Comments ( 26 )

• They may be right. I only know one painter, one part time actor, a handful of guys in bar bands, and a couple really good karaoke singers.
  Now if they were to feature culinary arts in their index, then yes Chicago should be on this list.

• NSH,

  Karaoke isn’t an art form? Seriously, there are scads of artists in this town – just look at the listings of performances and exhibits in the papers. Somebody’s got to be behind all that stuff, right?

  I’m going to be disloyal to Chicago in the food category, though. I think New York’s restaurants beat Chicago’s.

• sans Oscar winner, and most likely grammy winner Jennifer Hudson, who reportedly has just bought a home on the south side, can an artist make “it” in Chicago. They might be able to tune their performance here, and sell a couple paintings there, but everyone knows its LA NY or Vegas if you want to make “it” in performing arts. Small towns like Nashville and NOLA have more artists 10 fold than Chicago.

• keep in mind, chicago, this is the same buisness week that five or so years ago headlined their cover with “chicago blues” and they weren’t talking music here, friends. the article was so off-base about whether chicago was riding the urban reannisance wave…please. we started it. i don’t know why this rag has it out for chicago tho!

• chicago arts scene does not compare to NY, LA, or New Orleans. As someone else said, you have to go LA or NY to “make it” and as far as local talent goes new orleans and nasheville and others are far beyond chicago. Same for food. Chicago is a great city, but it is not the cultural hub that those other places are.

• I can’t speak to artists, but I can speak to musicians.

  it is the fact that Chicago is such a vibrant cultural hub for musicians that makes it almost impossible to make a living (at least for performance-based bands).

  it’s basic supply and demand, there are hordes of young, hungry artists who move here, and not very many places for them to play/perform.

  thus, wages are low, and your negotiating power is very limited unless you rise to “star level” and can command your own terms.

  there are certainly some operators who are die-hard music lovers, but this is an expensive town to run a live music venue, and most venues are using you to sell booze, as that is what pays the bills.

• Long ago Chicago was the hub of rhythm and blues rock. South Michigan ave was home to at least 30 different record labels, everyone from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to muddy Waters to the Impressions was recording during the day and playing clubs into the night and then playing more clubs into the morning. The scene burst even bigger when the memphis horn sound was big in pop radio. The Buckinghams, Chicago, Ides of march, Shadows of Knight, countless others were making the Chicago music scene the ONLY music scene.

  Times changed though, big business bought up most of the indi labels on Michigan ave and cut their catalogs, no one plays that northern soull south michigan ave sound anymore because its all out of print and only the people that were around during the time and a few hardcore collectors know what’s what. You’re not going to find Garland green doing Jealous Kind of Fella, or Patti and the Lovelites doing My Conscience, or on iTunes.
  YOu can listen here though http://www.northernsoul.net/home.html

  Yes times change, hopefully Chicago will be on top again.

• This question of whether you can “make it” as an artist in Chicago is an interesting one. There aren’t as many opportunities to make money in the arts as there are in New York or L.A., but I’d argue that this doesn’t disqualify Chicago as a vibrant arts town. To the contrary, it makes it a great place for young artists to get their chops together. Some great stuff has come out of groups of college graduates who start theater companies on a shoestring: Steppenwolf or Lookingglass or House Theater, for example. And the indigenous theater scene has produced many big names: Bill Murray, Belushis, Rebecca Gilman, etc., etc.

  In terms of how Chicago matches up to other cities, I think the comparison depends on the art form. L.A. beats Chicago for film – this much is obvious. And New York has Broadway. But Chicago is the improv comedy capital of America – even UCB in New York and IO West in L.A. are offshoots of Chicago projects.

• Have you ever been to Portland? If you haven’t, you don’t know what you are missing.

• Carter’s description of the music scene in Chicago is pretty accurate in terms of the theater scene too. I spend my evenings and weekends working as an actor, director and designer, and I’m a little offended by the article, but really, what do I care about what Business Week has to say about art?

  The Chicago theater scene is alive and doing very well – it’s true that there’s more opportunity to become rich and famous in NY or LA, but there’s a lot more opportunity to work regularly here, and there’s fantastic work going on all around this town. If you’re thinking of Chicago theater as being only the Goodman, the Steppenwolf, and Broadway in Chicago, you’re missing about 95% of what’s going on here.

  Nothing against Nashville or New Orleans, but if you think there’s that much more talent there (10 fold, as NSH said), then you’re not paying attention to the cultural and artistic programs that Chicago has to offer.

• The arts are stronger than Chicago in Kingston, NY? Carson City, NV? Thousand Oaks, CA?
  Now I am not saying those aren’t artistic havens but I would venture to say that an artist would go alot further in Chicago than those towns.

• In 1993, Billboard Magazine declared Chicago the epi-center of music when Wicker Park blew up as a destination. I still think that the real estate speculators who bought in the 1970s that beat out the Podmajerskys had something to do with getting Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill and Liz Phair signed. Anyway, I digress. Chicago may not be home to the blues any more, but if you have something that people want musically, you will be found. XRT sucks these days, but Richard Milne does a very fine job of promoting local acts (even ones he doesn’t manage). If you are in Chicago for the sake of being in a band, you are in the right place. The city has a great reputation, but no one genre. You will also get to know a lot of other bands. There’s a domino effect here. Bands are a moot in this discussion.

  Chicago is also the best possible place you can be for theater. Why? Because you can actually work in theater. You’ll probably have to keep your day job, but you will get great experience. New York has Broadway, but outside of those people working on Broadway, there aren’t a lot of actors working, even in the little storefronts. Why? Because it’s cost-prohibitive. Even the Broadway shows take a shallacking quite a bit of the time. As the that author noted, Chicago is also the Improv capitol of the world. Second City and UCB have theaters in LA and New York, Improv Olympic too. Quite a few people who have graced the stages have done pretty well. They got discovered and moved on to TV/Film careers in New York and LA. The thing is, not everybody at IO or Second City makes it. That’s just life. But that poor element, that faction here waiting to crack something big, they’re getting great experience. Better than they would in New York or LA.

  The problem with film in Chicago is that Chicagoans don’t finance it. If they don’t finance it, there is no industry outside of a service-based one that will ever support it. It has to do with the Midwestern mentality of playing it safe. Sure, people here invest, but few people lost their certificates of stock ownership (sarcasm) during the dot com bust that those in New York, LA, Cambridge or San Fransisco. Why? Because people in Chicago, for the most part, were investing in safer things.

  As for painters, Chicago has plenty. But if you look at what’s gone on, there all over. Blame it on the blow-up of Wicker Park. That was a truly incredible Bohunk kind of place. Because artists usually try one thing when another isn’t working. The community, although not exclusive, isn’t very inclusive either…But I digress. The point is, painters breed sculptors who breed painters who breed drummers who breed graphic designers anarchists or whatever. It’s sociological thing and you need a high concentration of them in one area. Wicker blew it. The highest concentration before Wicker was Old Town and parts of Lincoln Park. You’ve got a decent amount in Humboldt and Logan, but the speculation on things moving up Milwaukee Avenue, past Western, really forced rents way too high. Walking out of the Congress last night, I was reminded of what Wicker used to look like. There’s also people in Bridgeport, McKinley Park, Pilsen and even Little Village. But at this point it’s just way to spread out. Pilsen might be the best chance of that happening again, though Rogers Park doesn’t sound half bad either.

• art as a hobby Chicago wins, as a stepping stone to bigger and better, yep chicago is it. Lots of people name chicago as their hometown the list is huge actually, Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, Common, the Belushis, Eddie Vedder, Bill Murray, George Wendt, on and on and on. But guess what no one is coming to Chicago to make it big, they are leaving to make it big. Some come back, (Vince Vaughn) most don’t. Art as a profession? Na not any more dude. Even local artists like Tony Fitzpatrick and Jack Simmerling that felt chicago and painted Chicago are fewer and farther between these days.

  I blame it on corporatiziation of our neighborhoods.

• and video games

• and TIFs and property taxes.

  quite seriously, affordable rents are down because long time property owners who own the 2 flats, 3 flats, etc., can’t keep up with the taxes.

  and when they sell the value of the land means that rental units are replaced with condos or luxury single family homes.

  want to see more artists in Chicago? find a way to keep rents affordable. I don’t know if an acquisition-based property tax (coupled with a tax swap for the schools) is the answer, but as it stands this city is pricing out much of the culture that brought people (back) into it in the first place.

• Or find a way to help artists make enough money to afford decent housing.

• “Or find a way to help artists make enough money to afford decent housing.”

  That’s easy, make sellable art. Welcome to America Nate!

• I was being a bit facetious, NSH (and my name’s not Nate, by the way), but the point that you bring up (or that I brought up, or that’s running underneath the subject of this whole thread) leads into a different and much bigger conversation about what “sellable art” is and who has the ability to define it.

  I thought you nailed it when you spoke of the corporatization of neighborhoods earlier – it just keeps getting harder for small-scale, privately owned art galleries, theaters, music venues, bookstores, etc. to survive, and that makes it less likely that artists who haven’t proven themselves as “sellable” will have the opportunity to do so.

• Nathaniel, yeah I know i was being a bit of an anonymous smart ass. I knew where you were coming from but the setup was right there…

• It sure was. Which sucks for us artists.

  By the way, I had a long mock-tirade written in my head chewing you out for bad-mouthing video games earlier. Now I’m wishing I had posted it.

  Wait a minute – I think video games are “sellable art.” Huh.

• Chuck – It’s “Boho” not “Bohunk” – that’s considered an ethnic slur by some people of Slavic/Eastern European extraction, and yes many of them did live in Old Wicker Park and other areas before they became “artsy.”
  One solution to the starving-artist dilemma, which has been tried very sporadically in this town, is the artist co-op building in which the residents get breaks on housing costs while maintaining their spaces as live/works. For more info. contact Laura Weathered of the Near Northwest Arts Council.

• touche

• Sad thing when you have a place with a Vietnam Art Museum with all the space for artist to set-up studios or rentals, and the NVVAM is trying to put in a banquet facility instead of keeping the building 75% of space dedicated to the arts or museum purpose. Great opportunity for educational, art commerical spaces, etc.

• It just seems hard to believe here. the music scene seems pretty strong. Not so sure about the art scene though….

• the music scene here is strong, but as folks get older and get married and want kids, a permanent place to live, etc., Chicago becomes a tough place to hack it.

• “I thought you nailed it when you spoke of the corporatization of neighborhoods earlier -”

  that’s exactly it. the idea that artists should create “sellable” art in an environment increasingly geared towards mass produced knock-off items produced by sweatshop labor in Asia is ludicrous.