Avant-garde success instantly rewarded performers with superstar pay and fan worship.

Evidence

Pro-hip with a vengeance, Dionysus had taken off. The cast (without their director) was giddy with newfound popularity and flush with cash. Every performance was sold out. Even with four-dollar tickets, the members of the company were taking home an astonishing $300 a week—possibly more than stars like Rip Torn and Geraldine Page, who came to the show, were getting off-Broadway. Moreover, there were fans who religiously returned week after week to get high and have sex under the towers or hope to make out with their favorite actors. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1248

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s test case evaluating why culture stagnates now — evidence that avant-garde scenes got commercialized instantly even in 1968, long before the term ‘gentrification.’ — connects to: Artistic success is a reified reflection of the money audiences pay — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 424