Creativity and Capitalism
1
Abstract
This research explores how some of the ways “being an artist” is constructed and
contested in the River Arts District of Asheville, North Carolina, and how they are
interpreted within a capitalist framework. Structuring my paper around the narratives
embodied by objects, I quote from interviews with artists, developers, and other residents
to gain an understanding of the ways that systems of semiotics overlap with economic
transactions. I conclude that although art and capitalism are often conceived of as distinct
spheres, they can both exist in one interaction in the River Arts District, although
conversion is never complete.
Creativity and Capitalism
2
Introduction: A Collection of Objects
We begin with a collection of objects. It is at first glance a disparate grouping, a
strange choice of things to gather together. We have a billboard, a clay jar, a mechanical
sculpture, a black and white photograph, some note cards, and an abstract impressionist
painting.
How did I end up with this collection? When I wrote the research proposal for this
paper, I had an idea of what I wanted to study. I wanted to look at the physical objects
that tourists bought from artists in Asheville’s River Arts District, and the narratives of
authentication and commoditization these items evoked. When I began the actual
research, however, things rapidly became less clear. For one thing, it wasn’t tourist
season. I had very few actual transactions to observe. Similarly, it would be foolish to
write about artist- tourist interaction in the River District without observing one of the
biannual studio strolls, and my fieldwork period did not cover either November or June,
when the strolls occur.
As I did interviews, another issue emerged as particularly salient. I had never
assumed that in discourse there was a single clear definition of the term “artist,” but I was
interested in what a contentious subject it was. There was another theme that surfaced as
well, making its appearance when the first artist I interviewed, a glassworker, nodded
towards the furnace. “That purr you hear,” he said, “isn’t free.” Another artist put it even
more succinctly when he told me, “I wish I could sell shit, so I could get more shit built.”
Creativity and Capitalism
3
There were two parts to the research question that ultimately declared itself. The
first was this: How is “being an artist” constructed and contested? The second framed it
further: How does this work within a capitalist system?
I found this pair of questions particularly interesting because art and capitalism
are traditionally constructed as two distinct spheres. Stuart Platter states it well in the
introduction to his economic ethnography of the fine art market in St. Louis:
The art market is a fascinating case in a capitalist, commercial society precisely
because economics is not supposed to matter in art. Artists are supposed to make
art to advance and expand our vision through their intensely personal expression,
not to make money. This means that an individual artist’s oeuvre should have a
trajectory, spirit, and an integrity of its own. The challenge to artists is to create
work that is personal and unique, with significant aesthetic quality. Changes in an
artist’s image, meaning the appearance of a set of individual pieces that make up
the oeuvre, should be driven by an aesthetic imperative and no other (1996: 22).
This collection, then, is six objects whose narratives speak to this particular
situation, in which economics does matter, but so do other factors as well. In exploring
this collection, I rely on the work of several key theorists.
Karl Marx’s outline of the process of the fetish (1994) and Walter Benjamin’s
definition of the aura (1968) both greatly informed my research, but both stop short of
contemporary situations. I argue that in the River Arts District, re-insertion of processes
of labor serve to fetishize an object, whose aura is only heightened by the ritual of
meeting the artist.
This piece is influenced by Plattner’s economic ethnography, as quoted above, but
attempts to build on this by introducing some framework of social theory as well. This
paper is a clumsy attempt to introduce basic semiotics to an acknowledgement of
economic transactions grounded in a specific place.. I do not try to define exactly what it
Creativity and Capitalism
4
is that makes an artist, but rather investigate several of the ways this term is discussed. I
also do not try to defend or disparage capitalism and events of commoditization.
Although my research question grew and shifted, using the objects themselves to
tell stories continued to be a fertile method of research, for reasons I will explain below.
In the six sections to follow, I will use six different objects presented during my
fieldwork to elaborate on different ways the ideal of “artist” is constructed and contested.
The first object, a photograph, helps us to locate the River Arts District, and leads to
elaborations on how I came to be interested in what “artist” means, and idea of innate
artist-hood. In the second section, the story of a kinetic sculpture leads into ideas of
sacred missions and exotic Others. In the third section, a set of note cards demonstrates
how accessibility and open studios define an artist. Continuing in the theme of open
studios, in the following section a painting leads us into questions of the role of audience,
and how the aura of artist personality is performed. From here, we arrive at a sign
announcing a proposed development, which provokes discussion of “artistic” as a
signifier. From this billboard we arrive at a clay jar, our final object, which concludes the
conversation with the concepts of process and life as art. Although each section centers
on a particular object and personal narrative, they are not meant to function as simple
descriptive biography, but rather as focus points for larger themes.
Why begin with things? “All objects,” one artist informant told me, “are keys to
the human mind.” Objects contain histories, cultural functions, complex symbols of
power, entire systems of meaning. “Why,” you might ask, “do we have to pay attention to
the objects? Could we not just study the systems of meaning?” Arjun Appadurai, in his
essay on commodities, argues that even if things are composed of the meanings we imbue
Creativity and Capitalism
5
them with, we cannot study the meaning of objects without examining the forms, uses,
and trajectories of the things themselves. Only by looking at the thing itself can we learn
about the humans involved in its existence. “Thus,” he writes, “even though from a
theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a
methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and
social context” (1986 :5).
It is for this reason that I approach analysis of the communities and people of the
River District through the theoretical lens of objects produced there. Igor Kopytoff, in his
essay “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commodity as Process” (1986), proposes that
by charting the biography of an object, we can understand the social conditions that
surround it.
In researching this piece, I was inspired by Leah Hager Cohen’s application of
this principle. In her book Glass Paper Beans, (1997) she maps the complex biographies
of her morning newspaper, her coffee, and its glass, exploring the stories of the people
that worked with these objects in their trajectories of exchange.
Before we delve deeper into the stories of the people that live and work in the
River Arts District, there are a few more preliminaries worth noting.
Ethnography itself is a strange sort of collecting. You hang around, you ask
questions, you pay attention until you’ve collected enough information that it begins to
arrange itself. What I hope for this piece, and my position in it, is to be, as Karen
McCarthy Brown writes in her incandescent ethnography Mama Lola, “distanced enough
to discern patterns and relationships but not so distant as to create the impression of
Creativity and Capitalism
6
overall logical coherence. No person’s life or culture is, in the final analysis, logical”
(1991: 12).
An art collection, James Clifford observes, may be “a strategy for the deployment
of a possessive self” (1994: 623). I want to fully acknowledge the presence of my
possessive self, and what impact that may have on the information presented here.
Researching this paper I became acutely aware of my youth and awkwardness. I am also
middle-class, white, a woman, and an artist myself. All of these factors, and many more,
have probably influenced both the way I was perceived and the way I interpreted the
information offered to me. I have tried, to the best of my ability, to be conscious of these
factors, and to keep them from influencing the data I present here.
Fieldwork for this paper took place over a period of approximately four months in
the late winter and early spring of 2008. I encountered my informants though a
combination of meeting them at the local coffee shop, Clingman Café, calling them based
on their websites, being referred by friends, and venturing into their studios.
This is not a comprehensive study. I did not manage to interview people in all of
the studios. I tried to speak with people of a variety of incomes and genders. I spoke with
artists in diverse media, as well as developers and residents.
I am deeply, deeply grateful to all the people who generously agreed to be
interviewed for this paper. Any insight in this paper is a result of their graciousness. I
should emphasize, however, that the ultimate conclusions are mine, and their possible
inaccuracy mine alone.
In this paper I use the label “River Arts District” to refer to both a spatial
designation and a vague cultural marker. This label itself is loaded, although despite
Creativity and Capitalism
7
research I am not sure of its provenance. Many people say “River District,” and many
more are not aware the area has a specific name. It is for reasons of convenience, because
so much of the promotional literature uses that name, that I use it here.
This paper delicately avoids addressing the art/ craft divide. I interviewed a range
of people with studios in the District, from potters to painters. All of them claimed the
label artist, with varying degrees of attachment. For the purposes of this brief
ethnography, I chose to focus on what examining several aspects of that label, rather than
exploring its accuracy.
In Asheville in particular fierce sentiments exist on both sides of the art/craft
discussion, and it is a worthy subject for a book, although I am forced to neglect it here.
There are many other issues that relate to the River Arts District that are also not directly
addressed in this paper, such as the impoverished neighborhoods that abut several sides
of the District, the homeless population that co-inhabits many of the spaces I mention
here, or the economic dynamics of the recent influx of wealthy out-of-towners. This is
not intended as a statement of their irrelevance, but simply an awareness of time and
space constrictions. With all of this in mind, let us turn our attention to the first item in
our collection.
Part One: Michael’s Photograph of Cindy
Finding the True Artist
If you turn right off of Clingman onto Roberts, and then right again on Green, and
then left onto Park Avenue, you can park your car by Hanger Hall, the eccentric Russian
Creativity and Capitalism
8
mansion, and cross the street to an empty lot on the top of a hill. A factory and supply
shop used to stand there, with trucks maneuvering streets far too little for their bulk, but it
is gone, and the empty building has been torn down, to make space for condominiums. If
you take the advice of the lone plastic banner and go to the website
(www.100parkavenuenorth.com), you can scan your mouse over the small blueprint
buildings, most of which are offered at around $350,000 per unit, and view details about
each one.
The only thing there right now is a wooden observation deck waiting awkwardly.
“It looks like it came from outer space,” my guide wryly observed. The deck is puzzling
because it lifts you approximately five feet off the ground, which does little to change the
view. If you climb the steps to the deck, or stand beside it, you can see most of the River
District spread out before you.
The French Broad River curls through the valley, accompanied by the railroad
tracks. Echoing the undulations of the river are several rows of old factory buildings,
most of them built in the early 1900’s. From this view you might be mesmerized by the
long trains waiting in the rail yard, or the single simple white Victorian perched on a tiny
island of land, the cars and pickups on their side in the front-yard elevated above the
roofs of factories surrounding it.
Of course, it also depends on whose eyes you’re using. If you’re the New York
Times writer from out of town, this is what you might see:
To reach the River District, as the area is known, you take Clingman
Avenue out of downtown, down a steepish grade superintended by viny
kudzu ghosts. At the bottom of the hill, you turn left onto Roberts Street at
a gray-painted brick building, where a gilt-lettered sign reads: "Mr Gray
says Mind your bourgeois table manner but do not forget your proletarian
bite." The district is an assemblage of attractively distressed, previously
Creativity and Capitalism
9
forsaken structures from Asheville's bygone industrial age: a cotton mill, a
tannery, a gas plant, a brewery, produce storage sheds, a concrete block
plant, an ice factory, etc.; now they are mostly lofts and studios in various
states of rehabilitation. One hundred or so local artists work and, in some
cases, live there; many of them do not mind if you stop in for a visit.
{Tower 2006)
If you’re the young woman walking slow circuits on the corner of Clingman and
Roberts on a sunny Sunday afternoon, looking for male customers in cars, things might
look a little different.
I was first attracted to the River District by the paradoxes it hints at, all the ways it
could be seen. “Attractively distressed” is itself a paradox, as is bourgeois table manner
and a girl working the street. So, too, might be the production facility for military satellite
dishes a few yards away from a studio that hosts an opening called “Insurgency,” or the
“Sustainable Urban Village” planned next door to the house with two goats and a
confederate flag in their yard.
There is so much to learn about this neighborhood, from its history as a mill town
to the people that occupy the former mill spaces. One morning Michael, a professional
photographer who rents a live/work space on the second floor of an industrial brick
building turned studio, showed me some of his photographs of Cindy, who used to work
beneath his window. When Michael moved in, eight years ago, they became friends.
Michael’s building is in a compound with several others, including a tiny cubical oneroom storage shed that Cindy rented as a living space.
Cindy works in metal sculpture, enormous functional furniture pieces made of
discarded industrial parts welded together. Iron plow blades become the seats of chairs,
huge metal chains, each link larger than both of my hands, support glass tabletops. Cindy
Creativity and Capitalism 10
is in Florida now, where she has another studio, and no longer rents the shed, though she
still has warehouses full of tons of scrap metal in Asheville. The shed is once again used
for storage.
Michael laid the framed black and white photographs out on his bed and studied
them. In one, Cindy is welding outside, sparks flying around her slight frame. In another,
she is lying amongst huge gears, arranged on the ground in interlocking spirals. Michael
pointed out one in particular for me to see.
It was shot from the window above, un-posed. It is night, but the little square shed
is illuminated, the door flung open. Cindy lies on her back on the mattress on the floor,
asleep. Behind her stretches a long line of train track, lined with graffitied buildings.
Streetlights cast a dim glow in the background.
“This, to me, is the River District,” Michael said.
He regarded the photo a few moments longer. “Cindy,” he added, “is a true
artist.”
This statement intrigued me. What did Michael mean? As other interviews
progressed, this became an increasingly frequent concept, intricately linked to people’s
conceptualizations of the neighborhood, and Asheville as a whole. My initial question in
embarking on this project might have been, “What is the River District?” I quickly
realized that in order to explore this, I would have to ask, “What is an artist?”
Michael called Cindy “the real deal.” When I asked him what that meant, he said
that “artists are born, not made.” Eventually, he clarified what it was they were born into.
It was that these people had no choice not to do what they do. As he said of Cindy, “The
way I see it, she can’t not make furniture.” Regardless of financial reward, they were
Creativity and Capitalism 11
compelled to create in a specific way. What drew Michael to the River Arts District eight
years ago was that “the people that live here were doing that. They’re not geniuses, but
they’re true artists.”
According to this formulation, true artists are compelled by some essential
invisible driving force to create. It is this force that characterizes both the individual
artists and the larger River Arts District.
This narrative is noticeably devoid from any discussion of capitalism, not
necessarily as motivation but in any part of the picture. This absence implies that a “true
artist” is outside of the capitalist system.
If we were to try to find the capitalist aspect here, we might use the term “psychic
income,” which Plattner uses in an article to explain this sort of narrative. He links this
compulsion to self-characterization, writing that “some producers make work primarily
because their identity and self-respect are defined by their work” (1998:483). Various
phrasings of psychic income were ranked as important by many of my informants, but
many were also aware of financial pressure.
Being an artist in a capitalist system can take a number of forms. The two objects
we look at in the following sections illustrate two very different positions on that
spectrum.
Part Two: Jinx’s Chicken Shooter
Radical art and authenticity
Creativity and Capitalism 12
The second item in our tour of the collection is “The Chicken Shooter,” built by
Jinx. The Chicken Shooter does not possess a starkly avant garde title but is, indeed, a
machine that shoots rubber chickens. A kinetic sculpture built primarily of an old
motorcycle and assorted scrap metal parts, it doesn’t run right now because it caught fire
recently when someone who didn’t know what they were doing tried to start it. When
functioning, however, it can hurl the chickens maybe the length of a long parking lot“Far enough to make people laugh,” the artist says.
I interviewed Jinx on a chilly day in early spring in the brick former factory in
which he works. When I asked him what he thought of the River Arts District, he replied
in the past tense: “It was a nice place, but it didn’t have any money.” There is no way for
the District to survive, he continued, with no money and without the support of the
government or city. “It’ll probably become a place with too many laws, clean, and with
no room for mistakes that people might find interesting.”
In comments throughout the interview, it was clear that Jinx held in highest
esteem those “mistakes that people might find interesting.” It is in the messiness and
dirtiness of life, the scrap metal and salvaged auto parts, that vital creativity emerges.
All of his art plays off of these ideas of creativity. In another piece, the visitor
bounces on a pogo stick, which is linked to a piano that plays notes in conjunction with
the bounces. As the artist writes on that piece: “In some ways, I refer to it as a fountain of
youth, because to play it, one must regress to the childhood action of playing on a pogo
stick. It is in this regression that the audience is invited to revisit the joy of playing
without judgment” (www.seanpace.com/STATEMENTS.html).
Creativity and Capitalism 13
For Jinx, these sculptures and activities do not exist isolated in a field designated
as “art.” They are integrally important to politics, history, and human evolution. “The
way we’re designing ourselves in this capitalist model and strip mall mentality,” he told
me, “is that everything’s the same. People will stop thinking creatively and then they’ll
stop thinking.” Art exists, then, as a crucial bastion of radical possibility, an arena for the
ferment of essential human thought.
But art also needs support. Jinx thought the River Arts District should be better
supported by both the federal government and the city. This sentiment came up in many
interviews. In several cases the town of Paducah, Kentucky was cited as an example. In
2000 Paducah launched their “artist relocation program, which is now “a national model
for using the arts for economic development”
(http://www.paducaharts.com/about_the_program.php). Operating from the principle that
art can bring economic benefit to a city, and artists that own property will be vested in
promoting it, Paducah offers incentives like complimentary advertising, loans and other
financing assistance, dual-zoned properties (perfect for an artist residence/retail
combination), even free lots if one demonstrates ability to build. Over 70 artists have
relocated, coming from as far away as Hawaii or Germany.
Many of my informants implied that such a program might be necessary in
Asheville. The city is benefiting from the arts, they hinted, but it doesn’t want to invest.
This brand of silence and hinting is common when discussing art and money. Although
most galleries clearly exist to sell art, it is rare to post the prices. A potential buyer must
locate the booklet listing costs, or discretely inquire of an employee. For us to believe in
the transformative power of art, we may not want to look at how it is sold.
Creativity and Capitalism 14
Much later, researching on the Internet, I came across Jinx’s website. The site has
photos of work, descriptions of pieces, and also a resume page. On this page are lists of
awards, lectures, and exhibitions, as well as a column titled “collections.” Under this
heading is a list of people who own his art. These lists, common in the fine art world,
provide potential investors in a piece of art with a sense of who else deems this a worthy
investment. If one is familiar with the names on the list and their collections, one can
assess the apparent quality of this artist.
Darryl Breau, in her senior anthropology research, studied textile artists in
Western North Carolina. Her thesis pivots on this contradiction of artist- hood: While
textile artists participate in a system of production that operates counterhegemonically to
prevailing bottom-line priorities, they are also beholden to the dominant order.
Essentially, without financially wealthy patrons, these artists would find it difficult to
exist. As Breau writes:
While textile artists encourage conscious, intelligent consumerism in addition to
actively refuting the current system of big money capitalism and corporate,
dehumanized labor, they indirectly reinforce the system. Like organic food, a
product that resists the “efficiency” and unsustainable values of modern science
and technology, hand made textiles, has become an elite good… Consequently
textile artists reinforce part of the social system that in many ways they contradict
(2007: 30).
The products of anti-efficiency that Jinx, Breau’s textile artists, and many others
embrace as profoundly radical are also purchased as luxury goods by the capitalist elite.
In 1899, Thorstein Veblen published his book The Theory of the Leisure Class, which
focused on the way concerns of status influence economic decision-making. One of
Veblen’s key terms was the idea of “conspicuous consumption.” A clear declaration of
status, he explains, is the ability to buy “wasteful” things (i.e., those that have no
Creativity and Capitalism 15
immediate use value) and to perform that in front of others. The purchase of
“superfluities,” as Veblen designates them, is a way to visibly demonstrate economic and
social power (39).
This paradox, that art can function simultaneously as anti-capitalist and as a status
marker for the elite, can be discouraging. As Jinx put it at the end of our interview,
“Having big dreams and a beautiful vision is the most depressing thing.”
Art can also function as the epitomization of an exotic other. Painted in careful
lettering on the concrete wall of the gallery that abuts the office where I interviewed Jinx
is a saying. “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery,” it reads.
This mystery is what appeals to some of the visitors to the River Arts District, one
artist suggested. “Ultimately, I think for the laypeople, the uninitiated, it’s mysterious and
interesting.”
The ways that the artists are depicted as “agents of the mystery” is similar in
some ways to the way the toured are constructed in international tourism. I find it a
useful comparison, and while I will reference comparisons repeatedly in the course of this
paper, it is necessary to first qualify the relationship. One of the reasons I was interested
in researching tourism in Asheville is that the work on contemporary urban domestic
tourism is just beginning. It is important to stress here that a major component of tourist/
toured interactions is power differentials, and these are different in the River District than
they are in Sumatra, or Katmandu, two of the places I reference.
Dean MacCannell, the grandfather of modern tourism theory, wrote that tourists
travel in search of authenticity (2004: 57). When I asked Jinx’s opinion on why tourists
Creativity and Capitalism 16
came to the River District, he replied, “Like I said before, maybe it’s because everything
else looks the same. I mean, we’re bored in America. Why do you think we’re so fat?”
Sitting outside Clingman Café in the District one day I watched a pair of women
emerge from a car with out-of-state plates and photograph the steel plant across the street.
“Look at that rust,” one of them commented enthusiastically, “it’s gorgeous.”
In this anecdote we see that when the toured becomes Other enough, previous
standards no longer apply. To explore a different side of framing, let us now move to the
next item in our collection.
Part Three: Laurie’s Note cards
Accessibility and the Open Studio
We now turn to another object, a set of note cards. Printed on creamy cardstock,
the front portrays a panoramic photograph of the French Broad River, in all of its
summer-green glory. Available as a set of four, they are also available online, where the
website specifies that they are suitable for framing.
Laurie, the artist, also offers this image in the format of her larger work, which is
that of photographs printed on canvas. It is not only locals that buy images of the French
Broad, Laurie told me; she has shipped fine prints of it as far as Seattle.
When I asked about the note cards, Laurie told me that she sees them as “another
little promotional tool as an artist.” She continued, “It’s this promotional thing that artists
don’t do. There are a lot of artists who don’t think they should have to promote their
Creativity and Capitalism 17
work, and don’t know how to.” She adds that she has heard other artists in the District
disparaging her note cards.
This statement of controversy hints at one of the fundamental questions of art and
capitalism, that of promoting and selling work. The priorities put on selling work can
often be conflicted. As Stuart Plattner writes, “[…] high-art producers live in a value
system that is conflicted, not to say schizophrenic, about the importance of selling work.
This makes artists in the United States or anywhere in the first world a bit strange, since
they are embedded in a democratic capitalist society” (1996: 197).
This schizophrenic value system is exemplified in very simple ways such as art
galleries. In most galleries, although the art is explicitly for sale, there are no prices
displayed. The implication here is that to overtly present prices would make the art
somehow “less-so.” For most artists, however, promoting and selling one’s work is
necessary, and one way to do this is to make it more accessible.
There are many versions of accessibility, from pricing, as one potter implied when
she spoke of her desire to “make what I do more accessible to people like me,” to
availability, proximity, and education. Studio strolls and open studios bring the art nearer
in terms of visitors perhaps understanding the process better, but this version of
accessibility is contested as well. It is worth noting here, although none of my informants
brought this up, that, as Pierre Bourdieu points out, “a work of art has meaning and
interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into
which it is encoded” (1984:2). Following this, there are huge numbers of people who do
not possess the cultural competence to notice this featured accessibility.
Creativity and Capitalism 18
I first came to know Laurie’s presence in the neighborhood through the River Arts
District website and blog (www.riverdistrictartists.com and www.riverartsdistrict.com,
respectively), both of which which she maintains. The site is cheerful and professional,
evidence of the 25 years Laurie spent working in museums and doing graphic design. She
moved to the River Arts District two years ago, and has rented her studio since June. She
calls her life transition “the best leap I ever made.”
In her life narrative Laurie employs the idea of artist-hood as innate, saying that
although she was good at many things in college, making art was what really brought her
joy. She also notes that what she likes in art is the mystery. However, Laurie’s views are
more bottom-line oriented than some of the other artists I spoke with. Along with
maintaining the website Laurie is a member of the group River District Artists (RDA), to
which the majority of artists in the neighborhood belong. This is the group that organizes,
advertises, and participates in the studio strolls. They also finance billboards and other
advertising which directs people to the District. The RDA annually produce a studio
guide, which features a map and listings of around 80 artists, some with photographs of
the work. This year 40,000 copies of the studio guide are being printed. These guides are
distributed around town, including the Visitor Center of the Asheville Chamber of
Commerce, of which RDA is a member.
Laurie told me that within RDA, “there is a push in advertising to places where
people have the money to buy art.” This push takes place locally, in places like the
Visitor Center, and also in RDA advertising in magazines like Bold Life, an arts magazine
of Western North Carolina, and Talk Greenville. This push can be more impromptu as
Creativity and Capitalism 19
well. “When I go to the symphony,” Laurie says, “I keep looking around and I say, ‘I
need to get all of these people to come down to the River Arts District.’”
At least some of the people come down during the studio strolls. These strolls
happen twice a year, and there are now also studios open every day. The newest feature
on the RDA website is the option to search by day of the week to see which studios are
open on that day. “Perhaps because they have a human being inside,” writes MacCannell,
“occupations are popular tourist attractions” (2004: 67).
These open studios, whether biannually or daily, offer an opportunity sell work.
Often selling this work involves a conscious performance of the role of artist.
Marx asserted that it was when an object becomes detached from the processes of
labor that created it that it becomes an autonomous commodity. This autonomy of
objects, in which they have their own life transcendent and separate from the labor that
produced them, is what Marx called fetishism. This process of detachment from labor
imbues the object with a spirit, granting it exchange-value. This strange, near-religious
process of fetishization lends objects a mystical nature. (1994: 232- 233).
In our current world untheorized by Marx, however, it is not only separation from
processes of labor that lend objects a mystical nature. In a cultural economic system
where many people with the means to purchase goods do not labor directly, labor itself
can become fetishized.
Visitors come to the studio strolls, one informant told me, to “get this collective
experience of people at work.” While this was said in a condescending tone, his next
sentence affirmed his own participation. “During the stroll I personally ham it up a little
bit.”
Creativity and Capitalism 20
“When an actor takes on an established social role, usually he finds that a
particular front has already been established for it,” writes Erving Goffman, explaining
the ways that people perform identity. “Whether his acquisition of the role was primarily
motivated by a desire to perform the given task or by a desire to maintain the
corresponding front, the actor will find that he must do both”(1959: 27).
“Hamming up” the performance of an artist (definitely an established role), serves
to establish the studio as authentic, which facilitates purchasing. Lynn Stephen, studying
Zapotec weaving in Mexico, writes that craft production was revitalized to serve a market
for exotic and authentic. “A key dimension in the value of crafts and folk art is their
authenticity, particularly in higher-priced items […] An important part of perceived
authenticity has to do with the survival of what are viewed as traditional relations of
production”(1991: 186).
Although traditional relations of production differ between Southern Mexico and
West Asheville, they still serve for some to establish authenticity, in the hopes of
monetary gain. In the River Arts District, open studios are often framed in terms of
survival. Several different artists spoke in terms of “If the District is going to make it.”
Not all artists favor open studios. One glass artist told me he needs to be able to
work uninterrupted, and he is less interested in “the business of marketing yourself-- just
to shoot the breeze with people in their Bermuda shorts who are having this experience in
front of you you don’t really give a shit about.” Later in the conversation he continued
more moderately that he is excited about the possibilities of retail, but that it needs to be
handled somewhere else. Of course, somewhere else would not carry that same cachet of
authenticity that the workplace seems to hold. A similar situation faces wood- carvers in
Creativity and Capitalism 21
Sumatra: “how to satisfy Western buyers’ desire for objects with perceived cultural
integrity when at the same time selling them in a market place setting” (Causey 2003:
37).
Other artists voiced different concerns about open studios. “We all work really
hard,” said one, “and I think it’s cause we’re not getting looked at. As people come down
we slow down, pick up the room, sell more work here, instead of away.” Another agreed
that studio visits cut down on productivity, but still enjoyed hosting them. “It’s nice when
people come in and intuitively connect with my work.”
Other, anonymous artists object even to the studio strolls. Laurie alluded to people
who “don’t want people down here. They do passive aggressive things during the studio
stroll- loud music, cheap jewelry, haphazard parking.”
In replying to this perceived passive aggressive threat, Laurie references the
underlying question of survival. “Personally I think that the reality might be that for this
place to be an arts district people need to be able to come and see the art… [It is]
unrealistic to think that this could remain a place where artists could just do their thing.”
Some artists choose other paths so that they can “just do their thing.” Several I
spoke to had figured out a bare minimum of money they needed to make to make it, and
spent the rest of their time “doing their thing,” as a conscious choice. Other artists wanted
to, but could not sell enough work to completely sustain themselves financially. Some of
them deliberately choose this, but others do not. Jolene, co-owner of one industrial
building filled with studios, writes, “Other days the building’s quiet dignity stands severe
and muted. The place is filled with artists, trying to build a living out of something they
Creativity and Capitalism 22
love and feel strongly about, but their art ‘habits’ have to be supported by gainful
employment elsewhere.” (Mechanic 2007: 1)
The border between selling art and selling out sometimes behaves like
heat waves on a summer road, never quite holding still. Navigating this border appears to
be handled individually by each artist. One way Laurie steers through this divide is by
asserting her agency as an artist. When I inquired about the tourists that visit her studio,
she told me that many of them are looking for a “mountain thing.” People tell her that she
has to do mountain scenes if she wants to make it, but she replies, “Well I’m not doing
mountain scenes unless they’re mountain scenes I want to do.”
To explore another performance of the artist in the open studio, let us continue to
the next item in the collection.
Part Four: An Abstract Impressionist Painting By Jonas
Sign and Commodity in the Artist Personality
Our next object is an abstract impressionist painting. Unfortunately the name of
this painting is lost to the depths of imprecise ethnographic technique, but the story
behind it remains illustrative. Like most of the paintings in the gallery of Jonas, who
moved to the neighborhood last year from Miami, this painting was probably done in
around 30 minutes, and likely in front of an audience. Jonas terms his style “performance
painting,” which he does both in his open studio and in art fairs and other events. Always
accompanied by music, Jonas dances as he paints, wielding his brushes with great
Creativity and Capitalism 23
flourishing and performing for the crowd. 20/20 filmed Jonas painting last year for a
special on happiness. As the Asheville Citizen Times reports on the event:
[Jonas] said the cameras didn’t make him uncomfortable.
‘It turns me on,’ he said. ‘I like an audience. Their attention is a very
powerful force.
[…] Listening to Van Morrison as he started his second painting, Gerard
scrawled Morrison’s name on canvas with a heart around it, much to the delight
of the laughing crowd.
Gerard paints between dance steps, jokes, and the occasional bongoplaying break.” (Motsinger 2007: A2)
Although a recent addition to the neighborhood, Jonas has received a lot of
attention. This has come both from the local press, which has written numerous articles
about him, and also other denizens of the neighborhood. His name surfaced in many of
the interviews I did, either as an example of the changes happening in the River Arts
District, which I will discuss in the following section, or as the epitomization of one
version of what it means to be an artist.
It is for this reason, the way Jonas seems to serve as a condensation point for
various misty narratives, that I discuss him in the next section. The focus of this section,
however, and of the paper as a whole, is not individual artists, but the larger narratives
they illustrate.
The first theme we can see in the description above is the role of the audience in
framing the performance of an artist. As discussed in the section above, open studios
facilitate performing the role of artist. Jonas told me, “I always wanted to be in show
time,” and his particular professional expression has fit that urge very well.
The sort of feedback loop we see illustrated in the quote from the Asheville
Citizen Times, where the audience energizes the performer, who in turn energizes the
Creativity and Capitalism 24
audience through embellishments (like painting Morrison’s name) is discussed in more
detail in Gretchen Caverly’s senior thesis, “In New Orleans, It Bubbles Up from the
Streets.” In this ethnography of music in New Orleans she discusses how feedback loops
in performances can produce potent experiences, but that feedback loops are also
dependent on place and culturally specific behavior (2008).
The powerful force of the audience can also generate larger-than-life artistic
personalities. In 1965, at a retrospective of his work, Andy Warhol was greeted by four
thousand screaming fans. “I wondered what it was that made these people scream,”
Warhol related. “But then, we weren’t just at the art exhibit, we were the art exhibit, we
were the art incarnate’”(Plattner 1996: 40).
When I scheduled an interview with Jonas, his assistant told me, “Be sure to go to
the website and read the press before you come.” Most of the articles repeat the same
story, of Jonas’ Morrocan ancestry, participation in early acid tests, experience in jail for
possession of marijuana, and eventual commission to paint a bicentennial portrait of
America, presented to President Ford at the White House. In the interview itself, Jonas
referred several time to the various articles written about him spread on the table.
The gallery itself is bright and spacious, with videos of Jonas painting playing in
one corner. Jonas is warm and effusive, quick to reference various parts of his life
mythology in conversation. Entering this ritual space clearly marked as artistic and
meeting the artist imbues the art with a sort of “aura of personality,” some informants
suggested.
Creativity and Capitalism 25
One artist who works in a space relatively close to Jonas’ gallery told me, “I get
tourists who come in after meeting him and are flabbergasted. They feel like they’ve
really experienced an artist.”
In our interview Jonas asked me if I had read the testimonials on his website. I
had, indeed, perused the long page of testimonials from people who had purchased his
paintings. This one, from Laura Grindle of Columbus, Ohio, is an example:
As time has gone by, we have really begun to gain a greater understanding of
what your paintings bring and what they are. The essence of your work seems to
actually be within the painting itself. Somehow, you seem to have been able to
convey the very Source of creative power and energy directly onto your canvas. It
is not a description of that Source, it IS the very Source! I believe that is why your
art has such an incredible ability to transform, to emanate and to radiate.
One of the ways to understand tourists buying art in Sumatra, Andrew Causey
writes, is “that people desire to obtain objects because they believe these things can
change or affect their lifestyle, or that these new possessions can actually transform them,
perhaps spiritually” (39). This is shown in the following story that Jonas related to me:
A woman from Atlanta saw one of Jonas’ paintings at a friend’s house and
looked him up, arriving soon after at the Asheville gallery with $3,500 in her
purse, the dimensions she needed, and the stipulation that the painting must match
her house, which was all dull earth tones.
Being in the gallery opened her. She cried and cried. He hugged her. She
fell in love with all of the paintings. Finally she picked one. It was 9 feet long and
full of color. She worried about how it would fit in her home, but Jonas said not to
worry.
When she left she hugged him, cried and cried. She said she had never
been this open. She said she was ready to let go of all the things she had been
carrying.
When she got home and walked into her house she shut down again. Her
house brought her back to the way she was, and when the painting arrived after
being shipped she had already made up her mind, it was too big and didn’t fit the
style of the house.
She called and told Jonas no, it wouldn’t work, it didn’t fit with her home,
the decorating didn’t like it, her husband was going to rent a truck and bring it
back.
Creativity and Capitalism 26
Jonas said no, no, wait, we’ll visit. They stopped by on the way back from
Miami. Big expensive house, all dark, no color. Jonas held up the painting, said,
‘What’s wrong with this?’ They searched though the house to find any shred of
color. Eventually they found a yellow dress, a blue book, red tomatoes, and
brought them into the room with the painting.
At the end, she cried and said thank you. She had forgotten all she had felt
in the gallery.
In analyzing the above story and testimonial, I do not mean to discredit whatever
mystical significance the event may have held, but merely to explore some of the other
things buying a painting may signify. The “aura of personality” alluded to above is a
reference to Walter Benjamin’s essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1968). In this seminal piece, written shortly before WWII, Benjamin, a Marxist, argued
that original works of art possess an aura, similar to the aura of natural objects which he
defines as “the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be” (222).
This aura, which for Benjamin belongs only to the original work, has its roots in the
evolution of art and ritual, and is what grants art its mesmerizing qualities. These
qualities have traditionally been used by the upper classes as tools of manipulation and
domination. Benjamin argues that as mechanical reproduction becomes more and more
possible, especially with the increasing accessibility of photography and film, the
bourgeois domination of art will be broken, and the true potential of art for politics and
liberation will be available.
In a retrospective analysis, the second part of the theory does not quite appear to
have manifested. The aura of a work of art has perhaps a stronger hold on the popular
imagination than ever. The essential concept, however, remains very informative, and it
is this upon which we will focus our attention. The aura of a work of art has its basis in
ritual, Benjamin believed (224). In the original conception, this meant religion. If we
Creativity and Capitalism 27
stretch the definitions of religion, for a moment, to encompass capitalism, we can see the
acquisition of art as a religious rite.
The ritual of entering the gallery and studio space and meeting the performing
artist creates the aura of the painting. When I asked the informant who told me about
flabbergasted tourists what he thought created the feeling that they’ve really experienced
an artist, he replied, “the whole package.” This is affirmed by another testimonial on the
website, from Brenda Malloy of Gloucester, MA: “It was an amazing pleasure to enter
your space and feel the energy and vibe, and so much love. From the atmosphere to the
sales people to the stellar work you produce in all mediums, your place blew my mind.”
This quote makes it clear that it is not only the painting, but the entire experience
that creates the aura customers find gratifying. Similarly, in the story above, the woman
is “opened” by her time in the gallery. Her own ideas about what would look good in her
home are no match for the transformative event that happens, inspired by the collective
presence of the paintings, the gallery, and the artist himself.
The encounter with the sort of setting evoked by open studios and the artist event
is encouraged in literature from other studios in the River Arts District. One enterprise,
Desert Moon Designs, distributes a brochure with brief artist bios and then urges, “Be a
part of their continuing journey. Come for the art- Come for the Experience!”
Pierre Bourdieu argues that the emotions evoked by art are class-specific, learned
behavior. “Thus the encounter with a work of art is not ‘love at first sight’ as is generally
supposed, and the act of empathy, Einfuhlung, which is the art lover’s pleasure,
presupposes an act of cognition, a decoding operation, which implies the implementation
of a cognitive achievement, a cultural code” (1984: 3).
Creativity and Capitalism 28
To further explore the power of the object in our particular circumstance, let us
travel to another setting where objects embody stories of transformation: tourists
shopping in the Bodhanath market in Katmandu. In Peter Moran’s ethnography of
Western Buddhists in Nepal’s capital, he includes a chapter on transactions in the
marketplace between Western travelers and Tibetan vendors.
In his investigation of what it is that drives the purchase of objects, Moran returns
to the Marxian conception of the fetish. From here, he expands the term fetish to another
conception, initially proposed by Pietz, a semiotician. As he quotes:
Fetishes exist in the world as material objects that ‘naturally’ embody socially
significant values that touch one or more individuals in an intensely personal way:
A flag, monument, or landmark; a talisman, medicine bundle, or sacramental
object… Each has that quality of synecdochic fragmentedness or ‘detotalized
totality’. (Moran 2004: 53)
Items purchased that signify a totality like Tibetan Buddhism seem to possess
powers through their associations, Moran writes. “Their very contiguity to the buyer,
after they are brought home and displayed in one’s living environment or worn on one’s
person, furthers this idea: the objects ‘work’ idiosyncratically on the individual buyer by
giving up some of their essential spirit, as imagined by her, to her” (53).
So what might that painting signify, in its synecdochic fragmentedness, for the
woman from Atlanta? Jonas says that people tell him, “Oh, I wish I could be free like
you,” and it seems to be freedom that is signified by the painting. In the story, despite
having traditional elements of freedom such as wealth, the woman is unfulfilled. When
she enters the studio she is opened, cries, falls in love. In buying the painting that most
moves her, she is seeking to prolong this feeling into other areas of her life. Purchasing
the painting makes her “ready to let go of all the things she had been carrying.” When she
Creativity and Capitalism 29
returns to the rest of her life, however, that feeling is lost, and the painting loses its power
to signify. It is only with the arrival of the artist himself that that potential for freedom is
restored.
This behavior, of purchasing objects to prolong a feeling, is common in a wealthy
capitalist system. One only has to peruse any large media source to see how
advertisements urge us to consume objects to achieve certain states of status or emotion.
Because we are no longer focused on use-value needs, we can invent elaborate exchangevalue signifiers.
Jonas does not talk about capitalism, and definitely not about fetishization. He
talks about the concept of energy, and how it can’t be created or destroyed. His energy is
in the painting, and so “my soul meets your soul.”
Whether speaking in terms of souls or fetishes, it may be that purchasing a
painting is an attempt to acquire some portion of the freedom of a mythic artist lifestyle.
Charles Simpson writes: “The modern artist figure is a liberation dream born out of the
fear of incorporation into a routinized and bureaucratically entrenched life-style” (in
Plattner, 1996: 40).
By buying a painting, you can incorporate some small sliver of this liberation
lifestyle. People don’t have a problem paying 4,000 for a painting done in a half hour,
Jonas told me. “It’s like heart surgery. How long it takes isn’t the point.”
Jonas appears to be more financially successful than many of the other artists in
the District. In several of my interviews his approach was depicted as controversial but
necessary. “Jonas brings a whole other commercial energy to the neighborhood,” one
Creativity and Capitalism 30
artist said. “If this is going to be a big deal he’s the kind of personality that brings people
here.”
Is it possible for an entire neighborhood to signify this sort of artistic personality?
This is what I wondered when I first encountered the next item in the collection.
Part Five: The Chesterfield Mill Billboard
The Artistic Neighborhood and “Surviving Popularity”
Whit lives with his two sons in a house he designed, featuring pink stucco, a
tower, and an eclectic geometric fence. Across the street is a house with two goats and a
confederate flag in the front yard, which butts up to a large empty lot. Whit has big plans
for that lot. On the foggy morning that I interviewed Whit and his business partner
Courtney, we very quickly left the dining room table that doubles as an office and walked
down to the billboard standing lonely on one edge of the property.
This billboard is one piece of a prolonged process. Whit and Courtney had to
acquire most of the land, and the city had to re-zone it as an “urban place district” for
high-density mixed-use development (Postelle 2007). Then Whit and Courtney hired
Jaime Correa and Associates, celebrated urban planners from Miami, to design the new
neighborhood, and held several days of design charrettes in a tent outside to hear
opinions from current residents.
This development, its two promoters told me, will one day be nationally
renowned. “Why?” I asked.
Creativity and Capitalism 31
“Because the architecture is going to be amazing,” Courtney replied, “and the
energy and space is going to be amazing.”
As far as I know, there are two other entities doing major construction in the
neighborhood. The first organization, Mountain Housing Opportunities, has a building
nearing completion. During my fieldwork I have watched the Clingman Lofts (on
Clingman Avenue right before the Silver Dollar Diner) grow from skeletal scaffolding to
nearly complete structures. The Lofts will be a mixed price development, with 51%
affordable housing and 49 % market rate. When I asked in my interview with MHO about
tourists and people from out of state, the project director told me that their only interest in
tourists, was concern, that many of the people the house would be disadvantaged by the
especially low wages offered in servicing the tourist sector. MHO has another project in
the works, the restoration of the old Glen Rock Hotel at the other end of the River Arts
District. This building will be mixed-use residential, commercial, and office space,
offered at an assortment of prices. One of the hopes of the project director is that they
will be able to move back in some of the same people who were forced to leave during
the revitalization projects of the 1960’s and ‘70’s.
The second entity is a project marketed by Keller Williams. Referred to at the
start of this paper, 100 Park Avenue is planned where the observation deck now stands.
Their website, www.100parkavenuenorth.com, bills the new condominium development
as urban yet private, and within walking distance of both downtown and the River Arts
District. The website also offers an “Essence of Asheville” video which displays various
accolades, including: “Artists and street musicians converge with tourists and locals for a
vibrancy rarely found in a city of this size” (from www.relocateamerica.com, which
Creativity and Capitalism 32
ranked it #1 in America’s Top 100 Places to Live for 2007). And, “[…] Asheville seems
as if it had been created especially for art lovers.” (from AmericanStyle magazine, which
named it among the 2006 top 25 Arts Destinations)
Most of the conversation, however, centers on Chesterfield Mill, its planners, and
their company, Urvana LLC. I had been referred to it almost immediately when I began
asking questions about the River Arts District as a neighborhood. “You know who you
should talk to?” one artist told me. “Whit R___. He’s the one building the ‘bohemian
condos’ down the street. $300,000 each. They say some of it’s going be affordable, but I
don’t know any artists who can live there. It’s going to be rich people from San Francisco
that want to be artists. I guess they made it in the stock market ‘creatively.’”
Like Jonas, Chesterfield Mill serves as a flashpoint for commentary on identity
and definition. “Amazing energy and space,” is more complicated a phrasing than one
might initially imagine.
Whit and Courtney are very excited about the buildings they have planned. The
large old silo will be turned into an art and architecture children’s library, and the row of
smaller silos into a bowling alley/ cocktail lounge. The site will feature a central
pedestrian walkway lined with shops and live/ work studios. When I asked if artists
already in the District will be financially able to move into these buildings, they told me
yes, and that artists will want to because they are ready to buy, not rent.
In marketing the Chesterfield Mill development, the term “artist” is used as a
signifier. Chesterfield Mill denotes not just a set of buildings, but a lifestyle as well. Whit
and Courtney are sensitive about allegations that they are ignoring the needs of the artists.
“We are artists too!” they told me indignantly. Still, when I asked about affordable
Creativity and Capitalism 33
housing, Whit told me that since the development is within walking distance of
downtown, which means you don’t need a car, you can spend more on housing.
In her 2006 anthropology thesis, Mary Scherer wrote about the use of the signifier
“unique” in describing the city of Asheville. There comes a point, she wrote, in which the
signifier comes to exist on its own, “a stylistic device without a defined point of
reference” (3). Uniqueness in Asheville ceases to be based on anything, except that we
keep saying it is unique. This ultimately results in the symbolism “simply representing
itself rather than representing a reality. “(Scherer 46)
When people talk about “artistic developments that artists can’t afford,” this may
be the same sentiment rephrased.
Although several of the artists I interviewed said they wished the city supported
them more, it does seem that the city is very interested in the River Arts District, at least
its “unique” status. One informant told me that the mayor comes to Clingman Café, the
local coffeeshop, to chat with residents, and the Asheville chapter of the American
Society of Media Photographers currently has an exhibit of photographs of the River Arts
District mounted in the hallways of her office. The city administration has re-zoned
several properties in the District to encourage building (Postelle 2007), and I am sure
they can’t help but notice the attention that the “up-and coming River Arts District” (as
the New York Times calls it) (Dixon 2007: 2) has recently received.
In a paper for her Cultural Anthropology class, Jolene, the co-owner and manager
of one of the warehouse studios, quotes Nava, an artist that moved from New York City
and rents space in the building:
It’s like a place that used to exist in New York, but doesn’t anymore. The last
sort of loosely grouped connection that all are working on something that they
Creativity and Capitalism 34
really care about. There’s a feeling about wanting to do something valuable, hip
and non-commercial here. A neighborly feeling right here in the building, you
know, interesting people doing interesting things. I like that. (2007: 6)
I spoke to several people who moved to Asheville and the River Arts District
explicitly for the arts scene, including one who wanted to move to New York City, but
expenses were prohibitive, so she chose Asheville instead. “I think it’s becoming more
and more of a thing for people to do,” she told me. “The contemporary art scene can
translate into any community. An artist from Miami, New York, LA, can fit in here.”
An artist from New York might even have moved to Asheville after similar
circumstances necessitated her departure. As one New York artist observed in a
newspaper article “This really represents the broader picture, where cities are becoming
impossible places for creative producers to live and work, where the notions of loft living
and “bohemian’ becoming selling points in the development of real estate” (Pogrebin).
This sentiment was echoed locally in a Mountain Xpress feature piece last year.
“In its convoluted history, Asheville’s River Arts District has survived fire and flood, not
to mention neglect. Now it will have to survive its own growing popularity.” (Postelle
2007)
The article depicted many of the changes outlined above, as well as profiling
RiverLink, a non-profit that has been very successful in encouraging greenway
development and environmental protection along the French Broad. The article alludes to
several conflicts, but ends on a generally positive note. The comments posted online
present a more urgent wave of dissent. Three notable excerpts (from different writers):
It is obvious that the gentrification of downtown is now spreading into the arts
district. Soon it will be nothing but ‘safe’ ‘nice’ ‘pretty’ art for rich tourists to
stroll through.
Creativity and Capitalism 35
It seems that the landlords of many River District buildings are in the business to
make a buck instead of providing studio space for ‘regular’ people […] When the
local artists are forced to move out of town towards cheaper rent… they’ll realize
what a mistake they’ve made. Asheville will no longer be a ‘trendy’ artist haven,
it will be a pre-fabricated city of generic art and plastic people.
[Encouraging people to fight back] “This is YOUR city, not Biff and Muffy’s. It
was yours before they saw it, swooned at the oozing ‘quaintness of it all, and
decided they simply had to have some of it, plus tell all their friends back home
over a game on the links.”
As other parts of downtown become more “gentrified,” the River Arts District,
with its artistic signifiers, becomes more authentic. “As Walter Benjamin noted,
authenticity is only identifiable after its loss under the commodity regime, through which
it emerges as yet another quality that is commodifiable” (Moran 47).
The comments above not only identify this spreading nonn-authenticity (against
which the River Arts district suddenly appears precariously authentic) but also a time in
the recent past when things were different. This opinion startled me during one interview.
When I mentioned to one artist informant that Asheville had recently been called the
“Appalachian Shangri-la” (Dixon 2007), he replied, “Oh, Shangri-la is gone.”
“Was it ever here?” I asked.
“Houses used to be $250,000. Not anymore.”
This comment locates Shangri-la in terms of economic criteria, as a place where
things are affordable. When I carefully asked Whit and Courtney about the comment I
had heard about artists not being able to live in their development, they replied in noneconomic terms: “They’ve created this exclusivity. We’re trying to do the opposite. Make
community. All together now.” (“All together now” seems to be the slogan of
Chesterfield Mill, as depicted on their website, www.chesterfieldmill.com.)
Creativity and Capitalism 36
Three people I interviewed mentioned the proposed silencing of the train that is
currently under consideration. This would require the railroad to re-zone their designation
of the area, and would likely cause property values to rise. The silencing of the train
seems to function as a symbolic metaphor, indicating something about the way the
District is being presented and controlled, although I do not have enough data to offer
further conjectures. It remains unclear how the artists curently residing in the District will
transition to the new housing developments planned. It is not even clear how the
developments will manifest, because right now they exists as plans, propositions, and
paradoxes.
Interestingly, only in my interview with Mountain Housing Opportunities did a
discussion of adjacent neighborhoods arise. None of the artists, other residents, or
developers mentioned the neighborhoods that lie just blocks away. Homeless people
inhabit, sometimes problematically, many of the same spaces as my informants, and they
came up in conversation, but I never heard mentioned the communities that overlap in
less visible ways. During the countless hours I spent at Clingman Café keeping an eye on
street traffic, I saw car after car of African American people drive fast through the
District. None of them ever stopped, nor were they given any reason to.
There is a bumper sticker produced by the Asheville nonprofit Arts2people that
has appeared in abundance recently, not only on cars but on Warren Wilson student
coffee cups and abandoned buildings downtown. “Live as Art,” it declares. This is the
ideal signified in representation by the Chesterfield Mill development and by the city of
Asheville as a whole. It can manifest with an attention on image and lifestyle aesthetics,
Creativity and Capitalism 37
as we see have seen above, or with an attention to process, as is demonstrated with our
final object.
Part Six: Matt’s Jar
“The Processs is Fucking Cool”
Conclusion
The final item in this small collection is a jar. This jar is made from clay dug out
in Leicester, from the field of a tobacco farmer the potters in the Clayspace Co-op made
friends with. The clay has to be wedged by hand and fussed with some before it is a
pliable substance. The jar is fired in a woodfired kiln, built by Matt and the others in the
Co-op. “Wood firing is about my suffering,” Matt says. He cut the trees and hauled them
to the kiln. “My work goes into the fire to make the fire what it is.”
When I talked with Matt I was struck with his conceptions of process and life.
Matt verbalized the ideas that many people I spoke with had alluded to, that, “What I’m
really trying to do, maybe, is merging the concepts between art and life.”
Matt told me that he makes about a quarter of his income from clay. The rest
comes from selling the felt hats he makes, and working as a plant arranger at Lowes.
When I asked if he would like to make a living just from clay, or be a production potter,
he replied that if that was what he wanted, he’d have done it by now.
“My honest opinion,” he said, “is that making things out of clay is to further a
dialog with art, not making a shit ton of commoditized objects […] I don’t want to be
producing. I want to make art into a lifestyle and lifestyle into art.”
Creativity and Capitalism 38
In every one of the interviews profiled in depth above, as well as in several others,
the theme of life as art had hovered in the background. This ranged from a conceptual
arts administrator telling me that her work was “not just a job, it’s a lifestyle,” to Whit
and Courtney defending their plans on the basis of their lives as artists, to an artist that
lived in a house she had built herself out of bricks she had made herself.
In this conceptualization, being an artist becomes everything you do. It is not
something you can leave behind, like a 9 to 5 job at the office. It is present in your every
move. One function blurring the distinctions serves is to more clearly illustrate what they
are not. Art and life may be indistinguishable, but they are definitely not capitalism. By
emphasizing or de-emphasizing this narrative, artists position themselves on a spectrum
of their position in society.
As Matt told me about the particular instances of life as art, I noted that it sounded
like he was talking about loving the process. “Yeah, the process is fucking cool. Because
it’s what I live off of,” he continued, “doesn’t necessarily mean I make money off of it.”
Matt’s extreme focus on process illuminates another aspect of the way this narrative
serves as a delineation. By shifting the focus from product to process, capitalist systems
are left further out of the equation. This is clearly declared in explanations like the one
above.
One of the processes happening in the River Arts District, however, is that this
artistic lifestyle is also being sold. Walter Little, in his ethnography on Mayan vendors,
writes on a similar process I believe is relevant enough to quote several sentences here:
Creativity and Capitalism 39
One of my underlying themes has been the extent to which some Kaqchikel Maya
vendors have commodified their social life and put it up for sale on the global
market […] they have gone beyond the manufacture of handicrafts for the global
market. Some market mundane life practices, such as cooking, weaving, and
taking care of children. Not only are the handicrafts for sale, so is Maya life […]
The commodification of the domestic sphere is connected to the commodification
of place[….] Basically, Mayas who perform life for tourists’ consumption are
selling a package that includes the handicraft, the life behind the handicraft, a
place, and their cultural identity. (2004: 266-267)
This is visible in the development rhetoric, as discussed above, in the promotion
of the City of Asheville as a whole, and in the brochures that fill counter space in the
lobbies of the River Arts District. The pamphlet for Craven Hoffman Porcelain, for
example, offers the slogan Live Life Artfully.” “In a world of sameness,” the text
explains, “Craven Hoffman offers you something truly unique […] Beauty can be a part
of everything you do, let us help you, live life artfully.”
In this example, we see that with the help of the artists, anyone can live arfully,
they just have to purchase tableware. One artist I interviewed told me that as more and
more people want to live “artfully,” the rents will rise, until “eventually only the most
savvy studio operations will survive.” Those savvy studio operations, as we saw in
section three, are those that can most succinctly perform the role of artist within the
processes of labor, even to the detriment of their productivity.
Creativity and Capitalism 40
It is important to make clear that while some of the economic situations referred
to here seem to be specific to the River Arts District, few of them are. They are just
visible here first. As one informant put it, ““The River District, I think, is the amphibian
test of Asheville’s market. We’re a vulnerable group down here, because a lot of us just
make it by.”
Despite these dire pronouncements, many of the artists I interviewed remain
committed to making an artistic life work, even when it places them as very vulnerable.
As Jolene, who watches over a bevy of studio artists, writes, “A part of the
imponderabilia of Phil Mechanic studios is the attitude that goes along with the art”
(2007: 6).
“Recently, I’ve thought about getting a real job, believe me,” said one artist. “But
I look at these people, they’re like the living dead.” Given further time to research, I
would like to study the various ways that artists in the River Arts District navigate
systems of production to avoid becoming “the living dead” some of them fear.
Some artists work to make their expenses as few as possible. “I hate being
enslaved to money,” said one artist, who told me her studio rent is the only bill she has to
pay. Other artists work hard to figure out how to make the most money as possible from
their work, even if that means raising expenses as well.
Given further time to research, I would also love to study how artists price their
work, and what discourses influence the number they place on a piece of work.
Jolene one showed me photographs showing the process of a painting she had
bought from a young man exhibiting in her gallery. “I just had to have it.”
“So is it for sale?” I asked.
Creativity and Capitalism 41
She made a face. “I mean, probably. But I don’t know. Someone tried to buy it,
and I said no. I’m not ready. You as an artist know how it hurts to sell things.”
Although art and capitalism are traditionally conceived of as two distinct spheres,
they can both exist in one interaction. It hurts to sell things but we still do it, sometimes.
This sentence summarizes part of my conclusion, which is classically,
anthropologically, inconclusive. In these six sections we have seen different forms “being
an artist,” from the essentialist view, to the sacred actor, to open studio artist, the aura of
personality, the artistic neighborhood, and life as art, demonstrated and performed. And
what how is the capitalist system interpreted within these? It has an influence, but not a
mandate. There are layers. Although an artist will something, it may hurt, and although
an artist believes in “true” motivation, they may still be interested in financial success.
The conversion is always incomplete.
As Matt continued to talk about his jar, he voiced another narrative this object
symbolizes for him. “I really want to be a part of a system where we are all awake in a
creative sense,” he says, “and able to create what we need, and it [money] becomes a
thing of the past. In my heart of hearts I believe there’s enough.”
References Cited
Appadurai, Arjun
Creativity and Capitalism 42
1986 Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value. In The Social Life of
Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Arjun Appadurai, ed. Pp. 3- 63.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benjamin, Walter
1968 Illuminations. Hannah Arendt, ed. New York: Shocken Books.
Bourdieu, Pierre
1984[1979] Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Richard
Nice, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Breau, Darryl
2007 “Contemporary Textile Art and the Living Laborer.” Electronic Document,
http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~socanth/students/studentresearch07.html,
accessed March 3, 2008.
Brown, Karen McCarthy
1991 Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Caverly, Gretchen.
2008 “In New Orleans, It Bubbles Up From the Streets.” Unpublished.
Causey, Andrew
2003 Hard Bargaining in Sumatra: Western Travelers and Toba Bataks in the
Marketplace of Souvenirs. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Clifford, James
1994 [1990] “On Collecting Art and Culture.” In Art and its Significance. Stephen
David Ross, ed. Pp. 621- 642. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Cohen, Leah Hager
1997 Glass, Paper, Beans: Revelations on the Nature and Value of Ordinary
Things. New York: Doubleday.
Dixon, Chris
2007 “36 Hours in Asheville, NC.” New York Times, September 30: Electronic
document, http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/travel/30hours.html, accessed
October 3.
Goffman, Erving
Creativity and Capitalism 43
1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor
Books.
Kopytoff, Igor
1986 The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process. In The
Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Arjun Appadurai, ed.
Pp. 64- 94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Little, Walter E.
2004 Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity.
Austin: University of Texas Press.
MacCannell, Dean
2004 [1976] Sightseeing and Social Structure: The Moral Integration of
Modernity. In Tourists and Tourism. Sharon Bohn Gmelch, ed. Pp. 55- 70. Long
Grove IL: Waveland Press.
Marx, Karl
1994 Selected Writings. Lawrence H. Simon, ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, Inc.
Mechanic, Jolene
2007 Make It New. Unpublished.
Moran, Peter
2004 Buddhism Observed: Travelers, Exiles and Tibetan Dharma in Kathmandu.
New York: Routledge Curzon.
Motsinger, Carol
2007 “’20/20’ Spotlights Artist’s Joy.” Asheville Citizen Times, November 21:
A2
Pogrebin, Robin.
2008 “The Lords of Dumbo Make Room for the Arts, at least for the Moment.”
New York Times, March 6: Electronic document,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/arts/design/06dumb.html?th&emc=th ,
accessed March 6, 2008.
Plattner, Stuart
1996 Fine Art Down Home: An Economic Ethnography of a Local Art Market.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1998 A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Market for Contemporary Fine Art.
American Anthropologist 100 (2): 482- 493.
Creativity and Capitalism 44
Postelle, Brian
2007 “River Rising.” Mountain Xpress, December 19: Electronic document,
http://www.mountainx.com/news/2007/121907riverdistrict/, accessed February 3,
2008.
Scherer, Mary
2006 “Building a Bohemian Boom Town: The Construction of a ‘Creative Class’
in Asheville, North Carolina.” Electronic Document, http://www.warrenwilson.edu/~socanth/students/studentresearch06.html, accessed April 9, 2008.
Stephen, Lynn
1991 Zapotec Women. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Testimonials
2008 Electronic document, http://jonasgerard.com/testimonials.htm, accessed
March 3.
Tower, Wells
2006 “Arts and Crafts in the Blue Ridge Mountains.” New York Times, March
19: Electronic document,
http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/travel/tmagazine/19tsasheville.html?pagewanted=2 , accessed October 3.
Veblen, Thorstein
1899 The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: New American Library.