I was watching an old episode of The Twilight Zone (the first episode; “Where is Everybody?” - the 4:35 mark if you’re watching along). The story is about a man who finds himself stranded all alone in a typical small American town. The episode was broadcast in 1959 and was set in that year.
At one point the character is walking along the businesses on the town square. He walks by a walk-up office building and there are signs for “J.M Meyer, MD, and Richard Roy MD Room 204”, “Vladimar Sokolvasky Artist Room 206”, and “O.C. Clayburn, Attorney Room 208”.
I know what an MD and an Attorney do. But what did a professional Artist do for a living in an American small town in 1959? Was he painting portraits in his studio in Room 206 and was that something that a person could make a living at back then?
I considered the possibility that this was actually an inside joke and that Vladimar Sokolovsky was a member of the crew. But nobody by that name is in the credits. For that matter, Vladimar (with an a) is an uncommon name and there are only three of them listed in IMDB, none of whom was even alive in 1959.
Portraits, advertising illustrations, greeting cards, sign painting are all things that an artist can do to earn money. Ads and cards in particular can be created for clients and/or distribution that are not local, as long as there is postal service.
I hadn’t considered commercial art for businesses. That was probably a better field for an artist seeking work back in the fifties when so many more businesses were local and didn’t have national advertising campaigns.
Would a person who did photography as part of their profession have listed themselves as simply an “artist”? Would potential customers have understood photography was a product being sold?
In theory, yes. But if this were true in practice, then the business people wouldn’t have needed signs at all. People would have known who they were, what services they provided, and where their offices were. Advertising, even at the level of a sign, assumes that this is not the case and potential customers need to be informed.
IMDB lists Vladimir Sokoloff as an actor with credits in the later (1961-1962) Twilight Zone episodes: The Gift, Mirror, and Dust.
Getting back to the OP’s question, I agree with commercial art - especially someone who could “dress” store windows for holidays and sale events. On the the other hand it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think that a self-proclaimed small-town “artist” would be someone who gave music lessons and/or dance lessons.
Wait a minute! Who would have made those signs for the TZ prop department in the first place? Without given a specific brief, a sign painter might have used the opportunity to refer to himself as an “artist”. (My dad was a sign painter in the early 1960s and fancied himself an artist.) Sign painters weren’t given on screen credit back then and it’s unlikely the guy would show up on any IMDb pages or even a Google search.
That was my suspicion as well- a small-town professional artist would be a sort of catch-all “fine art” person- they’d do various sorts of sign painting- small scale billboards, lettering on doors, signs like the ones on the building (in fact, the artist sign is considerably more ornate than the others, lending credence to this idea), and other commercial type stuff.
I imagine they’d also probably do portrait painting of locals if they were sufficiently skilled, and probably whatever other art they wanted to on their own to sell to tourists or passers-through.
In addition to commercial art and portraits, he might paint a mural for a local church and such. My parents were friends with a somewhat successful artist (he had painted covers for national magazines) and he wasn’t above working as a house painter for booze money.
Nobody is disputing that there was plenty of work for an artist in a small town; just that it would be odd for them to have an office like the kinds doctors and lawyers might have. An office is kind of a waste, if you spend all day painting signs and murals on other buildings.
…and yet nobody bats an eye at the idea that a private investigator in the same era would of course have an office, despite not being able to do much detecting alone in a closed room.
Gotta have a place to be contacted, keep records, etc., eh.
I wasn’t around in the 50s and don’t remember the early 60s- but from the memories I do have and seeing old photographs , I think a lot of businesses that would now be run from a home office had at least a room in an office building or space in a shared storefront. For example, there is an appliance repair service in my neighborhood that is run out of a house - even 20 years ago, they would have had an office if not a storefront.
I grew up in a small town of about 2500. Across the street from my father’s store there was a shop run by artist J. B. Hartranft. He sold his own art: impressionist landscapes, seascapes, and harbor scenes. I see he opened the shop after he retired, but did make enough to keep the shop open. You could often see him in front of the gallery, working on another painting.
It helped that it was a tourist area and he painted local scenes. I’m sure he also would do a painting of your own house or boat on commission. It’s said he did over 2000 paintings.
He’s burning through his trust fund. He doesn’t make enough as an artist to justify the office overhead, yet alone live off of, but his parents will only keep him in the green if he pretends to he running a successful business.
I believe that for much of history (and many people and companies have antiquated beliefs even now, see irrational COVID telecommuting attitudes for example) having an office was considered a minimum for anyone to “be in business,” even as a sole proprietor of an artistic business or service that didn’t need a public storefront or location to meet with clients. If you didn’t have an office, you weren’t a legit [insert profession here], even if that made zero sense. I’ve been self-employed for 14 of the past 17 years and run in circles with several small businesses that don’t need an office but most of them still at least have the pretense of an office or some type of monthly shared space rental to point to as “that’s my office.” There are legit reasons for this (some vendors and creditors don’t accept home offices) as well as superficial ones. My grandfather was a self-employed architect for 50+ years and never held another job. He did most of his work at his desk at home and most of his networking at bars, but he rented a little office for as long as he could. He also maintained a business phone line and listing in the phone book even after he stopped doing any real work. Being listed in the business pages or the “yellow pages” was a minimum, too, even for businesses that didn’t have any reason to take phone calls.