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The Romance of Commerce and Culture: Capitalism, Modernism, and the Chicago-Aspen Crusade for Cultural Reform
The Romance of Commerce and Culture is a lively and provocative history of how art and intellect formed an alliance with consumer capitalism in the mid-twentieth century and put Aspen, Colorado, on the map.
- GenresHistory
392 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
James Sloan Allen
9 books3 followersJames Sloan Allen is the author of Worldly Wisdom, Great Books and the Meaning of Life, as well as The Romance of Commerce and Culture.
A cultural historian, essayist, and critic, he received his doctorate from Columbia University. He has taught at Columbia, Haverford College, Brigham Young University, the New School, and the Juillard School, where he was academic vice president. For several years he has been teaching a Great Books class for adults in New York City. A longtime New Yorker, he now resides with his wife in Honolulu and Philadelphia.
A cultural historian, essayist, and critic, he received his doctorate from Columbia University. He has taught at Columbia, Haverford College, Brigham Young University, the New School, and the Juillard School, where he was academic vice president. For several years he has been teaching a Great Books class for adults in New York City. A longtime New Yorker, he now resides with his wife in Honolulu and Philadelphia.
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September 2, 2024
Man, this almost certainly will be my favorite book this year, likely one of my favorite academic books ever! Unbelievably entertaining and well-written, rich with insight about both the history of modernism and the formation of elite consensus in the 20th century. This book is SO illuminating for the way it brings together so many overlapping histories: the New Bauhaus, the Great Books, the crisis of the humanities, “public intellectualism,” adult education (or seminars beyond university), “fellowship culture,” cultural patronage, etc. This book is so cool partially because its ideas, I think, are so timeless. Many things I thought I’d derived myself (or read elsewhere), particularly about the value of the humanities w/r/t increasing societal emphasis on technology, are in this book, spelled out by designers, educators, and businesspeople almost a century ago.
The main focus here is on Walter Paepcke, the young president of the Container Corporation of America (CCA), a cardboard box maker. Paepcke, at the behest of his wife Elizabeth, quickly took to modern art, commissioning a series called “Modern Art in Advertising,” which greatly increased the prestige (and profits!) of the CCA. Paepcke quickly became best buds with modernist luminary Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, and was instrumental in the foundation of the New Bauhaus in Chicago, both in funding and legitimacy. His effectiveness was incredible; Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, for example, praised Paepcke as the “rare exception of a man in power and leadership who seriously tries to fuse business with cultural progress. I certainly know how difficult a task this is and you can hardly imagine how much reassurance and confidence your attitude gives me for my own outlook.”
Paepcke also had a huge role in the “Great Books,” seminars to read works of the Western canon, which Allen takes up in the third chapter. Perhaps most interesting to me were the intellectual origins of these seminars, directly tied to increasing mechanization and technological emphasis. In essence: science can teach “truths of fact” but not “truths of value”—what something is like or how it works, but not how something “should” be. In this case, universities should focus on “non specialized humanistic learning,” like reading the Great Books, as opposed to vocational training. Paepcke was involved organizationally, financially, and as a participant in these seminars.
In parallel, through friends and his wife, he discovered Aspen. Once a booming silver mining town with a population of 12,000, the town had been all-but abandoned, housing 900 people. Paepcke, entranced by the beauty of the surroundings, planned to rejuvenate it as a cultural community, purchasing cheap properties en-masse (and in secret) and scheming cultural festivals to revitalize the town.
Chapter 5 is by far my favorite of the whole book, almost certainly worth reading on its own. The premise is wild: how can you turn Johann Wolfgang von Goethe into a minor celebrity, more than a hundred years after his death, and create a media phenomenon about an obscure academic conference dedicated to him?
Hutchins and Paepcke, along with some others, dreamed up an idea for a “Goethe Festival,” celebrating the 200th anniversary of the German poet-philosopher’s birth, in Aspen. The popularization was a huge success. As one of the publicists writes: “professional public relations had: (1) popularized philosophy; (2) brought the dying Goethe of 117 years before to life in the minds of a mass culture; (3) introduced a new center of world culture in the United States; and (4) shaped an intellectual centennial celebration into a potent, popular force.” There's an interesting tension between education and publicity that Allen pulls apart quite interestingly.
The festival was a hit. Eero Saarinen wrote to Paepcke describing it as “an Intellectual Mardi Gras which, if you can see your way clear to repeat it, will have far reaching consequences on the cultural life of our country.” The next year, Paepcke would found the Aspen Institute, focused on “the perennial questions of value, what out to be rather than what is.”
Some of my favorite parts of this book are seeing the closeness of the organizers, for example, Thornton Wilder’s cable to Hutchins: “GLAD TO ENDORSE YOU OR GOETHE AT ANY TIME.” There's also fascinating bits parsing commerce/culture tension. For example, describing a series of CCA ads, Allen writes: For example, remarking on a series of ads featuring quotes from the Great Books that CCA ran, Allen writes: “Container’s image would thus acquire fresh sophistication as well as greater distance from the emblems of vulgar capitalist acquisitiveness—and critics would cringe to see consumer capitalism now openly enlist in its cause not only the once subversive modern artists but the entire Western intellectual tradition.”
Chapter 8, dubbed “Consensus, Criticism, and the New American Elite,” parses the impact of the Aspen Institute and the ways it refracted these broader American tensions. Allen describes the rise of the professional managerial class as told in some of my favorite “corporate aesthetics”-y works, like The Organization Man, Executive Suite, etc. It was this new, often college-educated managerial elite, that brought new status to business, and motivated many gatherings of the Aspen Institute.
Paepcke hoped, in Allen’s words, to “bring together leaders of all sectors in American life, to dispel misunderstandings and forge ties among them, thus enabling them to better serve America, and America to serve the world.” In essence, Aspen worked on the assumption that elites shared interests. Together, through the “cross-fertilization of ideals,” they could form consensus, and provide “ideological and cultural leadership.” There’s lots of resonance here with the ‘ideology of the fellowship’ or belief in what such programs can accomplish.
Chapter 9 takes up a few other developments in Aspen over time; the International Design Conference, also Paepcke’s responsibility, which brought about much of “design-oriented management,” incredibly important in the intellectual history of design. I should note, and this is no surprise; one of the former chairs of the conference was also responsible for TED talks. Chapter 10 briefly takes up the period after Paepcke’s death.
In general, this is one of the most insightful books I’ve read in many months. Allen is an AMAZING writer, and he parses tension between commerce and culture in a thoughtful and opinionated way without being didactic or overly simplistic.
Walter Paepcke is a fascinating figure and amazing subject, who I think escapes a lot of contemporary recognition, as a sort of “Stewart Brand” figure who exists in the middle of many of the most interesting things of the early 20th century. There’s also lots in here about the “eternal flame to accomplish important worldly work, whatever the loss of emotional ease” and the joys of real intellectual community—I found it incredibly rousing and motivating.
Perhaps most interesting to me were personal ties here. In high school, I assumed I’d end up working in tech in San Francisco, and wanted to leave the west coast to do the whole “liberal arts” thing. This ideology of why the humanities remain important in the wake of technological change is, shockingly to me, the entire foundation of the Great Books, or much of the motivation behind a contemporary liberal arts education. I’ve been going to Aspen nearly every summer since I was born, and it’s remarkable to see such a rich history here, and I certainly wonder if the place influenced me to (consciously or unconsciously) gravitate toward a lot of what happened within it.
Regardless, I think anyone could get a lot out of this! I’m sort of obsessed with this book; if you read this, even if we don’t know each other, I would be really eager to discuss, please find a way to get in contact with me!!
The main focus here is on Walter Paepcke, the young president of the Container Corporation of America (CCA), a cardboard box maker. Paepcke, at the behest of his wife Elizabeth, quickly took to modern art, commissioning a series called “Modern Art in Advertising,” which greatly increased the prestige (and profits!) of the CCA. Paepcke quickly became best buds with modernist luminary Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, and was instrumental in the foundation of the New Bauhaus in Chicago, both in funding and legitimacy. His effectiveness was incredible; Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, for example, praised Paepcke as the “rare exception of a man in power and leadership who seriously tries to fuse business with cultural progress. I certainly know how difficult a task this is and you can hardly imagine how much reassurance and confidence your attitude gives me for my own outlook.”
Paepcke also had a huge role in the “Great Books,” seminars to read works of the Western canon, which Allen takes up in the third chapter. Perhaps most interesting to me were the intellectual origins of these seminars, directly tied to increasing mechanization and technological emphasis. In essence: science can teach “truths of fact” but not “truths of value”—what something is like or how it works, but not how something “should” be. In this case, universities should focus on “non specialized humanistic learning,” like reading the Great Books, as opposed to vocational training. Paepcke was involved organizationally, financially, and as a participant in these seminars.
In parallel, through friends and his wife, he discovered Aspen. Once a booming silver mining town with a population of 12,000, the town had been all-but abandoned, housing 900 people. Paepcke, entranced by the beauty of the surroundings, planned to rejuvenate it as a cultural community, purchasing cheap properties en-masse (and in secret) and scheming cultural festivals to revitalize the town.
Chapter 5 is by far my favorite of the whole book, almost certainly worth reading on its own. The premise is wild: how can you turn Johann Wolfgang von Goethe into a minor celebrity, more than a hundred years after his death, and create a media phenomenon about an obscure academic conference dedicated to him?
Hutchins and Paepcke, along with some others, dreamed up an idea for a “Goethe Festival,” celebrating the 200th anniversary of the German poet-philosopher’s birth, in Aspen. The popularization was a huge success. As one of the publicists writes: “professional public relations had: (1) popularized philosophy; (2) brought the dying Goethe of 117 years before to life in the minds of a mass culture; (3) introduced a new center of world culture in the United States; and (4) shaped an intellectual centennial celebration into a potent, popular force.” There's an interesting tension between education and publicity that Allen pulls apart quite interestingly.
The festival was a hit. Eero Saarinen wrote to Paepcke describing it as “an Intellectual Mardi Gras which, if you can see your way clear to repeat it, will have far reaching consequences on the cultural life of our country.” The next year, Paepcke would found the Aspen Institute, focused on “the perennial questions of value, what out to be rather than what is.”
Some of my favorite parts of this book are seeing the closeness of the organizers, for example, Thornton Wilder’s cable to Hutchins: “GLAD TO ENDORSE YOU OR GOETHE AT ANY TIME.” There's also fascinating bits parsing commerce/culture tension. For example, describing a series of CCA ads, Allen writes: For example, remarking on a series of ads featuring quotes from the Great Books that CCA ran, Allen writes: “Container’s image would thus acquire fresh sophistication as well as greater distance from the emblems of vulgar capitalist acquisitiveness—and critics would cringe to see consumer capitalism now openly enlist in its cause not only the once subversive modern artists but the entire Western intellectual tradition.”
Chapter 8, dubbed “Consensus, Criticism, and the New American Elite,” parses the impact of the Aspen Institute and the ways it refracted these broader American tensions. Allen describes the rise of the professional managerial class as told in some of my favorite “corporate aesthetics”-y works, like The Organization Man, Executive Suite, etc. It was this new, often college-educated managerial elite, that brought new status to business, and motivated many gatherings of the Aspen Institute.
Paepcke hoped, in Allen’s words, to “bring together leaders of all sectors in American life, to dispel misunderstandings and forge ties among them, thus enabling them to better serve America, and America to serve the world.” In essence, Aspen worked on the assumption that elites shared interests. Together, through the “cross-fertilization of ideals,” they could form consensus, and provide “ideological and cultural leadership.” There’s lots of resonance here with the ‘ideology of the fellowship’ or belief in what such programs can accomplish.
Chapter 9 takes up a few other developments in Aspen over time; the International Design Conference, also Paepcke’s responsibility, which brought about much of “design-oriented management,” incredibly important in the intellectual history of design. I should note, and this is no surprise; one of the former chairs of the conference was also responsible for TED talks. Chapter 10 briefly takes up the period after Paepcke’s death.
In general, this is one of the most insightful books I’ve read in many months. Allen is an AMAZING writer, and he parses tension between commerce and culture in a thoughtful and opinionated way without being didactic or overly simplistic.
Walter Paepcke is a fascinating figure and amazing subject, who I think escapes a lot of contemporary recognition, as a sort of “Stewart Brand” figure who exists in the middle of many of the most interesting things of the early 20th century. There’s also lots in here about the “eternal flame to accomplish important worldly work, whatever the loss of emotional ease” and the joys of real intellectual community—I found it incredibly rousing and motivating.
Perhaps most interesting to me were personal ties here. In high school, I assumed I’d end up working in tech in San Francisco, and wanted to leave the west coast to do the whole “liberal arts” thing. This ideology of why the humanities remain important in the wake of technological change is, shockingly to me, the entire foundation of the Great Books, or much of the motivation behind a contemporary liberal arts education. I’ve been going to Aspen nearly every summer since I was born, and it’s remarkable to see such a rich history here, and I certainly wonder if the place influenced me to (consciously or unconsciously) gravitate toward a lot of what happened within it.
Regardless, I think anyone could get a lot out of this! I’m sort of obsessed with this book; if you read this, even if we don’t know each other, I would be really eager to discuss, please find a way to get in contact with me!!
July 19, 2017
Goodreads has the wrong author. The actual author is James Sloan Allen. Hmmm.
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