Arnold Kling is skeptical that New York City will ever be as important as it was over the past decade because of the prominence of finance. He is responding to Richard Florida's new piece in The Atlantic, How the Crash Will Reshape America. Kling declares:
But I think that a lot of my attitude is that, notwithstanding Virginia Postrel's Substance of Style case for aesthetics, I don't think that the arts are all that important. To me, creative innovation that matters is somebody in a lab at MIT coming up with a more efficient battery or solar cell. It is somebody at Stanford coming up with a way to make computers smarter or cancer more preventable. I just can't get excited about some frou-frou fashion designers and the magazines that feature their creations.
Kling would perhaps get less grief if he qualified that aesthetics is not that important for economic productivity. Florida likes to use biological analogies, so I think it would be fair to characterize the technical creatives as the primary producers of the economy. Their innovation results in concrete gains in economic productivity, which naturally leads to a higher level of consumption. This consumption works its way up through the economic food chain, supporting a larger and more diverse array of heterotrophs.
It seems plausible that the future trajectory of New York City is going to be conditional upon exogenous factors. The city is no longer the master of its own universe. In other words, what gets invented in Silicon Valley, Austin and Route 128, production generators, will determine the viability of consumption capitals.
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It is hard to imagine that a 'crash' in fashion creativity would have the effect that the economic downturn is having.
In fact there has been a catastophic crash in creativity in Western high art from around the middle of the twentieth century - with no geniuses in any of the major forms (classical music, classical art, English langauge poetry etc).
This did not cause any great ructions - indeed the elite have been able to deny or disguise the fact for sixty-some years - which would hardly be possible for the economy.
BGC,
the 'crash' in Western high art has been accompanied by a rise in forms of art that some think of as 'lower' (quote marks, because many contemporary composers of 'classical' music do not think of jazz, rock, etc. as inferior forms of art). I see it more as the decline of certain genres as others rise. I don't think the 'overall' level of art, however that is defined, has declined in the last fifty years.
The Devil Wore Prada.
P.S. "In fact there has been a catastophic crash in creativity in Western high art from around the middle of the twentieth century." Some might date it earlier. And much though I love early Jazz, I'm not going to rank it with Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. I do, though, rate it far above popcrap and rockshite.
I think Arvo Part is a halcyon genius in the sense you're using, and will be listened to for centuries.
http://www.rhapsody.com/arvo-part/de-profundis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Safk6SdY0T8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTGgSr98luQ
Cormac McCarthy might qualify, at least for Blood Meridian and maybe Suttree - I'm not sure. It's been a while.
I forgot to mention Malick's "Thin red line."
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
Paul Simon The Sounds of Silence
Art and culture are just one of the consequences of New York's preeminence. They are not one of the causes. New York City gained her preeminence first because of location. The city is located at the mouth of a river that goes deep into prime territory. It is, to make this short, at the confluence of a number of trade routes. You have the interior via the Hudson River, coastal trade from both north and south, and then the overseas trade. All on a location -Manhattan Island- that is easily defended and with quick access to prime real estate for agriculture and industrial development. Even without a United States the city would still be a leading port.
Science, art, and culture followed the money in the case of New York. New York was where the patronage was, so people seeking patronage went there. New York is still where the patronage is, so people are still going there.
Keep in mind that New York is not just a financial center. There is more than Wall Street to New York's economic power. The city has company headquarters, and is the place for company representatives from around the world. It's where world business goes when they need to get together quick. Failing banks isn't going to change that. As long as New York is where you find the money, New York is where you'll find the arts.
"In fact there has been a catastophic crash in creativity in Western high art from around the middle of the twentieth century - with no geniuses in any of the major forms (classical music, classical art, English langauge poetry etc)."
If forced to choose between the survival of all "high art" ever made, and the collected works of Simon and Garfunkel, I wouldn't choose the high art.
There's some classical music I'd be truly sad to lose, but keeping "Scarborough Fair" is more important.