The title of the book and the sleeve – a lurid collage of pop art pictures and photographs – are enticing. The contents are perhaps less so, at least for those not part of the New York City clique that Currid describes – the cluster of creators and exploiters of style, the networkers and global tastemakers who set trends worldwide and deliver the dollars, making New York City a creative magnet.
Currid posits that the cultural economy (art, music and fashion) may be a more important driver of the New York economy than the finance, insurance, real estate and law sectors. Other sector clusters yield positive externalities, but these are the raison d’être for art and culture. Geography, proximity, density and social life are crucial for “spatially bound creative chaos” and the ultimate economic engine. She argues that how the cultural economy works has not been adequately studied. This book seeks to explain it: how members of these sub-sectors work horizontally on many levels but are most productive within their social lives, networking at galleries, fashion shows, and night clubs.
In support of Currid’s theses are numerous graphs of employment and tables of location quotients by industry sector, together with evidence from over one hundred members of the cultural economy – night club owners, fashion designers, musicians, artists, media experts and people from cultural institutions. The numerous and copious notes and references together with a comprehensive index indicate significant research.
Currid’s style (and we learn a lot about her penchant for shoes and Diane von Furstenburg dresses) is wide ranging – at times scholastic, in parts tabloid and even novelistic. For the most part it is a racing narrative. One refreshing aspect is that in this book social networking is not an internet phenomenon; it occurs in night clubs, fashion shows and art exhibitions. This is horizontal networking, a nexus between commerce and culture – where people get hired because they know someone, where the business gets done; where the elite dictate global style and commensurate dollars are generated. This is what Currid, presumably with an eye towards Theodor Adorno’s writings, describes as the commodification of culture, where untapped economic value is transformed into worldwide demand. A prime example is how graffiti artists ultimately made big money not just on stand-alone canvases but also on Louis Vuitton bags that sold for thousand of dollars.
Currid also provides an interesting explanation of the transformation of New York City from bohemia to a cultural economy as art, music, fashion and design collided. Pop Art and neo-Dada are discussed along with the birth of punk rock (Richard Hell’s band Television) and the development of New York as a hub of fashion design (largely owing to the occupation of Paris during the Second World War). We learn about peer review, flexible career paths, word of mouth, cultural gatekeepers, the influx of new talent and the creation of ‘buzz’. However, this important dynamic mechanism is increasingly under threat as artistic talent leaves New York, or at least Manhattan, owing to high rents and a punitive approach towards nightlife.
To conclude, Currid provides some wide-ranging advice for policy makers: non-closure of nightclubs; cheap property zoning; more investment and involvement in cultural educational institutions and artistic festivals and even new tax breaks. The book is at times raw and rambling, and while it could provide more hard quantitative evidence on the size of the cultural economy, it is informative about how the cultural economy works. Moreover, it is entertaining and certainly provides food for thought for policy makers.
Dr Alison Sprague