Explaining “Underground”

by AU(STL) Director Brad Edwards

Art Underground began as an initiative to help friends in the “starving artist” category find opportunities to make some kind of living off their labor of love (you can read more about how this happened here).  After the economy tanked in October of 2008, many of these friends went from “starving” to a category just below that, for which I’ve not yet discovered a label.  Art is a luxury for most, but an absolute necessity for artists.

Our 2010 Winter Quarterly was our 1st anniversary show, and a lot has changed since that first “wine and art party” a year ago.  We have literally stumbled upon success: St. Louisans love the Quarterly, and amazingly talented and gifted artists are coming out of the woodwork to connect with them.  The most unexpected and exciting aspect of this success is that people who would normally be intimidated by galleries or exhibitions are coming out in droves.  In other words, art is gaining new fans rather than recycling an existing audience. Everyone wins when both art and her appreciators grow.

Due to this success, Art Underground has grown from something truly underground and unknown into something with no small amount of buzz.  We’ve had to introduce structure and policies to intentionally but slowly grow and protect the potency of the opportunity.  For example, because we have over a dozen artists submit work for every Quarterly and we have limited space, we have to jury the submissions.  Also, with hundreds of “fans” on our Facebook Page, we have to limit posts and advertisements for art to those who have already shown in a Quarterly.  Otherwise, no posts from either AU(STL) or our featured artists would ever be seen.

I recently received an email from someone who took issue with our use of the word “underground” to describe our organization, especially considering the “exclusive” rules we’ve put into place to focus and harness that success.

True “underground” is diametrically opposed to “exclusive.” Underground art doesn’t require “submission” to be what it is. Maybe you should change your name, since you seem to employ it either improperly or as a gimmick. The whole notion of underground is about non-conformist, anti-establishment, anti-elite brutes and rejects… You use it to connote an “exclusive group” and worry about crowding your site with “well intentioned” artists….

I hope you realize that people you reject are the true “underground” artists, and not your hand-picked selection, and that if you ever were underground, rejected, a brute of an artist, you’d laugh at yourself.

Now, there are several aspects of this that I truly grieve over.  I hate to think that we “reject” anyone, and exclusivity being positive or negative depends greatly on why it is there.  However, the most important aspect of this email is the very legitimate need for clarifying how and why we consider ourselves “underground.”

The latest issue of Paste Magazine’s cover story is entitled, “Is Indie Dead?” (Side note: to add to the ironic gall for even asking their hipster readership this question, they patterned the cover after the famous [infamous?] cover of the 1966 issue of Time Magazine asking, “Is God Dead?”) Assistant Editor Rachael Maddux perceptively poses the question due to a growing epidemic use of “indie” to describe “a genre (of music first, and then of film, books, video games and anything else with a perceived arty sensibility, regardless of its relationship to a corporation), an ethos, a business model, a demographic and a marketing tool. It can signify everything, and it can signify nothing.”

There is a danger for AU(STL) to face the same challenge (if we haven’t already).  As we grow, success simultaneously undermines our uniqueness and better equips us to serve artists.  Maddux notes this paradox in her article, using the example of indie bands licensing their songs for commercial use:

For those unsure even now of the practical worth of musicians licensing their songs for commercial use, the finest bit of apologetics on the subject is probably John Leland’s 2001 New York Times Magazine piece about The Apples in Stereo licensing their song “Strawberryfire” for a Sony television commercial, which made it possible for the band’s husband-and-wife frontman and drummer to buy furniture for their new baby. ‘‘You imagine that it’s a crass process,’’ Apples lead singer Robert Schneider told Leland at the time. ‘‘But it’s not like Sony used our song in the commercial, which is how it looks to the indie kid. It’s just one guy who liked our music.’’

We’re not corporate.  We’re not commercial.  We’re certainly not here to make a profit.  In fact, talk to any artist that has worked with us and you’ll find out that it actually costs quite a bit of money and time donated by volunteers to pull off a single Quarterly.  Art Underground (STL) is indebted to the radical generosity of both individuals and communities who have taken ownership of the vision to create a St. Louis that “ought to be” through creative expression.  When you boil down to it, we’re just trying to provide the St. Louis artist community with the equivalent of baby furniture.  Surely there is legitimate value, and not dishonor, in this goal…?

Michael Azerrad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life, described the underground ethos in music as we at AU(STL) interpret and own it.

“Underground music stands against and apart from mainstream culture in order to offer an antidote to it. In eras past, mainstream culture was blandly, blindly complacent, so underground music was angry and dissatisfied. [...] But now, mainstream culture isn’t complacent, it’s stupid and angry; underground culture reacts by becoming smarter, more serene. That’s not wimpy—it’s powerful and productive.”

For us, being underground is a relentless pursuit at offering an “antidote” to St. Louis mainstream culture.  For artists, that culture is often fractured, ingrown and unhealthily competitive.  Very few new patrons of art are cultivated.  We certainly do not have all, or even very many, answers.

Thus, what we hope to bring to the table is a habit of gestures that cultivate a different posture among both the artist community and her patrons.  We hope that this posture is gracious and unified (but still diverse) under a vision of a St. Louis that “ought to be.” We welcome anyone and everyone seeking to partner with this local initiative of a global movement!