbolicgoods and ever-increasing real incomes topurchase them. When this state of affairsbreaks down, trouble rapidly ensues. Forthe most part, though, most of the people,most of the time, are happy. And thecommunist part of the world seems ashappy as the rest.

In all societies, however, there is onegroup that remains unsatisfied by thesearrangements. This is the group that isprofessionally concerned with symbols

and values-the 'curators' and 'creators'of my title-for the operation of thetrickle effect is based on the downwarddiffusion of the symbols of the leisureclass. By their very nature, these are thesymbols of the time-honoured and thetraditional, through which the aristocracyis aped by the nouveau riche. They havelittle or nothing to do with the interests ofmost innovators-especially when thoseinnovators are organised in professionalsocial groups which serve to foster quiteother values. The sad truth that themajority of society at all levels isindifferent to the concerns of the curatorsand creators is rarely admitted but clearenough to anyone who has had to sell anykind of cultural product for a living. Thusartists and architects are in a paradoxicalposition. On one hand, their wholelivelihood depends on the continuousproduction of ostensibly novel symbolicartefacts which fuel the trickle effect; onthe other hand, that same process isdeeply inimical to any real novelty orcreative invention at any level likely tointerest the professionals. After all, if themarket were demanding 'art' with its'architecture', there would be no need fora Society to promote the liaison.

Predictably, he reaction of the curators

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to this indifference is often uncharitable,to say the least. An example may serve toillustrate the chasm that separates theparties. Some years ago there was asculptural happening in a New Yorkgallery. Two roomsets-one a bedroom,the other a living room-were created outof what was no doubt called kitsch. Infact, they were like countless millions ofsimilar rooms in any city or village in anycountry in the industrialised world,homely but not in any way aesthetic-atleast as curators would understand thatterm. When the audience of culturati wasassembled, the sculptor Arman enteredand, seizing the axes and the sledge-hammer provided, began to destroy theoffending artefacts until everything wassmashed to pieces. Called ConsciousVandalism, the show was a calculatedaffront of the most aggressive kind to thevalues held by the majority of home-owning families throughout the modernworld. Given this kind of response totheir values, it is not surprising that thosewho are forced to dwell 'downmarket'remain hostile to those who promulgatesuch 'modern' art. Surely, it is tensions ofthis kind that lay behind the politicallymenacing assertions of Francis Morrell.What continues to smolder is not a classwar but a status war, and this kind of waris far more difficult to end.

III. STATUS AND THE IDEOLOGYOF THE CREATOR PROFESSIONSThis same awareness of social status

lies behind the absence of so manyarchitects from art conferences. OscarWilde said that "all art is useless". Onemight strengthen this assertion from aVeblenesque point of view and say that"only art is useless". Certainly, artembodies uselessness in its purest form.In art, the X% is actually 100%. Thisbeing so, it is thus art that attracts thehighest status. To be 'recognised', i.e.endorsed in one's claims to be an artist, isthe abiding aim of all would-be creators.In consequence, there is a universaltendency for all the useful arts to turn intothe useless or 'fine' arts-and architectureis no exception. Architecture is seen by itsmost illustrious practitioners as an artform in its own right, one that is in noneed of enhancement by so-called 'artists'of whatever kind. Indeed, for somearchitects, to be seen at art conferenceswould be admitting a dangerous in-security that could be professionallydamaging.

These imperatives are socialised intowould-be creators from their earlieststudent days and are reinforced con-stantly by warnings about life in a tough

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competitive professional hierarchy.Students learn about these hierarchiesearly on. Take a simple example: whereone should exhibit one's work. InLondon one could start by hanging it onthe railings of St. James Park (Fig. 1).Considerable sums are made here everyweek. However, everyone knows that ifone aspired to any serious recognition,this would not be a wise move-even ifone were desperate for the money-forvenues like this are not 'rated'. To be seenhere would be to court the risk ofpermanent stigma, the imputation of notbeing considered 'serious'. Just a smallcut above the railings are the various artand craft 'markets'. Again, the rightmerchandise will sell for substantialamounts, and many artists live happilywith locations like these as their onlyoutlets. Even within the markets there arehierarchies of desirability, with those onthe tourist routes in restored environ-mental areas, such as Covent Garden,preferred. A serious creator-especiallyone who aspired eventually to become acurator or cultural pundit-would shunsuch milieus however much the moneymight be needed. Only a recognisedgallery will do (Fig. 2).

There is a similar hierarchy ofarchitects' practices, one equally knownto students. Magazines such as theArchitects' Journal publish occasional'league tables' in which the popularity ofpractices is ranked on how many studentshave chosen a particular one in which tospend their year of professional practice.These rankings have nothing to do withthe relative affluence of a firm. Manywealthy practices would never make the

Top 20. Conversely, many well-knownand highly sought-after firms are quitemodestly endowed. Inevitably, the morehighly it is sought after as a potentialemployer, the more meagre the wagesthat a practice can afford to pay itsaspiring junior staff.

The status of any servant-artist orarchitect-is related to the status of themaster or, as one should more properlysay in speaking of the modern pro-fessional relationship, of the client.Service to a Duke is more highly regardedthan the same office to a mere Count.This is true whether this service issignificant or not. It applies equallywhether one is court painter or courtbarber. To this day, artists and architectsmust strive for patronage from anaristocratic elite who can confer status bytheir mere acquaintance.

Beyond this literal aristocracy lie thehigher echelons of the powerful and therich, whether these are individuals or,more commonly today, the big corpora-tions. Thus, to count IBM among one'sclients is more prestigious than merelyworking for the corner betting shop. Thedifference is not only one of scale andwealth, for the status of IBM depends inturn on the status of its clients-theconsumers of its products and services.The computer user is presumed to be ofhigher status than the common gambler.

As has often been noted, as soon as anyactivity becomes professionalised, theservants start to assert their status overtheir ostensible masters. They do this bythe aggressive manifestation of theiresoteric expertise. Perhaps one of themost famous examples of this behavior in


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our own culture is Vasari's story (told in"The Life of Cosimo Rosselli" [8]) of theinferior cultural status of the Popehimself. According to Vasari, while thePope was indeed the ultimate spiritualauthority, he was ignorant of trueaesthetic standards: clearly seduced byCosimo's banal extravagances of goldand ultramarine, in preference to thesubtle formal qualities of Cosimo's rivals,he awarded Cosimo a commission for awall decoration in the Sistine Chapel.Here, as so often since, the values of those'in the know' are asserted as superior tothose of the ignorant, even if the latter areof higher status in other regards; theuninformed, those who are not quite'with it', are classed as the benighted anddespised accordingly. To this day, 'good'clients are those who defer to the artist'sown values, and a 'free hand' isuniversally prized.

In praising the supposedly superiormerits of the formal abstract qualities ofworks of art and disparaging as 'obvious'and 'showy' such features as the surfaceglitter of gold and ultramarine, Vasari

was referring to a set of values thatappears to be universally prized amongcurator groups in all cultures. This is thetendency to attach high status to therestrained rather than to the indulgent.Erving Goffman has referred to this as'negative cultivation' [9]. In all cultures,high status attaches to certain kinds ofexpertise or prowess when carried toextreme lengths. Applied to culturalmatters among curator groups, this oftenleads to the ascription of high status ontothe ability to divert attention away fromthe obviously salient qualities in per-ception and to focus instead on themarginal and the oblique. This ability tocontrol perception in a particular way is askill that is achieved through prolongedtraining, usually as part of the apprentice-ship in a particular culture. Ability tofocus on minutiae, for example, is part ofthe prolonged (if usually tacit) socializa-tion into 'professional' understandingswhich takes place during the education ofboth artists and architects.

Goffman drew an example from anearlier period, in this case from Japan. In

the Zen tea ceremony, the elimination ofall extraneous symbolism and the severeattenuation of form and texture in thevisual environment enabled those 'in theknow' to focus concentrated attention onthe tiniest details of the glaze on thesurface of the teacups. Without thisconcentrated withdrawal of attention,such details would otherwise be over-looked. Negative cultivation enables oneto see aspects of one's world that areoverlooked in everyday life and plays acrucial role in enabling one to grasp thespecial qualities of works of art.

However, in some cultures negativecultivation is taken to extremes, and theconsequent austerities cut off the majorityfrom an understanding of the very natureof art. The twentieth century is one suchperiod. Whether it derives from thePlatonic primary geometry of De Stijl,Le Corbusier's romantic love of theausterities of Mediterranean peasantbuilding or the mechanistic minimalismof Mies van der Rohe, the abidingconcern is with a ruthless economy,leading to the progressive attenuation of

Fig. 6. Almost any nineteenth-century uilding reveals an effortless Fig. 7. Detail of a decorative orbel rom the rear elevation of Ulsterconversation etween rtist and architect. Terrace, ne of the Nash Terraces n London'sRegentsPark.

Lloyd Jones, Curators, Creators, Consumers

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form and the elimination of 'extraneous'content.

Needless to say, the perceptual trainingneeded to appreciate this highly refinedstyle of art and architecture is long andarduous. So it is not surprising that themajority of the population who have notundergone this training have not only nosympathy with it, but even no awarenessof it at all. The uneducated majority cantruthfully say that they "can't seeanything in it". What they mean is not

that they are blind but that their attentionis directed elsewhere, their interestsfocussed on quite other matters, matterswhich demand a much more diverse andundifferentiated perceptual stance.

Naturally enough, professional groupsshare a common interest in technicalmatters, on how things are done. Increator groups, these interests concernquestions of form and composition aswell as subject matter and narrative.Since the latter are highly variable andpersonal, it is precisely the more subtlequestions of form and technique thatconstitute the permanent concerns ofartists and creator groups in general.

Herbert Gans, in his book PopularCulture and High Culture, has clearlydelineated this contrast in the case offiction, primarily he novel but also in morerecent genres such as the cinema [10]. Henoted that the professionals in thosefields are interested in character, psycho-logical complexity and formal con-struction, whereas the consumers offiction are interested primarily in explicitaction, strength of plot and the vividdepiction of scene.

In the visual arts, this contrast ismanifest in the opposition between thelayperson's concerns with the concrete,with explicit and recognisable imagery,and the high value that professionals putupon 'abstraction'. Abstraction is pre-cisely the kind of art and architecture inwhich all extraneous imagery is strippedaway, thus forcing attention ontostructure and composition-the mentalarchitecture of the work-because thereis nothing else left to look at. Put thesetwo themes, formalism and negativecultivation,

togetherin the

competitivestructures of a mature professionalbureaucracy and one has the perfectrecipe for that alienation between creatorsand consumers which is a feature of allindustrial societies.

There is a further factor that is of greatimportance in the development of artisticformalism. Right from the beginning, allprofessions start to develop institutionsfor critical commentary and theoreticalspeculation. These grow in schools andcolleges, in learned journals and secular

publishing, in conferences and meetings,even in public lectures-indeed, whereverideas are worked out and doctrine isexpounded. And, of course, theoreticiansare like everyone else, subject to intenseprofessional competition. Under suchpressures, extreme or 'fundamentalist'versions of theoretical positions emergequite naturally. Those who hold suchpositions are derided as 'ivory tower' bythose who live in the marketplace. Inturn, the latter appear to the theoreticians

as having 'sold out'. Thus the 'commercial'seems to them a watered-down or dilutedversion of the 'real thing'.

Not infrequently, advocates of suchextreme 'creative' attitudes capture im-portant positions as curators. WhenGoffman introduced this term-a meta-phorical extrapolation from the realmuseum curator-he meant it to refer toall those who are professional custodiansof social values. If the museum curatorlooks after the artefacts that express thevalues of society, the metaphoric curatorlooks after the symbols themselves. Inmost countries there is a significantoverlap between the membership of 'thegreat and the good' (as the curator'establishment' is sometimes called) andthat of the traditional elites of thearistocratic and the wealthy. The force ofGoffman's metaphor can be seen in theease with which real-life curators, such asmuseum directors, slide over into be-coming cultural pundits who feel free topontificate on the values of society atlarge, often earning supplementarysalaries as media personalities in theprocess. In this sense, creators are part ofthe curator group, but the two are notcoincident; indeed, they are often inconflict, as any history of nineteenth-century art will tell. For much of that timethere was an almost continuous strugglebetween 'progressive' artists and a'reactionary' cultural bureaucracy-especially in France. Much the same istrue in this century in countries that areable to exert centralised control overartistic matters, such as the Soviet Union.

How does one join the ranks of thecurators? For those born into the leisure

class,it is an

easymatter

of acquiring asuitable perch in some museumofficialdom or on the editorial board of acultural paper or magazine. Creators whoaspire to curatorship or 'punditry' have amore difficult task. There are two more orless mutually exclusive routes. The firstentails a fanatical devotion to professionalpolitics in the bureaucracy of the art formconcerned-the ability to devote time tomeetings of interminable tedium being aprime requisite. The second, which iseven more demanding and, in con-

sequence, much more rare, entailswinning the acclaim of fellow creators byvirtue of a particularly potent version ofsome style of art or architecture thatembodies a current esthetic issue.

Whether one's work is popular, likeRichard Rogers' Pompidou Centre inParis, or virtually unknown except tocognoscenti, such as the Guild House ofRobert Venturi in Philadelphia [11], ithas to be 'rated' by fellow professionals.Once one's work achieves recognition byvirtue of the circulation of favorablecritical comment in professional journalsand the like, then one will soon beconsulted by official bodies and invited toserve on juries and selection committees.Eventually one will be invited to joinmembers of the leisure class in one of theestablishment organizations such as theRoyal Academy and thereby enabled toset the creative agenda for the practice ofart at large in that particular field.

Given these harsh, if little discussed,social realities it is not surprising thatcurators, creators and consumers havesuch different visions of what 'proper' artand architecture should be, and even lessso that there is no coherent view of whatthe proper relationship between themshould be. In the real world, the best thatcan be hoped for is, it seems, anunobtrusive placing of some con-temporary painting or sculpture as anadd-on to a more or less neutral piece ofmodern building. This seems to be mostreliably successful when the work of arthas plenty of empty space around it (Fig.3), such as in some wide piazza or grand

foyer.When

contemporaryart is

placedin the ordinary consumer environment ofthe city street, it is almost inevitably outof place and incoherent (Fig. 4). Wherethere is an attempt to incorporate art intoarchitecture, it is invariably superficial.Art is on the building but not of it (Fig. 5).One has only to look at earlierbuildings-buildings erected before therewere separate and exclusive professionalstructures for architects and artists-tosee how easy it all was. Almost anynineteenth-century building one mightthink of shows an effortless conversation

between artists and architects. Most arestill popular with their consumers as themany conservation lobbies testify.

Can anything be done to bridge thisdamaging cultural divide? The politicalexperience of the twentieth centurysuggests that social structures are en-during entities and that social engineering,even when pursued with the utmostviolence, is remarkably difficult. If, as Ihave argued, our alienated art andarchitecture are the inevitable outcomesof creative careers constrained within



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curators, creators and consumers pl jones

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