

`There goes the neighbourhood`

There goes the neighbourhood, an older expression that is somewhat similar to the more recent NIMBY (not in my backyard) to define residents of a quartier that see their way of life, or the value of their property being compromised by an influx of foreigners, the poor, people of a different culture or engaged in undesirable activities or, artists. The fear is often justified when social upheavals result in farmers, for example, being priced out of their property by surreptitiously introduced planning regulations favouring property speculators as happened in Victoria in Australia when the artist lived there or, land grabbing from the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. In poorer urban areas the newcomers' encroachment put pressure on overstretched public resources. An invasion of artists will, in modest neighbourhoods on the other hand, cause equal damage, introducing the blight of gentrification and pricing the locals out of affordable accommodation and services.

In 1660, the latter part of his life, when he fell on hard times, Rembrandt was obliged to move to a very poor part of Amsterdam, the Jordaan. Matthew Moss shows Rembrandt hanging up his shingle upon his arrival and surrounded by his wife, his children and the dog. He is looked on askance by his new, working-class neighbours while in the rear is his kombi van, loaded with the materials of his trade, canvases, portfolio loaded with drawings, his easel.
