Simon Reynolds talks about “artists as portals” in The Guardian, specifically referring to the NME’s “Portrait Of The Artist As A Consumer” column of yore. This kind of thing is still popular – Pitchfork’s “Guest List” columns, for instance, where we learn that indie rockers like one another, and books. But what’s intriguing to me is the way this idea of “portals” has spread into the marketing world. Here’s planner Mike Arauz writing in January:
“For brands on the web: if I don’t see your sources (what you read, watch, and listen to) and which things you think are important enough to pass on, then I don’t know who you are.”
Arauz’ is a somewhat minority view – most brands don’t have the personality to work as a “consumer” and it’s hard to imagine their audiences taking their recommendations without several pinches of salt. But it’s reflective of how commercial organisations are adjusting to social media – Twitter, in particular, can often seem like an extended series of “Portrait of the CEO as a Consumer” if you follow any members of the executive class. The default mode for execs on Twitter is peppy enthusiasm leavened with plenty of endorsements (often for airports and restaurants, admittedly, rather than for German commune members).
Of course it’s not just artists and corporate types who get to share their enthusiasms: we’re living in the world of “Portrait of the Consumer as a Curator” – which means that the phenomenon Reynolds is discussing has shifted a little. When Nick Cave laid out his sources following them would have involved a lot of dedication and legwork and quite probably money: this isn’t nearly as much the case now. I don’t necessarily regret that – the confusions between effort and achievement, scarcity and value, haven’t always resulted in great artistic decisions.
But at least back then Nick Cave – thanks to his profession – genuinely had a higher and more frequent level of access to obscure cultural production than most of his fans. Is that really true of, say, Grizzly Bear? Let alone of the CEO of a shoe company? The “Portrait Of A Consumer” columns worked as ‘portals’ because celebrity was a smokescreen for getting people with that wider access in front of the (relatively) impoverished readership. Celebrity looked like the point, but it wasn’t. Now it’s all that differentiates a star’s list from a blogger’s. Is that enough?
Is the artist the portal, or is the artist’s act of naming (& evoking w/ out detailing) the portal?
It’s more than just endorsements, though, isn’t it? It’s not just ‘if you like me and are like me you will like this’, it’s a reverse-gatekeeper motion, just oblique enough to be intriguing.
Looking back, I think I got a lot of artist-as-portal thing, which helped fill my fifteen-year-old mind with Andy Warhol and the Shangri-Las and Colin MacInnes’ books (which then lead me on to reading Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners). And I enjoyed the digging around in second-hand shops, spending a year or two between finding out-of-print Richard Brautigan books.
Whether you feel it is desperately contrived or not, what The Birthday Party were offering was a fully formed aesthetic, not just ‘here’s some stuff we like”. And for your average goth in 1982, being led towards Tanya Tucker was a massive leap.
Don’t think knowing what a CEO was listening to would make me more likely to buy their products, but I’m not really fully adjusted to the 21st Century.
i’m quite frustrated by the S Reynolds thing I guess because I consider “portals” and “influences” to be different things and to see them conflated seems to be missing the subtlety of the concept – though maybe that’s due to the title which he may not have written. But I don’t think “portrait of the artist as a consumer” has anything of the magic of the portal – it’s like a reading list, read this and you will be reading the same things as me. It’s too easy. It can introduce fans to exciting and difficult things in an attempt at emulation, sure, but… I don’t know, I’m not putting it well.
“if i don’t see your sources… then i don’t know who you are” is about brand definition, no? It’s about fleshing out the way the brand is portrayed, the relationship is between the brander and the branded. The relationship of the consumer to the brand is nothing more than an act of recognition, almost top-down.
OH’s point seems to be more about the relationship between band and fan – between brand and consumer, if you must – about the fan creating themself through images and ideas that have resounded with them when gleaned from sleevenote allusions, stray phrases, a pose struck in a photograph.
Yes, this is right I think, there’s a difference between presenting an aesthetic – which some brands and bands are excellent at, and some are rubbish at – and creating the space for fans to create themselves. The latter has an element of risk, I think – you don’t know EXACTLY what’s on the other side of the portal, it’s not being laid out for you shopping-list style…
Rachael: You think I’m a replicant, don’t you?
Deckard: Hah.
Rachael: Look, it’s me with my mother.
Deckard: Yeah. — Remember when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty building through a basement window. You were gonna play doctor. He showed you his, but when it got to be your turn you chickened and ran. Remember that? You ever tell anybody that? Your mother, Tyrell, anybody huh? You remember the spider that lived in a bush outside your window? Orange body, green legs. Watched her build a web all summer. Then one day there was a big egg in it. The egg hatched–
Rachael: The egg hatched…
Deckard: And?
Rachael: And a hundred baby spiders came out. And they ate her.
Deckard: Implants! Those aren’t your memories. They’re somebody else’s. They’re Tyrell’s niece’s — Okay, bad joke. I made a bad joke. You’re not a replicant. Go home, okay? No really, I’m sorry. Go home — Want a drink? I’ll get you a drink. I’ll get a glass.
Whereas folk like Mark E Smith would keep their influences very much to themselves for the most part, throwing a few scraps of meat out occasionally, and a couple of red-herrings to throw people off the scent.
as ilxors and others will recall, i have a giant massive huge relentless PROBLEM with the entire confused and goofy concept of “influence” — my position a ilx was basically an unbending THERE IS NO SUCH THING YOU IDIOTS, which i have possibly refined and tweaked a LITTLE (but not much)
am on supertuff deadline today so haven’t peeked at simon’s piece yet (in case it annoyed me to no immediate purpose): i have all kinds of guesses abt what he’s RONG abt (= the usual, *sigh*) but it wd be unfair to unload em quite yet
re mark e. smith’s “portrait”: i remember being super-excited when it was him that week in the nme, then being quite let down at the actual content — mark g’s interpretation of this makes sense (that smith was being canny) but i prefer mine (that the question “what are yr influences?” is silly and smith was exactly the person to spot this)
John Rotten is now forever tainted with the Vandergraf Generator, as his “Punk and his music” radio show played a couple of Peter Hammill tracks. (SOMEONE GET ME A LINK/COPY OF THIS SHOW PLZ!!!)
When Q did their “Cash for Questions” with him, and someone asked about which VDGG album they should start with, he got quite shirty and told them to go figure it for themselves.
Another case of someone much imitated not wanting to give too much of their DNA out, or just bored with being pigeonholed to one ‘influence’? Both, probably.
the portals thing is sort of stuck in my head!
my image of the portal is this:
you are sixteen and spotty and in a charity shop and against your eyesight scratches the spine of a fat tatty paperback that says DEAD SOULS; and your friend has made you a tape of b-sides and bootlegs that is like a secret you two and no-one else in the world know; and to see the conjunction of those two words makes your soul gasp; and you buy and you read the book; and now you are a person who reads Gogol.
This is not the reality of the portal. Some well-meaning music mag will spoiler you on every reference a band makes because they would hate you to be left out. But it’s the story of the portal you’ll tell yourself when you want romance.
(and still sometimes it happens – like hearing the original source of something you never realised was a sample, or… suddenly realising that superpitcher stole the lyrics of ‘happiness’ from a late-nineties sf sh?jo manga)
Of course “portrait of the artist as a consumer” can be intensely exciting but there is not that promise of serendipity – or the only serendipity possible is of the ‘cor [thurston moore] likes this thing that i already like!’ variety. Which is only satisfying when you care deeply about what [thurston moore] or any artist is into – if you’re on a programme of self-improvement through emulation of some guy in a band, if you want to be satisfied that you are already on the right track.
right maybe i’ll shut up now.
Re 7: But surely Portrait of the Artist as a Consumer is just that – what person x likes, not necessarily what is supposedly informing their work. In fact, a better read if it isn’t. You know, “Jim Reid listens to Spector and Heroin, yawn. Jim Reid likes Gardeners’ Question Time, hmmm…”
Re 9: I think both the explicit (Wellerist) and precious crumbs (ME Smith) have their uses – route 1 being more useful for the 15 year old* and route 2 more fun for the college student in a big city where much more is available when you dig around. (C20 means of distribution applying).
*For me, at that point, for instance, just going to the Rough Trade shop – notorious Notting Hill! – was an adventure. I was meant to working everything out through tiny clues too?
Or in the crudest possible terms, the Manic Street Preachers become the cool big brother you never had because your actual brother liked Weather Report and Merchant-Ivory films.
The crumbs approach leaves more latitude for portalisation.
It’s the difference – pace what I was talking about on Blackbeard yesterday – between content that replicates and content that breeds.