Commerce and Culture

This is a great example of commercial art and a great commercial artist – Shakespeare. Nobody does like competition, but competition, like Marlowe and Johnson, is healthy for culture. Shakespeare had to approach entrepreneurial backers in London who had surplus wealth to invest in a capital project...

There was a conflict between patronage and the market in music, as reflected in the book, Quarter Notes and Banknotes. The classical music tradition is traced back to Paris. The Court of Burgundy in the 14 th and 15 th Century begins to get interesting.

Modernism was a reaction to mass culture and totalitarianism government support. Are artists better off being shielded from markets and commercial pressures? There are pluses and minuses to commercial systems.

The motion picture is purely commercial art. Lack of taste can earn a producer a fortune. This is the perfect intersection of commerce and culture. Most movies are bad, but many are very good. The movie form is so recent, that its history is right there to see. It was just a novelty item at first.