CHICAGO, THEY LIKED TO SAY during the regime of the first Mayor Daley, was “a city that works.”
Seattle might be described as a city that works and works and works.
In the March issue of the spunky art zine The RedHeaded Stepchild, Jeff Miller suggests a focal point of the Seattle visual-art scene, and of the city as a whole: “Inasmuch as it has an identity, it’s about work.”
Quoting unidentified national mags, Miller sez LA’s schtick is the tits (“stuffed with silicone but fun to play with”); SF’s is the head (“tuned in or turned on, doing the brainwork”); Seattle’s is the foot (“working hard, shut up all day in socks and shoes, not welcome in polite company–pulling everything else along, but for no purpose, really, except hard work and money”).
“In Seattle,” Miller writes, “you work because it’s expected of you, because your dad did it, because you have no distractions; in short, because you’re a good Scandinavian. That’s also why–if I may stretch a little–you make and show your artn which means that Seattle’s response to the production/reception duality might be a different, but equally contemporary, kind of creation.”
Later on in his piece: “The fraction of our lives not taken up by work and sleep is occupied by home and television: if Los Angeles has claimed the latter two, then the former are left for the rest of us.
“I believe that Seattle’s spirit is shaped by exhausted American labor. The home of Microsoft understands, more than most, the sacrifice of life to paid employment. It has been a slacker haven, and an old-school blue-collar town. Artists, curators, and critics keep stopping by Seattle, looking for this city’s artistic voice, but the voice is never home: it’s too busy working a day job.
“In the end, I think the most striking feature of Seattle art might be the day job itself, or the negotiation between the job and artistic creation. Extraordinarily rich creations have sprung, perhaps, from LA’s strange preoccupation with domestic growth. The survival strategy that art negotiates in Seattle, the artistic response to the dominant features of this city’s environment, might then–as in LA–itself be the most compelling subject for the city’s art.”
Here we have an explanation for the MS workplace culture, and the Nordstrom workplace culture that preceded it.
It explains the homey, just-good-enough-without-being-showy aesthetic of the old Kingdome.
It explains the local theater scene’s historic emphasis on production rather than hype (and on accessible, workmanlike entertainment).
It explains the music scene’s emphasis on honesty and sincerity rather than hype and glamour. It explains the DIY obsession of the Olympia scene. Conversely, it also explains the powers-that-be’s historic distrust of bohemian culture and their abhorrance of youth culture.
It explains the REI culture’s vision of recreation not as “leisure” but as vigorous action.
It explains caffeine (the drug of active people) and Costco (where you have to work to shop).
It explains why we don’t care as much for passive icons such as beauty-pageant queens (unlike Portland).
It explains the neighborhood-activists’ drives to preserve Lake Union as “a working lake” and the Industrial District.
It doesn’t explain glass art (except the craftsmanship atttitudes associated with it), Kenny G (except as office music taken to the level of stardom), or the Hendrix cult (he was a soft-spoken, intelligent craftsman, but his public image among white boomers isn’t). But these could be exceptions that prove the rule.
It also might at least partly explain my own aesthetic preference toward honest working-stiff culture instead of the gussified-up prettiness emphasized in most Seattle picture books; and my abhorrance of the local media’s whole yup-leisure idolatry.
It explains why Greg Lundgren of the Vital 5 Productions gallery felt the need to start a little zine-and-poster “movement,” Artists for a Work-Free America. In someplace like Honolulu, Miami, or New Orleans, the value of letting-go and freeing your spirit aren’t things people need to be preached to about.
And it might explain civic leaders’ “world class” obsession (from the World’s Fair to the new fancy-schmancy buildings) as the expression of guys who wanted to be seen as constantly striving to be their best.
And it would certainly explain the city’s social schtick of uptight, polite “niceness.” It’s the schtick of a town that forever puts out the help-wanted sign “Now Hiring Smiling Faces,” and too often stigmatizes anyone guilty of insufficient perkiness.
And the menacing, near-psychotic grins on all the clean-cut yups’ faces in condo and restaurant ads? They’re the faces of characters who know they can’t ever let go of their passive-aggressive workplace personalities. Not even at home.
NEXT: A last look inside the OK Hotel.
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