UNIT 5: ART TODAY

The Q Classroom

Teacher: The Unit 5 question is "What makes a work of art popular?" What do you think, Marcus?

Marcus: One thing that makes a work of art popular is if the artist is popular. What I mean is, when artists draw attention to themselves in some way – by being controversial or beautiful or getting a lot of publicity for any reason, then people get more interested in their art and buy it.

Teacher: Interesting point. What else makes a work of art popular? Sophy?

Sophy: I think that a work of art becomes popular when it expresses something that is true for a lot a people; for example, when it expresses a feeling that everybody has or if it's about n experience that many people have had.

Teacher: What do you think, Yuna? What makes a work of art popular?

Yuna: Maybe it depends on the art. Popular books and movies are usually exciting.

Teacher: Hmm, so maybe they're not necessarily about experiences we've had, but about experiences we would like to have?

Yuna: Yes. Or about htings we'd rather watch or read about than experience ourselves, like mysteries and thrillers.

Teacher: What's your opinion, Felix? What makes a work of art popular?

Felix: I think I agree with Yuna that it depends on the art. Popular music is usually music eith s catchy beat that people can easily sing with or dance to.

Sophy: That's right. And popular visual art that people think is pretty – the kinds of things they like to put on walls in their homes. Sometimes critics like art that is disturbing or thought-provoking, but I think most people just like things that look nice.

LISTENING 1: MANGA'S NEW POPULARITY

Listen for Main Ideas

Peporter: It's posible that you haven't yet heard of the Japanese comic-book style called mange. But don't worry, you soon will. Manga is known for its distinctive artistic style, in which the youthful-looking heroes have big round eyes. It's been popular in Japan since the 1950s. The U.S and Europe started to pay attention in the late '80s and early '90s, and now you'll see the comic books in unexpected places like bookstores and your local library. So what's the big deal about manga? We're visited the recent Planet Comic convention and asked around.

John Abrams is a buyer for a major bookstore chain. Abrams says all the major bookstore chains have taken note of the rise in manga's popularity. The comics I recall from my childhood were about superheroes battling bad guys. But manga is different. John Abrams says that manga is not like the old comics.

John Abrams: Our generation grew up reading about heroes fighting so save thw world, but manga tells all kinds of stories. I think that attacts different readers. And each manga story or a character. He or she can usually read a whole series of books about that same character. And that means that bookstores are paying attention – if someone is buying a series of books, we want that person to be our customer.

Reporter: Abrams says there's greater variety in the tyoes of stories manga tells.

John Abrams: Hust about everything, from science fiction to high-school dramas to sports stories. And I think another factor is the art itself. Manga looks a lot like video games, and that attacts many younger readers.

Reporter: Manga, unlike earlier American comics, appeals to a different breed of reader: girls. Sixty percent of manga readers are female. Fourteen-year-old Tina Roberts is one of the young readers at the convention. We met her and her mother at a booth that specializes in shoju, manga written especially for girls.

Tina Roberts: Manga is really great. I really like the characters and the stories. I used to think comics were all about fighting, but manga has stories about regular girls like me.

At Planet Comic last year, I saw Rumiko Takahashi. I couldn't believe it! She writes Inu Yasha, a really good story about a girl who goes back in time. These conventions are really cool because sometimes you get to meet the artists.

Reporter: Although many people believe true manga still comes from Japan, a lot of manga or manga style books are now produced in North America, many by female artists. And this may be contributing to its increased popularity. After our encounter with Tina, we attended a session about North American manga, and about an American manga company called Tokyopop. Colin Baster, a UCLA graduate student who's studying manga, explained Toyopop's success.

Colin Baster: Yeah, this guy Stuart Levy founded Tokyopop in L.A. in 1997, after working over in Japan, and he's had amazing success. And he broke all the Western comic book rules. For one thing, he published all his books from right to left, just like they do in Japan, but the opposite of traditional American comics. And he printed them in black and white, like most manga, not colar, like most American comics. And every single book sold for less than ten dollars. They must be doing something right. In 2005, they reached a thousand tilles and are bringing in more than forty million dollars in yearly sales. They're on all the social networking sites. And they sell video games, produce films, and hold contests. No wonder manga is so popular.

Reporter: Margaret Brown, a librarian from Topeka, Kansas has a different take on manga;s popularity. She's part of a panel that will talk later today about manga and its new role in libraries.I asked her if her library included manga among its tiltes.

Margaret Brown: Oh, my goodness, yes. We've got a whole section devoted to manga in the children and young adult categories. Manga is incredibly popular. On any given day, I'd say at least three-quarters of our manga titles are in circulation, so we plan to expand that section of the library. That's why it's so exciting to come to conventions like these to see all of the great new tiltes.

Reporter: According to Brown, there's a connection between manga and more traditional forms of literture.

Margaret Brown: I think anything that helps young people have an appreciation for reading is terrific. And because manga looks like television shows and video games, it can get kids to turn off the TV and actually read. And like all lliterature, good manga shows the development of characters and plot over time. We're even starting a manga discussion group at our library so younger readers can talk about these important parts of any story.

LISTENING 2: THOMAS KINKADE

Listen for Main Ideas

Morley Safer: OK, a little test for you: Who is the artist who's sold more canvases than any other painter in history, more than Picasso, Rembrandt, Gauguin, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh combined?

If you didn't say Thomas Kinkade, then you've been shopping in the wrong places. He is America's – the world's – most collected living artist.

He produces paintings by the container-load. He is to art what Henry Ford was to automobiles. Ford said of his Model T, "You can have it in any color, as long as it's black". Thomas Kindkade might say, "You can have it in any color, as long as it's in every color".

Thomas Kinkade: Everyone an identify with a fragrant garden, with the beauty of sunset, with the quiet of nature, with a warm and copy cottage.

Safer: Cottage. He is one-man cottage industry. There's Candlelight Cottage, Twilight Cottage, Cottage by the Sea, Sweetheart Cottage, Foxglove Cottage, Teacup Cottage. For variety, ther are lighthouses, old-time street scenes and gardens by the gazillion. If you like six sugars in your coffee, these are the paintings for you.

While some art lovers might head for New York or Paris or Florence, Kinkade fans made their pilgrimage to quaint and copy Placerville, Clifornia, where the matter grew up.

Mr. Kinkade: There's been million seller books and million-seller CDs, but there hasn't been, till now, million-seller art.

We hav found a way to bring to millions of people an art that they can understand.

Safer: Art and the power of marketing and multiplication. The cottage industry is now traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the name Media Arts Group. Last year alone, it sold over $100 million worth of reproductions. Last summer, Craig Fleming, then CEO of the company, took us through the unique Kinkade doning proccess.

A few dads if paint and – Presto – each canvas: $1,000 to $50,000, framed. The operation is huge. More than 400 employees work in this vast artist's garret, where forklifts and power tools and assembly lines push the artist's vision out the door to the more than 350 Kinkade gallaries in the U.S and overseas; more than 600 more are being planned.

Is there any concern that as this thing just gets bigger and bigger, people might be concerned that it's the result of a proccess and a factory floot, but there's no Kinkade in the Kinkade?

Mr. Craig Fleming: Uh-huh. Well, Tom paints every single painting that – that we produce, and it's still an original Kinkade, as far as we've concerned, of his image.

Safer: Picasso, that than of 20th century art, was a rank amateur when it came to marketing. How do you regard Picasso?

Mr. Kinkade: I don't believe, in time, that he will be regarded as the titan that he is now. He is a man of great talent who, to me, used it to create three Pocassos before breakfast because he could get $10,000 each for them.

Safer: You may not create three Kinkades before breakfast, but you may sell 30,000 before lunch.

Mr. Heming: There's over 40 walls in the average American home, and Tom says our job is so figure out how to populate every single wall in every single home and every single business throughout the world with hos paintings.

d