A Summer of Reading

It’s been a busy year with a lot of travel and a lot of late-night talk among colleagues in community arts. Some of my most interesting conversations revolved around books. Artists and community activists tend to have eclectic tastes, and their reading choices are wide-ranging.

One book that has become a ready reference for artists is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Little, Brown and Co., 2000, 272 pp.). Whether they are working alone in their studios or on the streets trying to create positive social change, artists are talking about how things "tip" — what starts trends and makes sudden change happen in society.

Gladwell, a writer for the New Yorker, describes change as epidemic, with ideas, behavior, messages, fads and products often spreading like outbreaks of infectious disease. The Tipping Point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point. Its three characteristics are contagiousness, the fact that little causes can have big effects, and the notion that change happens not gradually, but at one dramatic moment.

He says that epidemics are "tipped" by one or more agents of change: The Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context. The Law of the Few states that every word-of-mouth epidemic is fueled by a "connector" (someone who knows everyone), a "maven" (information specialist) or a "salesman" (arm twister). The Stickiness Factor is the thing that makes an idea unforgettable. The Power of Context is in the discovery that humans are far more susceptible to small things in their environment than we have ever suspected.

Gladwell makes strong, quickly understandable arguments for these concepts, based on such diverse epidemics as the American Revolution following Paul Revere’s ride and the success of the Rebecca Wells book Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. His ideas are so compelling that the reader begins to see the dynamics of change in a completely different way.

Gladwell spoke in June at the New York conference of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations (NAAO), always a hotbed of controversy and animated discussion. NAAO’s executive director, Roberto Bedoya, says the talk was a big hit. "The question of how we create positive epidemics in the art world triggered a lot of dialogue and contemplation that carried on well past the panel discussion," says Bedoya. "Word-of-mouth was a point folks often came back to discuss, especially as it relates to the art practices we support which are not centered in the mainstream world. Two cautionary comments I heard were: 1) How might his characterization of role of mavens, connectors and salesman create a market profile of success that will act to cage us? And 2) How are his ideas of success and positive epidemics conflated with a market definition of success?"

Another book making the rounds is Pillar Of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 by Taylor Branch (Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1999, 768 pp.). This book is a sure thing among my artist friends in the Southeast, so many of whom often refer to Branch’s Pulitzer Prize winner, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963. These artists grew up in the post-Civil Rights era, and the events of the King Years made an indelible mark on their lives. There is enthusiastic agreement that Branch gets the story right.

Community artist Kathie deNobriga lives in Atlanta and is the former executive director of Alternate ROOTS, a group of some 200 community artists in the Southeast. She is reading Pillar of Fire this summer, and says this of Parting the Waters, "A phenomenal read - a history of the Civil Rights era with context I never read or understood anywhere else. Anyone who lives in the South, is interested in civil rights or uses the word ‘movement’ in casual conversation should read it. Plus, it's one of the most elegantly written and exhaustively researched books you could find. I'd come across whole paragraphs I would read two and three times, sometimes out loud, not so much that they were dense, but because they were so richly textured and nuanced. Gorgeous."

Branch’s third book of his trilogy about the King Years is forthcoming.

Causing enormous ripples through the art world right now is The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders (The New Press, 1999, 509 pp.). It’s not exactly a secret that governments use culture and cultural exchange to manipulate politics, but this book blows the cover off so many artists, foundations, publications and cultural agencies it takes your breath away.

During the Cold War, the CIA’s cultural front organizations were many, but the centerpiece was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, run by CIA agent Michael Josselson from 1950 to 1967. The congress, says Saunders, had offices in 35 countries, held art exhibitions, owned a news and features service, organized high-profile international conferences, rewarded musicians and artists with prizes and public performances and published more than 20 prestigious magazines (including the highly respected Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender and Irving Kristol). The whole idea was "to lure the intelligentsia of western Europe away from its lingering fascination with Marxism and Communism towards a view more accommodating of ‘the American way.’"

Intellectuals, artists and philanthropists involved — either unwitting participants in the operation or outright collaborators – included Isaiah Berlin, Clement Greenberg, Arthur Koestler, Robert Lowell, Henry Luce, Andre Malraux, Mary McCarthy, Reinhold Neibuhr, George Orwell, Jackson Pollock, Nelson Rockefeller, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. By the mid-'60s almost half the grants given out by various philanthropies–-including some by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations–-involved some CIA money, says Saunders.

Activities included rewriting the end of the movie version of Animal Farm; putting affluent-looking African-Americans into films (as extras) in order to counter Soviet criticism of the American race problem; and direct or indirect support for early exhibitions of Abstract Expressionist painting outside of the United States in order to counter the Socialist Realism being advanced by Moscow.

My favorite part of the book is "Yanqui Doodles," the chapter on Abstract Expressionism. "Non-figurative and politically silent, it was the very antithesis to socialist realism," says Saunders. "It was precisely the kind of art the Soviets loved to hate." Its export had to be accomplished covertly by the CIA because Congress was denouncing modern art as "un-American" and "trash." Saunders remarks: "Here again was that sublime paradox of American strategy in the cultural Cold War: in order to promote an acceptance of art produced in (and vaunted as the expression of) democracy, the democratic process itself had to be circumvented." Saunders carefully traces the collusion of the trustees of the Museum of Modern Art and the Nelson Rockefeller Fund in supporting and exporting Abstract Expressionism as a "pillar of liberty." Their support changed art history.

Having lived through our recent culture wars, contemporary artists are fascinated with this account of the confluence of money, power and political intrigue. Baffled as they are about how to apply for grants these days, the book fuels their suspicions about who and what gets the support of the government and powerful foundations, and especially what art finds funding to travel outside the U.S.

Here are some other recommendations from colleagues.

Dudley Cocke, artistic director of Roadside Theater, is reading Consilience, the Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson (Knopf, 1998, 332 pp.). Says Cocke: "The noted biologist (The Ants) argues that all knowledge is intrinsically unified and that behind our diverse disciplines (physics, arts, biology, etc.) are a small number of natural laws, whose interlocking he calls consilience. What are the genetic bases of culture? The biological principles underlying art? Consilience begins by asking the reader to consider the history and effects of specialization. Community-based artists know well these effects since ‘everyone to their corner’ flies in the face of their ethos. Since the ’80s, political forces have even succeeded in driving a wedge between the arts and the humanities. How improbable is that?! Edward O. Wilson argues in persuasive detail that disunity is mistaken and that scientists are drawing closer to proving it. How did U.S. art get itself into such a narrow, isolated place?! Let’s analyze that.

"Here’s Wilson, in his own words: ‘Poet in my heart, walk with me across the mysterious land. We can still be hunters in the million-year dreamtime. Our minds are filled with calculation and emotion. We are aesthetes tense with anxiety. Once again the bateleur eagle wheels above our heads, trying to tell us something we overlooked, something we forgot. How can we be sure that eagles never speak, that everything can be known about this land? Nearby is a spoor of the elusive duiker leading into the scrub: Shall we follow? Magic enters the mind seductively, like a drug in the veins. Accepting its emotive power, we know something important about human nature. And something important intellectually that in expanded space-time the fiery circle of science and the arts can be closed.’"

Bill Cleveland, author and director of the Center for the Study of Art and Community, recommends:

Prairie Visions by Robert Gard (Heartland Press, 1987, 319 ppp.): "Musings and stories by one of the great pioneers of arts based community theater. An important reminder that this work has wise and venerable roots."

Our Creative Diversity (World Commission for Culture and Development, 1993, on the Web - http://kvc.minbuza.nl/boekteksten/inleiding.html): "A report resulting from a five-year UNESCO-supported research effort delving into the definitions, standards and impacts of culture as a critical aspect of development at all levels of community. The World Commission, which produced it, had representatives from Jordan, France, Saint Lucia, Mexico, Senegal, Brazil, Greece, Zimbabwe and Japan, among others. Contributors include Prince El Hassan Bin Talal, Aung San Suu Kyi, Claude Levi-Strauss, Illya Prigogine, Derek Walcott and Elie Wiesel. Topics include: Creativity and empowerment, gender and culture, cultural heritage for development, culture and the environment, and a section on 'new global ethics.'"

Economies of Signs and Space (Theory, Culture & Society, 1993, 368 pp.) "presents a novel account of social change that supplants conventional understandings of 'society.' The authors develop a sociology that takes as its core principal an analysis of social and cultural flows through time and across space. This book was recommended to me by Bert Mulder, a information-technology futurist working with the Dutch Parliament. He delivered an interesting talk about the future of the arts at the Common Threads Conference in Liverpool."

Richard Geer, artistic director of Community Performances Inc., says: "A big inspiration to me is Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers' book, A Simpler Way (Berrett-Koehler, 1998, 168 pp.). Its subject is natural systems and what they can teach us about human systems. Brilliant stuff that turns the normal approach to leadership on its ear. A vision of how community really works.

Mat Schwarzman, director of East Bay Institute for Urban Arts, recommends:

Common Culture: Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young by Paul Willis (Westview Press, 1990, out of print), "an extremely effective anthropological/cultural studies analysis of the connection between 'art' (what Willis calls 'symbolic creativity') and social behavior. He focuses on youth culture, but his analysis is useful for humans, period."

Bomb the Suburbs by William Upski Wimsatt (Softskull Press 1994, 1999, 112 pp.), "a great political analysis of United States culture and politics from the standpoint of the hip-hop generation."

Jan Cohen-Cruz, author and professor of drama at NYU, says: "I'm an avid reader of novels that have strong social (in)justice context, compelling narrative, strong characters and informed social, historical political context. Like Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (Norton paperback, 1993, 629 pp.), described on the back of the jacket as: 'a stunning and engrossing exploration of power, domination and greed. Filled with the "sacred hunger" to expand its empire and profits, England entered fully into the slave trade and spread the trade through the colonies...' It won the Booker Prize some years ago — it’s not new, originally published in 1992 — and it started me off tracking down other Booker Award winners, many of which I've appreciated for the same general reason. This year was Michael Coetzee's Disgrace (Viking, 1999, 220 pp.). Oh I love those South African novels. And then I love nonfiction, like Parting the Waters (above), that tell history in strong vivid narrative. It’s like the two ends meet – some authors coming at it 'fictionally,' others coming at it nonfictionally, but both including elements of writing and content traditionally thought of as the other's domain."

Linda Frye Burnham is a codirector of Art in the Public Interest.

Original CAN/API publication: July 2000