1920's The Arts | Movies

Art and Money.

Periods of great artistic activity require wealth and leisure. The prosperity of the American 1920s and the rise of new classes provided a public and a market for artistic endeavors. It takes money to buy a theater ticket or concert ticket; it takes time to attend; it takes previous experience or education to understand the performance. During the 1920s the arts became important to classes of Americans who had heretofore been indifferent to them. This awareness of the arts was concomitant with the development of mass media. In previous decades American art was nurtured in certain big-city enclaves mainly in the Northeast, particularly New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Newspapers did not have national distribution; there were no newsmagazines; there was no radio. But arts and letters became national news during the 1920s; artists and writers were newsworthy. Money makes headlines. The publicized record prices for...