Go here to read about a fascinating sociological experiment recently done by the Washington Post. To briefly summarize, they took one of the greatest violinists in the world (who plays on one of the greatest musical instruments ever created), and put him in a Washington D.C. Metro station as a busker. The question was this: without the context in which we normally expect to find virtuoso musicians (in this case, Joshua Bell), would passers-by recognize his talent? I spoil the result inside the jump.
The result was that the overwhelming majority of people completely ignored Bell. A few people realized that they were in the presence of an enormous talent, but most people just kept walking without acknowledging what was going on. One of the conclusions the article draws is that when you take a piece of great art and remove it from the contextual clues that tell us that it is great art (in this case the symphony hall, the high-priced concert tickets, and the name "Joshua Bell" and its accompanying reputation), we are less likely to recognize it as great art.
It's a fascinating article, but I post it here because it made me wonder: is this simply a different way of demonstrating something that we already learned from Roy Lichtenstein?
Posted by Jason Fliegel at April 12, 2007 4:35 PM
I think that the Stradivari effect ("one of the greatest musical instruments ever created") is--has to be--essentially psychological. Bell's Strad is called out in the article itself as having a crappy rear panel that's missing most of its varnish. You're going to have trouble convincing me that there's a detectable quality difference between that and a modern master craftsman's instrument.
I think it's not really a valid experiment in this sense: Is it really surprising that people didn't recognize musical greatness in a location where they are stressin' about their daily lives, trying to get to work or go home or go to the dentist?
What if you did the experiment like this: What if you had solo artist open mic night at Waterloo Icehouse in downtown Austin and put a disguised Joshua Bell in a line up that featured other folks of varying levels of talent on different instruments playing different styles? I'm fairly certain most of the crowd in that context, even if they weren't orchestral music fans, would recognize that This Guy is Really Good.
The Washington Post experiment amounts to little more than observing that if you take a dirty C note and throw it on the ground at a metro station, thousands of people will walk over it without every realizing it's there.
None of which has anything, really, to do with your point, I know. There's no question that "the masses," however you define 'em, allow "someone else" to filter artistic work through to them, to make decisions about quality or what gets shown at the local cineplex versus what is simply a student film or whatever. Outside of the most commercially popularly or successful, what you are aware of as a consumer of artistic/entertainment media is in many ways a matter of random chance -- what people recommend, something you read about online, something you chance upon in a video store or late one night on cable, whatever.
There's more information about how and why the bit was set up in the subsequent live chat at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/06/DI2007040601228.html
A commenter mentions that a similar experiment was done on a Belgium beach in the summertime (i.e. people on vacation/not rushing somewhere/cultured Europeans), and the performer just got enough to buy an ice cream.
According to NPR, Josh Bell's take was about $40/hr, which is damn good for a busker. Additionally, he was playing during MORNING rush hour--in other words, when people are trying not to be late for work. A better experiment would have been if he'd been playing during EVENING rush hour--when people weren't worried about being late and possibly getting demerited or docked pay.