I have a lot of issues with the invocation of tradition and history where the French Quarter is concerned because I suspect much of what people believe isn’t historically accurate. Or their history is sanitized for their own protection. I suspect that those who love the idea of preserving an artists’ bohemia envision a Vieux Carre that was once full of NPR listener-types who also wrote and painted. Gay – sure. Drinkers – sure, but all outrageous in moderate ways and decorous to a fault. Not, by my understanding, what the Quarter was like at all.

Today, New Orleans City Business reported that:

 Judge Ivan Lemelle with U.S. District Court denied the artists’ motion that the city’s ban on the sale of prints infringed on their First Amendment rights. He sided with the city’s argument that the prohibition is designed to preserve the “tout ensemble,” or the overall feel and historic nature, of Jackson Square and the French Quarter.  

Thank God the artists’ colony that is Jackson Square is saved from print makers. Now the artists who’ve found that they could create hundreds of meaningful, artistic variations on the fleur de lis are safe. Those who see the social condition in poorly drafted illustrations of Quarter buildings are free from the threat of decently drafted prints of Quarter buildings.  Those artists with hands of stone for whom the brush is a mysterious, uncontrollable object more than likely to produce refrigerator-quality images of T-shirt shop cliches are free to peddle their wares and honor the tradition of Jackson Square.

Most of the works I see on the fences at the Square are simply expensive souvenirs, and I also wonder if it hasn’t always been like that. I wonder if the image of Jackson Square as an idyll for artists isn’t as historically inaccurate as other notions of the Quarter. I’m sure talented artists have displayed their work there – and still do – but I suspect that people have also been churning out hackwork for dollars for as long as there have been tourists and suckers. In that sense, Judge Lemelle’s ruling does preserve the “tout ensemble” character of the Square and the Quarter as the site where commerce and the sideshow meet.