The 1980s Arts and Entertainment: Overview

The 1980s was a decade preoccupied with success and image, and much of American art during that decade was shaped by this preoccupation. In a time of excess, art became bigger. Painting, theatrical musicals, and pop recordings all became bigger in scope and ambition, bigger in theme, bigger in budget, and bigger in promotion. The new scale and influence of art suited Americans in the 1980s. With more disposable income than in the 1970s and weary of the pessimism of that decade, they wanted to enjoy themselves again. Aided by the healthiest national economy since the 1960s, Americans began to spend more money on arts and entertainment. Prices in the art market reached new heights as the wealthy discovered that acquiring fine art was a way to demonstrate their financial success. More than ever, they came to look upon art as a business. The financial bottom line became the ultimate purpose of an art form.

Artists quickly picked up on the increased public demand for their work. Often, they marketed their work in such a way as to create and extend that demand. Pop artist Keith Haring, who drew inspiration from graffiti on city buildings and subways, created a line of products bearing his most popular graphic images. He then opened a store to sell them. Other artists were so skillful at marketing their work that the work itself became secondary. They became advertisements for themselves. Perhaps the most skilled at the sale of image was Madonna. As she marketed her movies, videos, recordings, and ever-changing image, she became a one-woman business, making millions of dollars in the process.

The most successful artists and performers of the decade learned to use the media to package and market their public images and to create a demand for their projects and products. As the public demanded more, the media gave them more. In the early 1980s, MTV hit the airwaves with a constant, twenty-four-hour-per-day stream of music videos. Continuing the decade-long madness for image, musicians and groups were soon measured by their looks as well as by their sound. A new generation of video pop stars arose, catapulted to stardom from a merging of film and music. Thanks to exposure in videos and movies, break dancing, rap music, and other forms of hip-hop culture soon spread from urban ghettos to suburbia. Pop culture became a melting pot of fashion, image, hipness, trendiness, and attitude.

The 1980s was not a decade of greed, style, and self-promotion for everyone. Some artists and entertainers became involved in social causes. Others used their work to make political statements. English musician Bob Geldof organized the Band Aid project in 1984 and the twin Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia in 1985 to aid victims of famine in Africa. His work inspired the USA for Africa collaboration that produced the 1985 all-star pop anthem "We Are the World." The Farm Aid concert held that same year sought to raise money to pay off the debts of American farmers. Other benefits helped raise public awareness of the discriminatory practices of the South African government and of the AIDS epidemic, which received little serious attention by the U.S. government during much of the decade.

While Americans spent lavishly on art during the 1980s, the American government under President Ronald Reagan tried to cut federal funding of the arts. His fellow conservative politicians disapproved of government agency support for artists whose works the politicians considered to be morally offensive. This culture war, with various groups trying to impose their definitions of art on everyone else, extended across America. Conservative and Christian groups throughout the nation fought to censor or ban art they considered indecent, history books they considered biased, rap music they considered violent, and movies and videos they considered irreverent. In some communities, school boards tried to remove "controversial" books from school libraries, many of which were classic novels written by respected American writers.