How To Survive a Night in Jail

    Happy Fourth of July weekend everyone!  Fourth of July represents a high point for dui arrests- lots of special funding for check points, etc.  That means, statistically speaking, you have a better chance of ending up in jail this weekend then any other.  Now, I counsel a lot of people AFTER they've been to jail, and I always think to myself, "Gosh- I wish could talk to people about this experience BEFORE they went to jail."  Here are my tips:

1.        Be aware of how your behavior while you are in jail effects your loved ones.  Hey, everyone knows that being in jail sucks, but being in jail overnight is not the end of your world, and you should not be baby when you are calling your wife, husband, girl friend, boyfriend, etc.  Take a deep breath and grow a pair because....
2.       95% of the time you are only going to be in jail one night.  The Cops can hold you for up to three days, but in most standard dui scenarios, it's just the one night, then you get out.  Trust me, I see people getting released out of jail almost every day- usually in the mid morning.
3.        Be aware of your specific type of jail environment.  There are two main types of jail- the first is the big city central lock up- lots of drunk people, some hobos and a few guys/gals who are regulars.  The other type is the small town lock up.  You need to figure out which of these you are in, because if you are in a big city lock up, the guards will be your friends and the inmates potential problems, whereas if you are in the sticks, you need to watch out for the guards.  Small town jail personnel can be big time assholes.
4.        Enjoy your time!  For most people, that one night will be the only time they see the inside of a jail cell- don't spend your time being a cry baby bitch- you want an anecdote that will stand up over time.
5.        Do not talk shit.  To anyone, about anything.  Winning an argument inside jail is worthless and potentially life threatening. 

      Have a happy and save July 4th weekend- if you are going to be out indulging take a spin on the internet for dui checkpoints in your area before you go out- they are often made public right before the weekend starts.

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex by Philip D. Curtin

The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex
Second Edition
by Philip D. Curtin
first published 1990, second edition 1998
Cambridge University Press

     I think I've mentioned this before, but always be on the look out for history books, published by Cambridge University Press, that cost less then five bucks.  Paying attention to the publisher can save you a lot of wasted reading time.

    A major trend in history over the last thirty years has been the shift away from books that dealt with The History of Country X or The History of the Such and Such War to books that try to relate multiple events to one another as well as the elaboration of areas of inquiry that span separate historical subjects.  A major example of this trend is the rise of "Atlantic History" which seeks to relate what happened in the new world with events in the old world in a specific and non-specious manner.  In American History, the most notable authors in this area are David Hackett Fischer and his seminal Albion's Seed as well as Bernard Bailyn.

   The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex is a simple example of what I would call the "new atlantic history," written in an easy to read prose style that makes it accessible to anyone with an undergraduate level education.  Curtin charts the rise of the Plantation complex in south America and the Caribbean with reference to the internal history of Africa, the settlement history of the New World, economic history and a heavy emphasis on demographics.  It's a sophisticated, of the moment approach which undoubtably explains why the edition I read was the 13th edition of the 2nd printing (i.e. it's a hit.)  Perhaps the success has something to do with the moderate length (200 pages) and almost total lack of foot notes- I'm guessing this book is an undergraduate staple in history departments on three different continents.

More on Pacific Law Center Shut Down

        Oh glorious, glorious day.  Pacific Law Center, the high volume advertising/high pressure sales tactic using criminal defense "law firm" is folding up shop.  Two observations:  Their staff:attorney ratio was 6:1- that is really high, and tells you that at least a third of those 107 employees were sales staff.  The claim that their "No Money Down" policy was in some way harming them is a farce. I have never encountered an ex-PLC client who didn't throw down a ton of money.

      Again, just read their Yelp Reviews if you want to see what real clients thought about these cats.

       Here is the San Diego Union Tribune summary:

         Kerry Armstrong, a defense lawyer who worked for Steigerwalt for 11 years but did not work at Pacific Law Center, said Wednesday’s announcement was inevitable.

“I knew it was coming; I just didn’t know when,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong said the firm was hamstrung by its business model and a poor reputation that changed little despite Steigerwalt’s efforts.

“I think Kerry really wanted to change it when he went in,” Armstrong said. “He just didn’t put the right people in place to do it for him.”

Book Review: A History of the Hapsburg Empire by Robert A. Kann

A History of the Hapsburg Empire: 1526-1918
by Robert A. Kann
p. 1980
University of California Press

   One consequence of WWII is that American universities picked up a ton of first-rate scholars.  Robert Kann (two "n"s) was one of them.  He was a German speaking historian and he came over to the United States and wrote a ton of books about the Austro-Hungarian empire that rely on almost 100% non-English language sources.  Unfortunately, English was his second language and his prose reads like it.

  This book is an example of something I like to call "Dad history," like it's counterpart, Dad music, Dad history shows high level of technical ability but is either out of date or lacks artistic inspiration.  You know, culture... for dad's.

  The story of the Hapsburg Empire is, to my mind, the strangest chapter of European history.  If you are looking for in depth description of how an Absolutist European Monarch copes with the vicissitude of a multi-national polygot Empire during the birth of modernism.... unfortunately this isn't the right book for you.  But: It is the right subject to be investigating.

  I suppose the answer to "Who cares?" on this subject consists of three names:  Adolf Hitler, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka.  Ok asshole you don't give a shit about Austria, but they produced some pretty heavy hitters there at the end.  This is not the kind of book where the author gets into hows and whys but it does lay out the scenery of what this crazy place was all about.

  Perhaps the most (only?) interesting chapter in Kann's book is the description of the implementation of an empire wide Congress, with political parties and everything, that was introduced by the Emperor in the mid 19th century.  It's hard to ignore the role of this shift to participatory democracy and the rise of organized anti-antisemitism.   SPECIFICALLY, Alois Hitler, Hitler's father worked in for the Austrian government as a CUSTOMS AGENT.  One of the Austrian political parties drew heavily in it's support among German speaking public employees.  This was the same party that early on adopted Antisemitism, before it was cool.  Thus, Hitler grew up in the home of this government bureaucrat who was officially, politically anti-semitic.

   It just goes to show ya that democracy ain't always the greatest.

Book Review: Sound Effects by Simon Frith

Sound Effects:
Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock and Roll
by Simon Frith
p 1981
originally published in 1978 as "The Sociology of Rock"
Pantheon Books

    Simon Frith is an academic who has melded a love for rock and roll/popular music with an thorough grounding in the vocabulary and concerns of US/UK sociology.  The main relevance of this book is grounded in the fact that it was first published in 1978, and that it fully accounts for the emergence of the punk movement.  For whatever reason, the American publisher decided to remain it with that terrible, terrible name, but "Sociology of Rock" certainly does describe what Frith expostulates.

   Sociology of Rock is dated in the sense that the book is written in leaden, academic prose.  On the other hand, it is relevant because the vocabulary that Frith employs continues to be descriptive of the same subjects today.  In other words, in the areas where "nothing has changed" Frith is great, in the areas where change is what needs to be explained, Frith is useless.  That is one of the bugg a boos about all the social sciences.  Good theories either tend to describe a static structure very well or they describe a theory of change, but never both using the same idea.

   Frith is at his most accurate when he describes institutions in the language of 70s marxist inspired sociology. For example, it's hard to dispute his description of the role of local musicians:

  "As local live performers, musicians remain a part of the community subject to its value and needs, but as recording artists they experience the pressure of the market, they automatically become rock and roll imperialists, pursuing national and international sales.  The recording artists' community is defined by purchasing patterns."  

   Perhaps you don't think of local musicians in the same way, but I can assure you that Frith is accurate.  Similarly, his description of the production of recorded music is hard to quarrel with simply because Marxist vocabulary knows how to describe the production of a good.

   However, when it comes to audience, Firth shows himself for the leaden 70s era college professor that he is. For example, he cavalierly summarizes fan magazines of the 60s and 70s saying "the essence of fan magazines is that they respond to audience taste."  However, in Selling Sound, Diane Peckhold rather conclusively establishes that in Country Music, prior to Rock and Roll, the fan magazines were in fact started by the fans themselves.  The music press followed the fan run magazines in the United States.

   As you would expect from a 70s Marxist sociologist, his chapters on "Consumption" are weak, weak, weak.  This era of sociology did not handle consumption with aplomb.  The focus on values as expressed by subcultures is a dead end.  Ultimately those values are those of the consumer.  At the same time, the late 70s working class cultures of the United Kingdom, where Frith did his highly amusing "field work" to not work as universal stand-in's for "youth culture."  Further more, the in depth discussion of "youth culture" hardly reflects the diversity of consumer society as it relates to rock music or any other cultural product.

Pacific Law Center Closes

      

       A local law firm known for its high-volume advertising is going out of business. The Pacific Law Center -- with offices in the Golden Triangle, in San Diego; Chula Vista; and Escondido -- has stopped taking new clients, according to attorney Kerry Steigerwalt, who has owned the law firm for more than two years. The firm has 19 attorneys and a staff of 107 people in all. 

           Steigerwalt, a veteran San Diego defense attorney, said the office will complete all unfinished cases and will not shut its doors on any existing clients. "Every client will be taken care of," Steigerwalt promised. "We're going to complete everyone's case." Steigerwalt said he announced the firm's closure at a company meeting on Wednesday morning. He said the Pacific Law Center's high-volume, saturation-advertising business model "was not working" and has been a "management nightmare" for him. The Pacific Law Center was the focus of several serious complaints from clients before Steigerwalt purchased the company in February 2008.

(NBC 7/MSNBC)

Movie Review: Pandora's Box d. GW Pabst *1929*

  

    


















PANDORA'S BOX directed by G.W. Pabst *1929*

     Inspired by Netflix streaming service, I've decided to make a move into film writing.  I'm not going to review contemporary releases, nor am I going to bitch about Hollywood.  I don't see the point in telling the world about crappy Hollywood movies.  I do see a strong link between film/cinemas/movies and other subjects I write about on this blog: the production of cultural objects, the relationship of artists and audiences and the nature of creativity in the world of mass media.  As a forum for discussing those subjects, film actually surpasses music in that the film industry both proceeded AND directly inspired the music industry.  For example, the practice of calling a cultural product a "hit" was INVENTED by film and ADOPTED by music decades later.  Thus, movies are relevant to the project of this blog, and Netflix streaming service is the break through I need to carry out my project.

      I wanted to start by discussing how I watched Pandora's Box- I started at my office, watching it in two twenty minute increments while I waited for people to arrive for their free consultations.  Netflix actually keeps track of where you start and stop the film.  I noticed right away that the prospect of not having to sit in front of the television to watch a two hour plus silent film cheered me immensely. When I went home, I had dinner, then my wife had a business meeting, so I watched the remaining hour and forty five minutes in two more blocks, interspersing the watching with reading a book.  This was so revolutionary for me that I wanted to write about it, even though it is 'boring' material.

    If you are going to address film in a comprehensive manner, you need to understand the pre-talkies era.  Perhaps the most important fact to understand about the era is how the commonly used "SILENT FILM" term is hugely inaccurate.  Films where never "silent."  The introduction of characters talking on screen was a technical innovation, but films were accompanied by sound from almost the very beginning. Popular films were typically presented with a live orchestra.

   The technical achievements in this era were in no way primitive, but the preservation of the master films was primitive, and that impacts the ability of the audience to appreciate the merit of "silent" movies.  I can personally attest to having seen multiple silent era films that were so poorly preserved as to make them literally unwatchable- and these were commercially available dvd's put out by major film studios.  Also, when watching a silent movie you need to have some concern for the audio soundtrack which accompanies the film.  Silent movies worked because you saw them in a live setting, with people playing instruments.   The "quiet theater" aesthetic of the talkies era was not shared with the silent film aesthetic, which more resembles a circus or vaudevillian show.

   Might I suggest watching silent era films released by Criterion Collection?  Whatever the film, you know Criterion Collection is going to do a bang up job on the re-release.  Pandora's Box (Criterion Collections Spine #358) was released in 1929, directed by G.W. Pabst.  The first talkie was released in 1927.  The thing to understand is that Pandora's Box represents the end of the silent era, and thus the techniques used and themes are as sophisticated as any in silent film.  The film looks beautiful- no small task for a 1929 movie produced in Germany and Criterion has provided four separate sound tracks.  I believe the track that Netflix uses is track one, an "orchestral score similar to what was heard at the big European music palaces of the day."

  It was the first time I had ever been blown away by the sound accompanying a silent film and it made quite an impression.  How can you be fair to these films without considering the impact of a live orchestra on the audience?  It makes for a significantly different product.

  The second fact to understand about Pandora's Box is that Pabst made it in the pre-code era.  It has a frankness and openness about sexual relationships that is in many ways more insightful then the pablum one gets in contemporary rom-coms.

    The third and final fact to know is that Pandora's Box made Louise Brooks a fucking star.  The story of Pabst "discovering" Brooks playing a circus acrobat in a Howard Hawkes film is the ur-Hollywood Starlet story.  I'm not going to lie: I found parts of Pandora's Box extremely tedious.  I could NOT have watched it on DVD- ever- ever- I would have turned it off after twenty minutes.  However, given the opportunity to cut it up into smaller segments over the course of a whole day, I found the viewing experience to be close to exhilarating.  As I watched Pandora's Box, I had plenty of time to think about silent films, Louise Brooks and G.W. Pabst.  All those topics are worth some quiet contemplation.  Louise Brooks: one of the first Hollywood starlet/it girls; G.W. Pabst- a filmmaker sophisticated beyond his place and time; Silent movies- not that annoying if they have a kick ass sound track and you break them up a little.

SAN DIEGO DUI DEATH TRAPS

       Here is another post I wanted to do about DUI Death Traps... 95% of all the DUI's I get involve people who were driving around on Friday or Saturday night at or around 1- 2 AM the next morning.  This is information that is especially useful for people who live in the San Diego area and don't already have a DUI.

      Some places you want to avoid:

     5th Avenue heading uptown:  Hillcrest/Bankers Hill-  There is a DUI check point that pops up here at least once every couple of months, if you are driving uptown you want to avoid 5th Ave.  This covers post-Padres game scenarios, Gaslamp to Hillcrest, etc.  San Diego, CA. 92103.

    The Gala Foods Parking Lot:  South Park/Golden Hill-  This is the classic South Park spot, where Fern jogs down Grape st.  It's a confusing intersection when sober because of the odd placement of the stop signs and traffic coming in several different directions.

    Grand and Garnet Streets leading to Interstate 5: Pacific Beach- This is prime hunting grounds for the SDPD on weekends- like shooting ducks in a barrel.

     Interstate 5 between Garnet exit and the Interstate 5/8 interchange:  central San Diego.  This is the stretch of freeway that runs between the Pacific Beach hunting grounds and people heading downtown, south bay and east county from those places.  The California Highway Patrol is able to feast along this stretch.

   This is all information that is current as of the date of this post.

Museum Review: *Calder to Warhol* Introducing the Fisher Collection @ The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Triple Elvis by Andy Warhol (1963): Modern Art Triumph.

From Calder to Warhol:
Introducing the Fisher Collections
@ The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)


   This exhibition is notable because it acknowledges a collection accumulated in a single "person," "Donald Fisher."  It's important to observe in passing that "David Fisher" likely represented a combination of four or more people, the Donald Fisher, his wife, their agent and the museum itself.  The market for fine art is cultural economics 101:  high level of interest in the audience, high level of attention from specialists, and, most importantly, a s*** ton of money.  What is it about the successful capitalists' soul that he or she seeks solace in painting, sculpture and architecture?   Historically, "art" was limited to those three subjects.   If you are talking about fine art subjects, it's important to recognize that the discourse for the three subjects has developed in tandem.  It is proper to speak of the philosophy and history of art being wholly concerned with painting, sculpture and architecture.

    It is well known that the original use of "post modernism" was in the field of architecture.  It was a term that was developed, by the artists and critics of architecture, to describe specific groups of buildings built in the twentieth century.  From architecture, it's use spread to anthropology, sociology and the other social sciences.  From those disciplines, it spread through college education to the general public.  Post Modernism represents what you might call a "Kuhnian Paradigm Shift" that goes MODERNISM---POST-MODERNISM.  Now, after a generation of post modern everything, perhaps it's appropriate for a shift back to MODERNISM or an updated version.

   If one was looking for institutions to participate/lead in this shift BACK to Modernism, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a good place to start.  First of all, it has "Modern Art" in the title.  Second of all, it showcases other fine arts and is itself an interesting example of architecture.  Therefore, it is a place where a total discourse about art and meaning can occur.  Donald Fisher founded the GAP, and as such he represents a later day Medici or Pope, using his vast resources to accumulate large quantities of fine art.  Much of this work is painting, but the presence of Alexander Calder as a major feature brings sculpture into the mix.

  Although most of Calder's corpus precedes World War II, everything else in the collection is post War World II paintings, starting at abstract impressionism and running strongly through pop (the triumphant "Triple Elvis" that anchors the last room of the exhibition is a true stunner.)  It left me with a distinct sense of what was in and outside the canon of Modern Art/Painting.  The presence of so many Alexander Calder mobiles left me craving a little space between the works.  It's hard to really observe a three dimensional Alexander Calder mobile when there is another one right behind it.  The exhibition notes mentioned that Fisher has about 50 of these mobiles which brought to mind the car warehouses of comedians like Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld.  I'm sorry, is that like a mental disorder or something with these rich guys?  Are they "proud" of buying so many objects?  If you can figure that psychology out you should be able to become rich.

   But I think the most important to take into the Fisher collection is some well collected thoughts about the relationship of the artist, collector, critic and museum and how they interact to create the experience you have as you view a Roy Lichtenstein painting a the SFMOMA.   Such observations are particular valuable to those who work in the popular cultural arts world.  While it is no longer accurate to talk about "high" and "low" art (how bourgeois can you get?) the distinction between "fine" and "popular" art markets is, if not a full dichotomy, an easily described continuum.  On the one end you have: painting, sculpture, architecture, on the other end:  advertising, commercial signs, consumer product design.  In the middle, movies, music, literature.  You can use the same disciplines to talk about all of them: history, art criticism, economics and they share a common critical vocabulary.

Book Review: A History of Archaeological Thought by Bruce G. Trigger

A History of Archaeological Thought

Second Edition

by Bruce G. Trigger

P. 2006

Cambridge University Press

   Let me give you a tip about used book shopping:  If you see a book that has been published by Cambridge University Press, and it's less then ten bucks, by it.  I found this book at Moe's Used Books in Berkeley- and it was sixteen dollars- it would set you back 80 on Amazon.   This was actually my second start down this path.  Earlier, I bought a book about the great discoveries of archeological history and discovered that it was a boring book filled with the journal's of early 20th century archeologists.  What a bunch of imperialist dicks.  In fact, the main problem I have with archeology is the discipline itself.  Archeology has been used to justify Nazism, Manifest Destiny and the superiority of classical civilization over that of the present.  Hardly a resume which inspires confidence.

    Most, if not all of the bad stuff from archeology dates from before World War II.  As the author points out, 90 percent of all archeologists through out world history are active right now, so writing a history of archeology is surprisingly easy.  It's like that for most academic subjects.  Trigger first wrote this book back in the mid 80s, twenty years later, he wrote this update, then he died.  This book is just about as thorough and comprehensive as you might expect, and it could guide self study in the field of archeology for a decade or more before you'd need to be brought up to speed with new developments.

   Trigger's clear headed and comprehensive treatment of subjects like "antiquarianism" and "cultural historical archeology" are conversation enders.  I simply don't think that anything he says about older archeological movements is even worth challenging.  As he moves into more recent times, the filtering and discussion becomes a little more confused, a little more specialist then general audience.  By the time he gets to his two hundred page discussion of "post processal" archeology, I was just about ready to through my hands up in the air.

  Like all other social science disciplines, archeology has suffered by being subjected the the vagaries of the university cultural production world- an emphasis on increasing specialization and specialized discourse leading to fewer cross connections both intra and inter discipline.  The impression I got was of a wave of knowledge slowly building, only to hit a pier of French inspired critical theory and American academic polemic.  In covering the grand sweep of archeology as a discipline, Trigger makes many of the points that Kevin Collins made about philosophers in his excellent the Sociology of Philosophies.  Trigger's grasp of cybernetics and systems theory seems limited but he seems to intuitively grasp these interdisciplinary concepts and their relevance of archeology.  He also neglects a discussion of the intellectual networks that produced the writers whose ideas he discusses.  For example, his discussion of Walter Taylor and his impact on the "new archeology" in the United States seems to directly parallel the network analysis of philosophers in the Collins books.

  You really don't need to talk about networks until the volume of material surpasses the limits of rational comprehension, which happens surprisingly late if ever for most intellectual subjects.  Few, if any, intellectual subjects outside of the hard sciences reached this level of complexity before the 1960s.

   Despite it's flaws, archeology remains the main way that we can learn about cultures who either didn't write, or whose writing is incomprehensible to us, so we need to think about it.  That doesn't mean the archeologists know what they are doing- quite the opposite, it would seem, archeological discourse should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt and all conclusions should be treated with skepticism. 

GENE WILDER: PURE IMAGINATION

GENE WILDER

Post-Modernism is Global Capitalism's Lackey

   Here's an opinion I have about post-modernism, be it post-modern architecture, literary criticism, philosophy or the social sciences.  Post modernism is the lackey of global capitalism.

Museum Review: Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces of the Musee D'Orsay @ The De Young Museum in San Francisco

The Birth of Impressionism:
Masterpieces of the Musee D'Orsay
at the De Young Museum
San Francisco, CA.
May 22- September 6th


   A critic is a lot like a surfer.  The surfer sits in the ocean, on his surf board, assessing the waves.  The waves come in groups or "sets."  The first task of the surfer is to assess which set to pick.  Once the set is selected, the surfer selects a wave within the set, and puts herself in position to ride the wave.  This involves being in front of the wave and paddling away from it so that the combination of forces carries you to the top of the wave.  Then the surfer stands up and rides the wave to shore.
   For the critics, the ocean is the universe of things he can write about.  The sets of waves are the specific discourse the critic chooses to have opinions about.  Riding the wave is the act of criticism.  In both scenarios, the person standing on the shore, watching the surfer, is the audience.
   Aside from the analogy itself, the comparison offers other insights.  For example, the figure of the person watching the surfer is key.  That person might be there just to watch the ocean, specifically to watch the waves or even to watch the surfer.  Also, the same person might argue first, that the person on the shore doesn't matter to the surfer AND that the audience doesn't matter to the audience.
  
   What can a critic say about the impressionists?  Only that they are the most financially significant group of artistic products produced in the 19th and 20th century- at present, in fact, impressionist paintings dominate the top painting 100 sale prices of all time.  A materialistic take on great art for sure, but the impressionists are the most appropriate group of cultural products to subject to economic analysis because the records are so clear.

  This fact stems from the nature of the art market in Paris, France in the second half of the 19th century.  The market was made by a royally designated art show called "the Salon."  The Salon was a yearly show where individual patrons decided how to buy art.  These patrons are what you would call "institutional" purchasers: government officials, city fathers, church officials.  The Salon was a fully developed culture industry institution, and though it antedated the rise of bourgeois art market as well as market capitalism,  it none the less directly influenced painters working then through it's all pervasive roll as the arbitrator of what patrons would buy.

     In addition to being the market maker, the Salon also had it's own art-presentational aesthetic.  All readers are familiar with the contemporary museum aesthetic in current art museums: low lighting, one painting for x amount of wall space, etc.  That was not the style of the Salon.  The Salon filled every available inch of the wall surface (and these were big walls) with huge canvases in ornate frames.  In that sense the Salon represented the taste of the patrons: looking to fill wall space, pretty vulgar, etc.  The prominent time period of the Salon was from 1725-1890s, when modern art really got it's game on.

     The Museum Audio Tour manages to incorporate the voices of various Impressionist figures, though obviously read in English and not French.  I think, actually the speaker was Claude Monet (1840-1926).  Anyway, he complains that people won't buy his art because his art isn't in the Salon show. The Impressionists as a group became known as such because they were the first group of artists to D.I.Y.  Specifically, in 1874 the Impressionists had their first art exhibit in a photographer's studio in Paris, and the rest is fucking magic.

      Strolling through the Birth of Impressionism exhibit, I was struck by how thoroughly the individual artists just  nailed it.  These guys... understood what the bourgeois purchasers wanted to see.  Dark colors, realistic themes, interesting use of color, abstraction.  It's not like these intellectual themes were somehow unique to French painters, they were just anticipatory, they were in the right place at the right time and they had the technical ability to integrate techniques utilized by sophisticated "Salon" style painters in the service of their own modernist vision.
  
      Through staging their own art show, they managed to create their own market, outside of the salon.  This move coincided with the emergence of the industrial class as art purchasers.  Wealthy French, British and Americans, in some cases the children of wealthy industrialists, in other cases the industrialists themselves, had money to spend and they didn't give a FUCK about the Salon.  In fact, you could say they hated it, seeing as it was directed toward the pre-capitalist aristocrats and autocrats of French society.

    Ultimately, success validates itself, and at this point, as the Impressionists continue to sell museum tickets and paintings at the highest level of the art world, there isn't anything left to do but ask "how?" and "why?"  A viewer in 2010 doesn't need to see impressionist paintings AT ALL to appreciate their splendor, since their own advances in technique were incorporated by subsequent modernist artists and THOSE art works were hugely successful.  It's not like "Impressionism" has any possible current relevance to the world except to just say, "Man, what a hit."  but that is surely enough, since Impressionism is such a huge smash.  Furthermore, the triumph of impressionism is so utter complete that it could serve as the basis for observing a documented change in the culture taste of the entire world.  That makes Impressionism a worthy subject of thought, as indeed, it has been, almost literally since inception.  As it continues today, and as it will be for as long as this particular world is still around.