Excuse us, Mr. Famous Big-Deal Artist, but our business is not with you. Kindly step aside, if you please, because we have other people on our minds today: those for whom you sing, dance, declaim, write, film, compose and design.
We are speaking–in case you have forgotten, which some believe is precisely the case–of the audience, of the little people out there in the dark, of the ones who fork over their dough for the tickets, tap their tabletops with two fingers to keep the beat, bob their heads in sync with the CDs, move in a graceful trance through the galleries, pack themselves into the balconies, stroll past the buildings.
We are talking about the audience.
They have always been a complex and paradoxical part of the artistic equation. They are the ultimate arbiters of art–or are they?
The audience: It’s a word that used to sound like a blurry conglomeration, like an assortment as anonymous as a candy box with no blueprint for creamy or nutty centers. But no more. Thanks to contemporary technology and modern marketing techniques, audiences can be sliced and diced, vivisected and fileted, like the catch of the day.
We know, better than any other time in history, exactly who is patronizing the arts, how old their kids are, how much money they make, the names of their pets, what kind of beer they drink, what their zip codes are and what they think of the snacks available at intermission. Marketing experts know what makes them tick and what ticks them off.
But all of that highfalutin’ scrutiny doesn’t seem to be making audiences any happier. Rock audiences, in particular, are disgruntled and out of sorts, although you can hear grousing from readers, record-buyers and filmgoers, too.
Audiences are getting restless. Today and for the next three Sundays, the Arts & Entertainment section will explore the other side of the footlights: the audience. Having lavished an inordinate amount of time on the makers of art, we now take a look at its consumers.
We will be reporting on how arts groups and artists determine who their audiences are and how best to woo them; how audiences are treated, from the moment you decide to buy a ticket to the dying echo of the last note of the final encore at the show; how artists view their relationships with audiences; and finally, how being a member of an audience intersects with the obligations of citizenship–because along with power, comes responsibility.
Indeed, while audiences may feel neglected and abused, in many ways they are mightier than ever. Their strength lies in the very minute detail by which they are known to marketers. The slightest flicker of interest can be tracked and enumerated; the merest hint of disapproval can instantly be sensed. Performers are elevated overnight, or prematurely sent packing, on an audience’s whim.
For audiences can be wrong, of course, and shortsighted and reluctant to be challenged, and sometimes the wisest course for an artist is to ignore the audience. Or is it?
Are audiences mere connoisseurs of art, simple witnesses, or are they also silent collaborators with the artist?
How much power should audience members exert upon an artist’s work? How much should an artist take an audience’s reactions and preferences into account in what they do and dream of doing?
These are primitive, elemental questions that go back many centuries, back to the first pictures scratched on the sides of caves with the burnt tips of sticks. They are also as fresh as the new Madonna CD or the fall TV lineup.
Like the familiar query about the chicken and the egg, a simple question lies at the heart of artistic endeavor: Which came first–the artist or the audience? And there is a corollary question, too: Which matters most?
TIMELINE
KEY MOMENTS IN AUDIENCE HISTORY
6th Century B.C.: Greek drama emerges from religious celebrations of the god Dionysus, and as its popularity grows it moves from open markets to large semicircular amphitheaters capable of seating hundreds and thousands of spectators.
5th Century B.C.: The Pinacotheca of the Acropolis in Athens holds paintings by Polygnotus of Thasos, becoming one of the earliest examples of a picture gallery, the origin of the modern concept of a museum.
1500s: The pit, a sunken, standing-room-only area named after the cockpit of cockfighting, is introduced, charging the cheapest admission price (one penny) and drawing the rowdiest crowds in front of and around the raised stage of Elizabethan theaters. From this vantage point, the “pit people” could throw their fruit and other missiles at actors who displeased them.
Middle 1700s: The English model of public subscription concerts is adopted. In 1731 a “Concert of Music” is given in Boston, and during the next two decades “Gentlemen’s Concerts” become a fixed part of the social calendar there.
1793: The Louvre, royal palace of the kings of France, opens as a public art museum.
1893: Millions of Americans visit the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the spectacular collection of glistening white neo-classical buildings in Jackson Park. Those attending the fair come away so impressed that cities around the country create real-life imitations of the fantasy city in Chicago. The result: Beaux-arts civic centers are built from San Francisco to New York.
1907-12: “The Playboy of the Western World,” John Millington Synge’s tragicomedy of rural life in Ireland, causes audience riots in its first production at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and in its subsequent American productions. Audiences at the Abbey, offended by its portrait of peasant life and its use of such words as “shift” (petticoat), shout “Kill the author,” and 500 police have to be brought in to quell the tumult.
1915: Unprecedented crowds for D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” presage a future of longer, more ambitious and expensive Hollywood movies; they also help revive the long-dormant Ku Klux Klan.
1953: English playwright Terence Rattigan, in the preface to a collection of his plays, introduces a classic, fictional audience member he calls Aunt Edna, “a nice, respectable, middle-class, middle-aged maiden lady, with time on her hand and the money to help pass it.” As a theatergoer, Rattigan states, she is universal and immortal.
1835: Chicago’s first public music concert of which there is any reliable record takes place on Dec. 11 at what was then the Presbyterian Church on Lake and Clark Streets. Tickets are 50 cents. The program, performed by members of the Old Settlers’ Harmonic Society, must have gone on for hours since it contained everything from popular airs and duets to “glees for three voices” to various anthems and marches.
1840: Giuseppe Verdi’s second opera, “Un Giorno di Regno” (King for a Day), is such a resounding flop with the public at its premiere in Milan’s La Scala that it is removed from the stage after only one performance. Even so, other Verdi works that bombed initially, such as “La Traviata,” went on to achieve lasting success. Much the same could be said for such masterpieces as Rossini’s “Barber of Seville,” Wagner’s “Tannhauser,” Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and Debussy’s “Pelleas et Melisande.” Moral: Initial audience reaction isn’t necessary an accurate measure of artistic quality or durability.
1913: The first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet “Le Sacre du Printemps” (The Rite of Spring), in Paris’ Theatre des Champs-Elysees, produces one of the great audience riots of all time. The audience quickly becomes incensed by Stravinsky’s violent, dissonant, neo-primitive score, and the uproar becomes so loud that even the dancers cannot hear the music. Audiences at performances in Paris and London later that year are better-behaved, but the vociferous reaction of the original patrons would forever be linked to Stravinsky’s great manifesto of modernism.
1950: Who needs a real audience? The very first television laugh track is used on “The Hank McCune Show,” an otherwise forgettable slapstick program.
1955: Teenagers and college kids, with little initial prodding from the Hollywood publicity machine, make a posthumous demi-god of near-sighted Indiana rebel James Dean. This deification breeds numerous imitators and lasts for the rest of the century.
1973: All of New York’s SoHo district becomes the audience for one of Philip Glass’ seminal works, “Music With Changing Parts.” From the open windows of a large loft apartment, the highly amplified sounds of Glass’ ensemble playing his clean, repetitive Minimalist music bounced between buildings and turned passersby into instant Glass groupies.
1970: Healthy numbers for the neat little black milieu cop thriller made from Chester Himes’ “Cotton Comes to Harlem” make Hollywood suddenly aware of the African-American audience.
1969: On Dec. 6, an 18-year-old man is stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels, hired to provide security, at a free Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, Calif.
1969: An estimated 400,000 people descend on Max Yasgur’s farm Aug. 15-17, shutting down the New York state thruway, and the Woodstock Art and Music Fair becomes a watershed event for the rock ‘n’ roll generation.
1961: Jane Jacobs’ book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” galvanizes popular opposition to modern planning methods, like public housing projects. Jacobs champions the ability of ordinary people to determine the shape of the buildings and urban spaces they come into contact with everyday. Following the book’s publication, citizen groups fight the plans of private real estate developers and public agencies with new vigilance.
1961: For the first time, 90 percent of U.S. households have television sets, a proportion that more than doubled in nine years.
1956: The worldwide enthusiasm for a very blond and often-undressed French movie star named Brigitte Bardot in “And God Created Woman” and a dozen subsequent (mostly mediocre) follow-ups spells doom for Hollywood’s ratings system and sexual taboos.
1975-77: When fans deluge the theaters in record numbers, first for Steven Spielberg’s shark thriller “Jaws” and two years later for George Lucas’ space opera “Star Wars,” it has a profound impact on the ways movies are made and marketed for the next two decades, ushering in the era of blockbusters and mass opening-weekends.
1978: Siding with citizen protesters who fought plans to construct a huge office tower over the Grand Central Terminal in New York, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the city’s right to declare the building a landmark. Empowered by the court’s ruling, the fledgling historic preservation movementalready evident in such organizations as the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinoissaves thousands of other structures around the nation.
1980: “Shear Madness” opens in Boston as an audience-participation play, the crowd voting on how the murder-mystery ends. The show becomes an interactive phenomenon, playing on several continents to this day.
1987: Nielsen launches the People Meter, the audience measurement device that makes ongoing detailed demographic measurement nationwide more scientific.
1999: The Information Revolution hits Hollywood. Audiences come out in droves for the mini-budgeted indie horror movie “The Blair Witch Project,” which got most of its buzz from festival showings and the Internet.
1979: Before a Who concert on Dec. 3 in Cincinnati, 11 fans are trampled to death as the doors are opened and fans rush for festival-seating spots closer to the stage.
1983: The most popular television program ever, the series finale of “M*A*S*H” airs on Feb. 28, drawing 105 million viewers.
1994: The Eagles charge $118 for prime pavilion seats at the World Music Theatre, setting a new high for ticket prices.
1995: “Claude Monet: 1840-1926” attracts the largest audience–964,895 visitors–of any paid exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.
1999: Victoria’s Secret webcasts a fashion show live on the Internet. Millions try to connect; few succeed.
2000: The Experience Music Project opens in Seattle. Portable computers and headphones are loaned to visitors, giving musuemgoers a new level of freedom and control.
Sources: “Grove Dictionary of Art,” “The Oxford Companion to Art, ” McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Art, ” Slonimsky’s Lectionary of Music,” Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, ” “Chicago Architecure, 1872-1922: Birth of a Metropolis, ” The Landmarks of New York II”
Sources: “Grove Dictionary of Art,” “The Oxford Companion to Art,” “McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Art,” “Slonimsky’s Lectionary of Music,” “Directory To Prime Time Network and cable TV Shows,” “Chicago Architecture, 1872-1922: Birth of a Metropolis,” “The Landmarks of New York II.”
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THIS WEEK
WHO IS THE AUDIENCE?
Mark Caro reports on how the movie industry masters its market.
ALSO:
– The demographics of the audience, from theater to rock clubs. Page 5.
– How different arts groups cultivate their patrons.
Oct 22
HOW ARE AUDIENCES TREATED?
Greg Kot analyzes whether rock fans get the respect they deserve.
Oct 29
WHAT DO ARTISTS WANT FROM AUDIENCES?
Local artists explore the special bond
Nov 5
HOW DO AUDIENCES ACT AS CITIZENS?
WHAT DO AUDIENCES WANT FROM ARTISTS?
Blair Kamin reports on how audience members can become part of the action-and help transform the outcome. And, a readers’ forum.
