‘Man as an artist is at home only in Paris’ (Frederick Nietzsche).

The city is the mass collection of individuals from different ethnic backgrounds, with different tastes and different beliefs. It is the center of culture. There are many sub-cultures and niche groups and this facilitates much artistic potential. In this essay I will discus why some artists are attracted to working and living in cities. I will argue that the four main benefits of urban living for artists are: it is a place of many encounters and hence inspiration; it is a place where often avant-garde art is produced; it offers anonymity and the possibility for recreation; and it is the place of modern life and modern culture.

I will examine artists and art in the urban environment focusing primarily on literary writers and musicians. The city is an attraction for artists from both high and experimental art to low brow and popular art. The city not only provides a place for artists to work but it is most often the focus of much of their artistic expression.

In the nineteenth century Baudelaire wrote poems about the urban experience in Paris, and Charles Dickens wrote realist novels depicting life in London; whilst only a decade ago rappers from Los Angeles and New York expressed life in a big city through hip hop. Ultimately the city provides a wealth of inspiration, it is where the majority of people live and it is were human nature and human emotion is most frequently encountered and best expressed.

Baudelaire, a French poet, wrote pioneering poetry about the city and the experiences of city living and modern life. Gilloch (1996: 133) suggests that Baudelaire, “presents the finest articulation of the experience of the modern individual in the urban setting.” For Baudelaire the role of the artist was to express modern life and human emotion and the only way to do this was to engage with the outside world. Schwarzbach (1979: 1) suggests that, “modern life is city life”, hence, the city is a playground of inspiration and the perfect setting for the artistic expression of modern life. Gilloch (1996:138) suggests that Baudelaire had an ambivalent relationship with the city.

The city was both heaven and hell; both bestial and beautiful. Benjamin (Quoted in Gilloch 1996: 138) argued that, “No one felt less at home in Paris than Baudelaire.” This love hate relationship with – and response to – the city was the perfect inspiration for Baudelaire.

Although the city was the location of ruination and intoxication it was also compelling. “For Baudelaire, as for Benjamin, the color and noise of the street and the hustle and bustle of the modern metropolitan crowd were not only vital components of the text, but were the necessary conditions surrounding its genesis” (Gilloch 1996: 138). The crowds and the movement; the flows of people and the busyness of the city were the necessary environment for the creation of art expressing modern life. Baudelaire had an ambivalent approach to the city. A love hate relationship that inspired him to write.

He acted as a flaneur – a walker – drifting with the crowd. Benjamin (1983: 55) suggests that, “The flaneur is someone abandoned in the crowd.” In the crowd but outside the crowd the flaneur receives fleeting impressions of modern life.The artist in Benjamin’s view is a spectator of the urban who is distinctly separate from the crowd in order to observe. The view of artists as flaneur’s, strolling through the city streets, inhaling their surroundings, demonstrates the possibilities for inspiration in the city.

The industrial revolution from 1750 to 1850 produced massive population growth in London. Charles Dickens who wrote and lived in London through these times was largely inspired by London and the possibilities for interaction the large city enabled.strong Dickens, like Baudelaire, had an ambivalent approach to the city.

Schwarzbach (1979: 23) suggests that Dickens had an “attraction of repulsion” towards the city. This repulsion is seen in his novels.strong “Places and people, in the city of London are used in Oliver Twist to evoke a nightmare vision of a bestial city of death” (Schwarzbach 1979: 47). The city is portrayed as dark and evil. It generates fear and suspense for both the characters and the readers.

Also like Baudelaire, Dickens played the role of a flaneur. He was inspired by walking through the city and absorbing his surroundings. “Over the course of his writing career, he began to sense the connection between inspiration and walking the streets” (Schwarzbach 1979: 26).

Dickens’ daughter Kate recalls that her dad “would walk through busy, noisy streets, which would act like a tonic and enable him to take up with new vigour the flagging interest of his story and breathe new life into its pages”” (Schwarzbach 1979: 27).

In this sense Dickens’ art and the city were entwined, the city gave his stories life. G.K. Chesterton (Quoted in Benjamin 1983: 60) implies that Dickens was a flaneur by suggesting he drifted through the city, eyes wide open.strong “Whenever he had done drudging, he had no other resource but drifting, and he drifted over half London… Dickens did not stamp these places on his mind; he stamped his mind on these places.” Dickens expressed the phenomena of the industrial age city like no one before him. He used the city as both an inspiration for his novels and as a setting.

Both Baudelaire and Dickens expressed urban life in new ways. The appearance of larger cities in Europe in the nineteenth century demanded new ways of expression through art. The large, industrial, city was a new phenomenon and needed to be represented in a new way.strong Hence, ground-breaking art often came out of such cities as Paris and London. Gilloch (1996: 133) argues that, “the city creates and demands a new mode of representation, a new artistic sensibility and practice, corresponding to the transformed perception of the urban environment.” The city became the place of modern life and a new way of living needed a new kind of expression. Baudelaire saw the poet as a hero in his battle to “articulate the modern” (Gilloch 1996: 150). In this sense avant-garde art often appears out of the city due to necessity, as pioneering styles and techniques are often the only way to express certain aspects of city life.

Kazin (1991: 130-31) explains that New York in the 1940s was the center of a new style of painting called abstract expressionism.

In New York, abstract expressionism made the city, “the capital of modern art”… The new painting was wonderful in the subversive colors and rhythms that breathed the variety and excitement of New York, a town where native sons notoriously gape in wonder and feel like recent arrivals.

The colorful abstract expressionist painting mirrors the hustle and bustle and excitement of the New York lifestyle. It is a form of painting or representation inspired by city living. Additionally, the city is a place where like minded artists can find each other, help each other and use each other to produce pioneering, avant-garde art.

Nick Cave is an Australian artistic icon. In his early days of making avant-garde punk music he lived in two cities and played in two separate bands. He resided in Melbourne in the seventies and played in a band called The Boys Next Door. The band redefined punk music in Australia: “They were trouble: private school yobbos who refused to grow up, but whose career would be a matter of shaping this juvenile refusal into sophisticated refusal. They transformed yob punk into urbane art” (Wark 1999: 91).

However, the Melbourne punk scene became all too familiar and as with many artists before him Cave needed something new: a new scene, a new landscape and ultimately new inspiration. In 1980 Cave moved to London and formed a new band called The Birthday Party. At that time London was in recession and cultural depression. Wark (1999: 91) writes that, “Cave lived in dismal squat… Gigs were few, but the band were not entirely without friends.”

The fact that Cave and his music were not welcomed in London but he still managed to find a small number of fans and friends illustrates the way cities can provide an audience even for the most eccentric, out of favour, act. Cave’s move to London shows the way in which cities act as a place of anonymity and in turn help in the process of recreation both artistically and personally.

His move to London, although difficult at first, ultimately gave him a new life, new music and a new crowd. Nick Cave is in many ways an avant garde artist: he writes songs, he writes books, is an actor and a poet. The city is a place where his art is heard and appreciated. Wark (1999: 93) eloquently suggests that, “His songs were not representations of violence, death, eros and chaos, they were expressions of a kind of inchoate experience at the threshold of subjectivity. They were not meant to be performed for an audience but with one.” Cave is an artist who grew out of the city. He lived in cultural exile, and through sheer hard work implanted his music upon the people of London. He performed “with the audience” and represented themes in new ways. The city is a place where avant-garde ideas can be easier expressed and where artistic change and development is often more easily facilitated.

Nick Cave is just one example of a musician producing pioneering, “new” music in the city. In fact, there is a definite link between new genres of music and the city. Blues originated in New Orleans and it is where classic Blues Clubs still are; Nashville is the home of country music; Chicago and New York are the two key cities in jazz music; New York has also been the focal point for new styles of rock and roll; and lastly, Los Angeles and New York are the home cities of hip hop and hip hop culture. Artists and fans stick together in the city; they form clubs and open specialized bars.

In this sense certain cities attract certain artists. For example, if you play country music you will find a welcoming and appreciative audience in Nashville. Gaye et al. (2003: 109) suggest that, “the city has long been an inspiration and site for musical expression, whether as a metaphor in classical composition, a source of rhythms and sounds in jazz and electric music, a stage for street performance or the cradle of a walkman generation.” The modern city is a place of headphones and mp3 players.

Music is an integral part of the city and city life. Musicians are attracted to the city because of the many bars and pubs available for performance, the culture, the inspiration and the friendship of like minded musicians.

One of the new genres that emerged out of New York and Los Angeles in the 1980s was hip hop. The majority of hip hop musicians came out of the ghettos and expressed the difficult life and racism Negro-Americans often had to face. It was new music combining elements of rock, funk, jazz, and blues. The effects of life in the ghettos and the need for expression largely influenced the development of hip hop. It represented, in a sense, the new modern life, or the late modern life. Hip hop musicians were replicating what Baudelaire and Dickens were striving to do a century before. They were trying to express one particular form of modern city life. Hip hop created a culture of its own. It expressed the oppression and focused on the inequalities of city life. N.W.A (Niggaz With Attitude) exemplified this approach; their lyrics were so anti-establishment and so offensive and violent that the FBI actually sent a letter of concern to their record company (Cave et al. 2004:82).

“Niggaz start to mumble, they wanna rumble
mix em and cook em in a pot like gumbo…
Here’s a murder rap to keep you dancin
with a crime record like Charles Manson
AK-47 is the tool .”(N.W.A 1989)

This extremely violent style of hip hop was later termed, “gangsta rap”, as it portrayed the violent lifestyle of those living with gangs in the ghettos of Los Angeles and New York. The rappers as artists and musicians lived and breathed the city. Hip hop was their music, graffiti their paintings and the city their inspiration. The poor sections of cities, the gangs, the pollution, the warehouses, and the run down housing is vividly seen in their lyrics as they aim to show the wider world the reality of their situation.

The Beastie Boys, a three piece hip hop act from New York, also dwell on city life in their songs. However, unlike “gangsta rap” they focus on the positives of city life. In their latest album they wrote a song called, “An Open Letter to NYC”. This song demonstrates their connection to the city and city life. The city has been a major part in the making of themselves and their music. It is a home; a place of inspiration and a place were the majority of their audience are found.

“Dear New York this is a love letter
To you and how you brought us together
We can’t say enough about all you do
“Cause in the city we”re ourselves and electric too “(Beastie Boys 2004).

The Beastie Boys express a great fondness towards the city. It brought the band together, and it is the one place where they feel comfortable. Their lyrics focus on the diversity, the art and the culture.

“Brownstones, water towers, trees, skyscrapers
Writers, prize fighters and Wall Street traders
We come together on the subway cars
Diversity unified, whoever you are.” (Beastie Boys 2004).

The city is portrayed as a welcoming and unified community. The Beastie Boys’ contentment in the city can be seen as what Park et al. (1967: 41) suggests is the “attraction of the metropolis”:

Every individual finds somewhere among the varied manifestations of city life the sort of environment in which he expands and feels at ease; finds, in short the moral climate in which his peculiar nature obtains the stimulations that bring his innate dispositions to full and free expression.

The city is a place where musicians and other artists alike can find the sort of environment which they feel relaxed in. This might be in a community group with similar interests, or in a bar where a certain type of music is played, or a gallery where a certain type of art is displayed. The city accommodates multiple and varied communities and groups that can encourage artists and support their work.

Although city life offers so many possibilities for the artist there are some restraints and problems for artists who reside in the city. For example, it is becoming more difficult for artists to actually live in the city center due to rising property prices. The costs of inner city living can economically pressure the artist.

Commercialization and the huge corporations that base themselves in many cities can also encourage artists to commodity their artwork. For example, hip hop in Los Angeles has become so commercialized that many original rappers have distanced themselves from the current hip hop scene. Fishman (1987: 485) argues that a new city is emerging in which advanced communications technology has completely superseded the face-to-face contact of the traditional city. New media technologies have connected the world beyond spatial boundaries.

Phenomena like “virtual communities” break down the need for artists to live in artistic communities in the city because they can interact with similar communities on the Internet. For example, a hip hop fan or musician in Melbourne can communicate with a hip hop musician in New York; there is no need for a geographically fixed community in the city.

Castells (2002: 132) argues that, “on-line networks become forms of “specialized communities;” that is, forms of sociability constructed around specific interests.” This new technology, in a sense, breaks down one attraction of the city for artists. Geographical boundaries are broken by new technology. Special interest communities on the Internet link artists that could only be linked previously if they worked and lived in the same city.

New media technologies may diminish the need for an artistically linked community in the city. However, the city has been and will continue to be the site of modern life and the site were artists get glimpses of this life and represent it through their work. Gaye et al. (2003: 109) suggests that, “whether a pleasant stroll or a mundane commute, being in the city involves dynamic creative improvisation.” The modern city may be the center of economical, political and technological production but it is also the center of “creative improvisation” and new artistic movements. A broad range of artists from Baudelaire to N.W.A have found inspiration and motivation from city living. Pike (1981: 243) suggests that, “the central fascination of the city, both real and fictional, is that it embodies man”s contradictory feelings – pride, love, anxiety and hatred – toward the civilization he has created and the culture to which he belongs.’ The city is a place of contradicting feelings, of paradoxes and ambivalence. Both the negatives and positives of the city life are expressed through art and the contradictions of modern life inspire the artist.

Ultimately the artist reconstructs a version of reality – no matter how dark and pessimistic – to generate awareness, tolerance, appreciation and a brighter future for all.