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PAN Discussion Group Wednesday June 28th 2006
Subject:
Art and Society : Culture, Taste Role of the Artist, Funding, Public and Private Art,
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Apologies for the articles being late. I’m ‘between PCs’ so things are a bit
messed up at the moment. Also I don’t have access to my PAN list so please
forward to anyone who may not have received this.
Location: RSVP ( but Loop - ish :)
Time : 7pm to 10pm ish
Thanks to
everyone who sent suggestions for articles.
The documents
..will eventually be …available at the PAN web site:
https://www.angelfire.com/ult/pan/
GROUND RULES:
* Temper the urge to speak with the discipline
to listen and leave space for others
* Balance the desire to teach with a passion
to learn
* Hear what is said and listen for what is
meant
* Marry your certainties with others'
possibilities
* Reserve judgment until you can claim the
understanding we seek
Well I guess that's all for now.
Colin
Any problems let me know..
847-963-1254
tysoe2@yahoo.com
The Articles:
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First some opening comments
from A UNESCO conference on Art and Society which included Nadine Gordimer, and
others…….
http://www.unesco.org/culture/creativity/wc-artist/html_eng/conclusions2.shtml
Three main themes were broached
by most of the speakers at this first session: the artist and society, the role
of art in society and art as a major challenge for the coming century. These are
illustrated by extracts from the addresses delivered by the three main speakers.
1. The artist and society
'I think we must not forget
that the status of the artist is determined twofold: one, by the nature of the
artist's engagement with society, on the one hand; and two, by the attitude of
the state to the artist, on the other. The first is a matter of the artist's
individual choice; the second is a condition imposed upon the artist from
without. It is aleatory.
For the artist, integrity to
his or her talent is the basic relation to society; your society, your country,
is served best by your doing your work as best you can and thereby enriching the
artistic and intellectual consciousness of that society. We must write, paint,
sculpt, compose, perform; propaganda is not our medium, no matter how great a
loyalty to a cause. Propaganda is not a medium to be recognized by the arts, at
all. But the artist is also a citizen, a citizen at home, and of the world. He
or she, I believe, has civic responsibilities, just like everyone else, towards
the pursuit of justice, peace, freedom from want - and I emphasize want - in the
form of the intellectual deprivation that exists among millions all over the
world. For the artist, this specific civic responsibility means that the artist
has an obligation to give time to nurture the latent talent in others whose
circumstances have denied them the opportunity to develop, and to summon energy
to assert an active part in a monitoring and innovative role in the structures
and policies whereby states, cultural organizations, funding organizations, and
financial institutions have the authority to create the status of the artist.
This status, as determined by
the state, is first and foremost defined by two factors: censorship and funding.
Where there is censorship, whether on political, religious, or other grounds, at
worst the artist has been in a straitjacket, as in the old Soviet Union, lives
now under a religious fatwa like Salman Rushdie or a secular fatwa like Wole
Soyinka, and at best writes, paints, makes films and performs under threat of
works banned from publication, exhibition or performance.
Where there is no censorship,
there may be artistic freedom, but no concomitant state funding for the
development of that freedom.
The fact is: there are very few
states where the artist has status; and a real status, for the arts, is the
first condition for acquiring state funding. There is, one might safely say,
worldwide concern for the spread of education as the spearhead of human
advancement, particularly within the philosophy of democracy. What is not
recognized, though plainly to be understood, is that the arts are education in
the best sense, the most widely effective sense, since they open up the
sensibilities, of everyone who has access to them, to every discipline of
learning, to the exploration of human possibilities, the fullness of mind and
senses, the stimulation of the imagination without which the present ruling
deities of science and technology could not have come into existence.
As our century ends,
organizations of the arts - those great educators - have to go with the begging
bowl to the philanthropic foundations, and the conscience of big business, for
funds.
For the arts to flourish in the
twenty-first century, the state must recognize that the arts belong in the
government budget along with the millions earmarked for Defence-, for the arts
are themselves. Defence of a vital kind: defence of the human spirit, in all
its terrors and marvels of complexity' ... (Extract from Nadine Gordimer's
paper.)
Art and Society
'Maybe the condition of the
artist is the result of questions such as: Who needs the artist and his art?
Does he give? To whom does he give? What does he give? Does he take? From whom
does he take? Is he serving society? Whom does he serve? Should he be serving?
Is he free in a society of marketing and media? The bombardment of Guerinica
gave birth to one of the most important paintings of our century, a painting by
Pablo Picasso. Have I the right to ask you whether that marvellous painting
saved one life? Other important painters continued to paint pastoral landscapes,
portraits and "nature mortes" from the
Côte d'Azur while transports to the gas chambers were leaving from Drancy.
My dream is Peace and Tolerance
and I hope that those who have similar dreams will wake when a new dawn rises
and that our dreams will become reality. I know it will not come by itself. I
know that we will have to fight for it.
If so, what is the condition of
the artist as a human being? Can he or she, should he or she, at least try to
stop the destruction of the world and humanity?
This is my own personal
situation as an artist today' .. (Extract from Dani Karavan's paper.)
Art: a major challenge for the
coming century
'The 1970s were a period of
great upheaval which led to major reforms in the field of culture. As countries
gained their national independence they spoke up for the cultural
distinctiveness of their peoples and demanded support and recognition for the
artists of developing countries, to which our Organization has tried to provide.
The Recommendation of 1980
suggested that the work and lives of authors and performers should be protected
by stressing the public usefulness of artists and the importance of recognizing
their rights and providing the social protection that they need. It stressed in
particular the need to find a true national audience for creators from young
nations as a means of promoting their country's identity and cultural
development.
As we approach the year 2000 we
must assess the new relationship between the artist and society and the
challenges to creativity and the communication of cultural values posed by the
technological revolution.
Although art has in fact always
both celebrated and challenged the community, it seeks to utilize the changes in
contemporary society to nourish reflection on the material and legal conditions
of artistic creation.
Artists have sometimes been
outcasts - they were banished by Plato - and sometimes excommunicated, which had
serious implications for the status of actors in
France up to the time of Molière. Sometimes they have simply been lone
individuals asserting the autonomy of the creative act in opposition to the
standards set by society, as did Baudelaire. Today they are independent and
respected members of the community. The place of culture and art has steadily
grown and taken on more importance in our societies, and appreciation of art is
becoming increasingly widespread, as witness the huge numbers of people visiting
museums, going to shows or films, and reading books. Even in countries where
inequalities persist, the right to culture has now become a popular aspiration
and demand.
The World Decade for Cultural
Development, during which UNESCO bas striven vigorously and successfully for
recognition of the cultural component of human activity, is coming to an end
this year, and we now see a new question arising: how to foster artistic
experience so as to create the rich culture so vital to the fulfilment of both
individuals and society. Art is attracting an ever-growing number of amateurs,
connoisseurs and professionals and is becoming a more and more integral
component of ethical and political life. It can also serve the cause of peace
and mutual understanding and can throw light on spiritual responses to the
crises sparked off by economic and political upheavals in today's world' ...
(Extract from the address by Mr Federico Mayor.)
Does the easy availability of
cultural material, the internet, Walkman, IPod, DVDs, improve society
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/09/19/improving_ourselves_to_death?mode=PF
Improving ourselves to death By
Tim Cavanaugh September
19, 2004
IF THERE'S ONE TOPIC liberals
and conservatives agree on, it's the intellectual and artistic emptiness of
America's cultural products -- which always seem to be declining, but somehow,
like Xeno's arrow, never quite arrive at a state of absolute decrepitude.
Recently, without actively looking for such stuff, I have read an article
blaming lousy bestsellers for illiteracy, an argument that the glut of sequels
and remakes demonstrates a new low in cinematic art, and a "think piece"
claiming Sony's Walkman destroyed our ability to appreciate music.
But if our entertainments are
getting dumber, why do they all seem to want to teach us something? The striking
development in contemporary popular entertainment is not an increase in media
demanding vapid or passive responses, but of media that make critical apparatus
available to everybody.
DVDs offer a wealth of movie
lore you once had to go to film school to get.
Reading guides and discussion notes tacked onto book-club-friendly paperbacks
have revived literary deduction, albeit in a manner nightmarishly suggestive of
high school English. Boxed-set CD compilations come bundled with book-length
liner notes discussing every angle of musicology. Everywhere you look, America
has become a nation of grad students.
Much of this supplementary
material functions more as marketing hype than as criticism. Behind-the-scenes
documentaries, commentary tracks (where filmmakers give shot-for-shot
appreciations of their own dazzling technique), and other extras helped get home
viewers to upgrade from VHS cassettes to DVDs. Book publishers seed book clubs
with Reading Guides, Questions for Further Consideration, and other scholastic
material. ("Can you think of examples from your own life when you had to give up
something to meet a goal and found the price too high?" asks HarperCollins'
reading guide for Paulo Coelho's New Age hit "The Alchemist.")
Just a few years ago, nothing
would have seemed more abstruse than a director or actor (or worst of all, a
screenwriter) commenting on a film with the soundtrack turned down. It's an idea
you'd expect would interest only the most flatulent film geek. Yet the concept
has taken off -- possibly because the commentary track can make a mediocre movie
seem like a lasting artistic triumph. Think "Legally Blonde 2 -- Red, White &
Blonde" is just a quick-money throwaway? Wait till you take in the deleted
scenes, the in-depth featurette, and a commentary track that required the
efforts of not one but three of the film's supporting actresses.
But the popularization of
critical apparatus feels like a bait-and-switch. We've been promised an ever
dumber range of entertainment, and we don't have the luxury of paying only
half-attention to it. Popular entertainment feels increasingly like an unending
homework assignment, an art appreciation course where you're actually expected
to attend class.
In the early 1990s, at the
height of the vogue for "Director's Cut" versions of masterworks ("Blade
Runner," "Amadeus," etc.) that had allegedly been butchered by studios, Spy
magazine pulled a memorable prank: interviewing director Stan Dragoti about
doing a director's cut of his execrable Tony Danza comedy "She's Out of
Control." In entertainment history, the farce precedes the tragedy. If "She's
Out of Control" were made today, the DVD really would feature deleted scenes,
commentary from Dragoti and costar Amy Dolenz, interviews wherein cast members
describe each other as down-to-earth geniuses, and maybe resources for fathers
who (like Danza's character) must cope with their sexy daughters' coming of age.
It's part of
America's glory that one nation can produce so much blessedly forgettable
entertainment. But what happens when you're not allowed to forget it? When Mitch
Albom's "Tuesdays With Morrie" invites post-reading exegesis? ("Who do you think
got more out of their Tuesday meetings, Mitch or Morrie?" asks a reading guide.)
When even "Agent Cody Banks: Destination London" is not safe from a "Visual Cast
Commentary?" ("One of the greatest things about making a movie is how they edit
it," notes star Frankie Muniz.)
The strangest entry in the
pop-crit field must be VH1's "True Spin." Like the revenge of every loser who
spent high school poring over the lyrics to "Dark Side of the Moon," the show
teases out the true import of pop music -- even songs (Berlin's "Take My Breath
Away," 2 Live Crew's "Me So Horny") whose meanings would appear to be so
crystalline you could cut yourself on the first listen. The show offers a
contest element, in which you guess at various possible interpretations. Which
raises the question: Is there anybody out there who didn't get the meaning of
NWA's "Fuck the Police" the first time around?
Undoubtedly, this sort of
critical machinery deepens the cultural experience. But it threatens something
precious: disposability, and the confidence that most cultural offerings are
things you don't need to think about. I'm pretty sure
America could survive the end of NEA-sponsored Shakespeare festivals. But the
end of trash culture would really be a loss worth mourning.
Tim Cavanaugh is the web editor
for Reason magazine (www.reason.com).
From our good frieds at the
Cato Institute. Why we shouldn’t be funding the arts with public money…
http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-14.html
In a society that
constitutionally limits the powers of government and maximizes individual
liberty, there is no justification for the forcible transfer of money from
taxpayers to artists, scholars, and broadcasters. If the proper role of
government is to safeguard the security of the nation's residents, by what
rationale are they made to support exhibits of paintings, symphony orchestras,
documentaries, scholarly research, and radio and television programs they might
never freely choose to support? The kinds of things financed by federal cultural
agencies were produced long before those agencies were created, and they will
continue to be produced long after those agencies are privatized or defunded.
Moreover, the power to subsidize art, scholarship, and broadcasting cannot be
found within the powers enumerated and delegated to the federal government under
the Constitution.
The National Endowment for the
Arts, an "independent'' agency established in 1965, makes grants to museums,
symphony orchestras, and individual artists "of exceptional talent'' and
organizations (including state arts agencies) to "encourage individual and
institutional development of the arts, preservation of the American artistic
heritage, wider availability of the arts, leadership in the arts, and the
stimulation of non-Federal sources of support for the Nation's artistic
activities.'' Among its more famous and controversial grant recipients were
artist Andres Serrano, whose exhibit featured a photograph of a plastic crucifix
in a jar of his own urine, and the
Institute of Contemporary Art in
Philadelphia, which sponsored a traveling exhibition of the late Robert
Mapplethorpe's homoerotic photographs. (Thanks to an NEA grantee, the American
taxpayers once paid $1,500 for a poem, "lighght.'' That wasn't the title or a
typo. That was the entire poem.) The NEA's fiscal 1996 budget was $100 million,
reflecting cuts made by the 104th Congress.
The National Endowment for the
Humanities, with a fiscal year 1996 budget of $110 million, "funds activities
that are intended to improve the quality of education and teaching in the
humanities, to strengthen the scholarly foundation for humanities study and
research, and to advance understanding of the humanities among general
audiences.'' Among the things it has funded are controversial national standards
for the teaching of history in schools, the traveling King Tut exhibit, and the
documentary film Rosie the Riveter.
The 27-year-old Corporation for
Public Broadcasting--FY96 budget, $275 million--provides money to "qualified
public television and radio stations to be used at their discretion for purposes
related primarily to program production and acquisition.'' It also supports the
production and acquisition of radio and television programs for national
distribution and assists in "the financing of several system-wide activities,
including national satellite interconnection services and the payment of music
royalty fees, and provides limited technical assistance, research, and planning
services to improve system-wide capacity and performance.'' Some of the money
provided local public radio and television stations is used to help support
National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
Note that the amount of arts
funding in the federal budget is quite small. That might be taken as a defense
of the funding, were it not for the important reasons to avoid any government
funding of something as intimate yet powerful as artistic __expression. But it
should also be noted how small federal funding is as a percentage of the total
arts budget in this country. The NEA's budget was barely 1 percent of the $9.68
billion in private contributions to the arts from corporations, foundations, and
individuals in 1994. According to the chair of the American Arts Alliance, the
arts are a $37 billion industry. Surely they will survive without whatever
portion of the NEA's budget gets out of the
Washington bureaucracy and into the hands of actual artists or arts
institutions.
The 104th Congress voted to
phase out the NEA over three years. The 105th Congress should honor that
commitment and also end federal involvement with the NEH and the CPB.
Poor Subsidize Rich
Since art museums, symphony
orchestras, humanities scholarship, and public television and radio are enjoyed
predominantly by people of greater-than-average income and education, the
federal cultural agencies oversee a fundamentally unfair transfer of wealth from
the lower classes up. Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson is correct when he
calls federal cultural agencies "highbrow pork barrel.'' As Edward C. Banfield
has written, "The art public is now, as it has always been, overwhelmingly
middle and upper-middle class and above average in income--relatively prosperous
people who would probably enjoy art about as much in the absence of subsidies.''
Supporters of the NEA often say that their purpose is to bring the finer arts to
those who don't already patronize them. But Dick Netzer, an economist who favors
arts subsidies, conceded that they have "failed to increase the representation
of low-income people in audiences.'' In other words, lower income people are not
interested in the kind of entertainment they're forced to support; they prefer
to put their money into forms of art often sneered at by the cultural elite. Why
must they continue to finance the pleasures of the affluent?
Corruption of Artists and
Scholars
Government subsidies to the
arts and humanities have an insidious, corrupting effect on artists and
scholars. It is assumed, for example, that the arts need government
encouragement. But if an artist needs such encouragement, what kind of artist is
he? Novelist E. L. Doctorow once told the House Appropriations Committee, "An
enlightened endowment puts its money on largely unknown obsessive individuals
who have sacrificed all the ordinary comforts and consolations of life in order
to do their work.'' Few have noticed the contradiction in that statement. As
author Bill Kauffman has commented, Doctorow "wants to abolish the risk and
privation that dog almost all artists, particularly during their
apprenticeships. 'Starving artists' are to be plumped up by taxpayers. . . . The
likelihood that pampered artists will turn complacent, listless, and lazy seems
not to bother Doctorow.'' Moreover, as Jonathan Yardley, the Washington Post's
book critic asked, "Why should the struggling young artist be entitled to
government subsidy when the struggling young mechanic or accountant is not?''
Politicizing Culture
James D. Wolfensohn, former
chairman of the
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has decried talk about abolishing the
NEA. "We should not allow e arts] to become political,'' he said. But it is the
subsidies that have politicized the arts and scholarship, not the talk about
ending them. Some artists and scholars are to be awarded taxpayers' money. Which
artists and scholars? They can't all be subsidized. The decisions are ultimately
made by bureaucrats (even if they are advised by artists and scholars). Whatever
criteria the bureaucrats use, they politicize art and scholarship. As novelist
George Garrett has said, "Once (and whenever) the government is involved in the
arts, then it is bound to be a political and social business, a battle between
competing factions. The NEA, by definition, supports the arts establishment.''
Adds painter Laura Main, "Relying on the government to sponsor art work . . . is
to me no more than subjecting yourself to the fate of a bureaucratic lackey.''
Mary Beth Norton, a writer of
women's history and a former member of the National Council on the Humanities,
argues that "one of the great traditions of the Endowment r the Humanities] is
that this is where people doing research in new and exciting areas--oral
history, black history, women's history to name areas I am familiar with--can
turn to for funding.'' When the NEH spent less money in the mid-1980s than
previously, Norton complained, "Now, people on the cutting edge are not being
funded any more.'' But if bureaucrats are ultimately selecting the research to
be funded, how cutting-edge can it really be? How can they be trusted to
distinguish innovation from fad? And who wants scholars choosing the objects of
their research on the basis of what will win favor with government grant
referees?
Similar criticism can be
leveled against the radio and television programs financed by the CPB. They tend
(with a few exceptions) to be aimed at the wealthier and better educated, and
the selection process is inherently political. Moreover, some of the money
granted to local stations is passed on to National Public Radio and the Public
Broadcasting Service for the production of news programs, including All Things
Considered and the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. Why are the taxpayers in a free
society compelled to support news coverage, particularly when it is inclined in
a statist direction? Robert Coonrod, the executive vice president of CPB,
defends his organization, saying that "about 90 percent of the federal
appropriation goes back to the communities, to public radio and TV stations,
which are essentially community institutions.'' Only 90 percent? Why not leave
100 percent in the communities and let the residents decide how to spend it?
Since only 21 percent of CPB revenues come from the federal government, other
sources presumably could take up the slack if the federal government ended the
appropriation.
It must be pointed out that the
fundamental objection to the federal cultural agencies is not that their
products have been intellectually, morally, politically, or sexually offensive
to conservatives or even most Americans. That has sometimes, but not always,
been the case. Occasionally, such as during the bicentennial of the U.S.
Constitution, the agencies have been used to subsidize projects favored by
conservatives. The brief against those agencies would be the same had the money
been used exclusively to subsidize works inoffensive or even inspiring to the
majority of the American people. The case also cannot be based on how much the
agencies spend. In FY95 the two endowments and the CPB were appropriated less
than $650 million total, a mere morsel in a $1.5 trillion federal budget. (The
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Endowment for Children's
Educational Television get $23.5 million more.) The NEA's budget is less than 5
percent of the total amount spent on the arts in the United States.
No, the issue is neither the
content of the work subsidized nor the expense. Taxpayer subsidy of the arts,
scholarship, and broadcasting is inappropriate because it is outside the range
of the proper functions of government and it needlessly politicizes, and
therefore corrupts, an area of life that should be left untainted by politics.
Government funding of anything
involves government control. That insight, of course, is part of our folk
wisdom: "He who pays the piper calls the tune.'' "Who takes the king's shilling
sings the king's song.''
Defenders of funding for the
arts seem blithely unaware of that danger when they praise the role of the
national endowments as an imprimatur or seal of approval on artists and arts
groups. Jane Alexander says, "The Federal role is small but very vital. We are a
stimulus for leveraging state, local and private money. We are a linchpin for
the puzzle of arts funding, a remarkably efficient way of stimulating private
money.'' Drama critic Robert Brustein asks, "How could the NEA be `privatized'
and still retain its purpose as a funding agency functioning as a stamp of
approval for deserving art?''
The politicization of whatever
the federal cultural agencies touch was driven home by Richard Goldstein, a
supporter of the NEH. Goldstein pointed out,
The NEH has a ripple effect on
university hiring and tenure, and on the kinds of research undertaken by
scholars seeking support. Its chairman shapes the bounds of that support. In a
broad sense, he sets standards that affect the tenor of textbooks and the
content of curricula. . . . Though no chairman of the NEH can single-handedly
direct the course of American education, he can nurture the nascent trends and
take advantage of informal opportunities to signal department heads and deans.
He can "persuade'' with the cudgel of federal funding out of sight but hardly
out of mind.
The cudgel (an apt metaphor) of
federal funding has the potential to be wielded to influence those who run the
universities with regard to hiring, tenure, research programs, textbooks,
curricula. That is an enormous amount of power to have vested in a government
official. Surely, it is the kind of concentration of power that the Founding
Fathers intended to thwart.
Separation of Conscience and
State
We might reflect on why the
separation of church and state seems such a wise idea to Americans. First, it is
wrong for the coercive authority of the state to interfere in matters of
individual conscience. If we have rights, if we are individual moral agents, we
must be free to exercise our judgment and define our own relationship with God.
That doesn't mean that a free, pluralistic society won't have lots of persuasion
and proselytizing--no doubt it will--but it does mean that such proselytizing
must remain entirely persuasive and reactions to it entirely voluntary.
Second, social harmony is
enhanced by removing religion from the sphere of politics.
Europe suffered through the Wars of Religion, as churches made alliances with
rulers and sought to impose their theology on everyone in a region. Religious
inquisitions, Roger Williams said, put towns "in an uproar.'' If people take
their faith seriously, and if government is going to make one faith universal
and compulsory, then people must contend bitterly--even to the death--to make
sure that the true faith is established. Enshrine religion in the realm of
persuasion, and there may be vigorous debate in society, but there won't be
political conflict--and people can deal with one another in secular life without
endorsing each other's private opinions.
Third, competition produces
better results than subsidy, protection, and conformity. "Free trade in
religion'' is the best tool humans have to find the nearest approximation to the
truth. Businesses coddled behind subsidies and tariffs will be weak and
uncompetitive, and so will churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. Religions
that are protected from political interference but are otherwise on their own
are likely to be stronger and more vigorous than a church that draws its support
from government.
If those themes are true, they
have implications beyond religion. Religion is not the only thing that affects
us personally and spiritually, and it is not the only thing that leads to
cultural wars. Art also expresses, transmits, and challenges our deepest values.
As the managing director of
Baltimore's Center Stage put it, "Art has power. It has the power to sustain, to
heal, to humanize . . . to change something in you. It's a frightening power,
and also a beautiful power. . . . And it's essential to a civilized society.''
Because art is so powerful, because it deals with such basic human truths, we
dare not entangle it with coercive government power. That means no censorship or
regulation of art. It also means no tax-funded subsidies for arts and artists,
for when government gets into the arts-funding business, we get political
conflicts. To avoid political battles over how to spend the taxpayers' money, to
keep art and its power in the realm of persuasion, we would be well advised to
establish the separation of art and state.
*****************************************************************
URL:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3069275/
A different view..
The End of Arts Funding? The
NEA stayed alive during the culture wars, but its survival strategy may have
done more harm than good By Douglas McLennan
May 29 - Across America,
government is getting out of the arts business. While states like Massachusetts,
California, Florida and Michigan slash their arts budgets by half or more,
lawmakers in Colorado, Oregon and New Jersey consider eliminating their arts
agencies altogether.
THE LAST TIME state governments
attacked a program with such cost-cutting zeal was welfare reform in the
mid-’90s.
So why the arts, and why now?
The obvious reason is that state governments are hurting for money and have big
deficits they have to close. If it’s a choice between arts and public safety or
arts and roads, you know that truck has already left the turnpike.
Anticipating these
all-too-familiar choices, arts leaders have spent much of the past decade
churning out dozens of economic-impact studies to show that the arts are a great
public investment: You want return? For every dollar government invests in
nonprofit arts, eight dollars are returned to the economy. You want economic
stimulus? The arts generated $134 billion in economic activity across
America in 2001. You want jobs? The arts produce 4.85 million full-time
equivalent American jobs. If money seems to be a language legislators
understand, then arts leaders figured they’d give them economic ways to think
about the arts.
The strategy seemed to be
paying off, too. Between 1993 and 2001, state public spending on the arts more
than doubled, from $211 million in 1993, to $447 million eight years later,
according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.
But those were boom years, and
as soon as the economy started to sour, states began cutting their arts budgets,
slashing $93 million combined in the past two years. This year’s cuts could
whack off another $100 million or more, bringing arts spending down to levels of
a decade ago. Worse, the massive cuts don’t just put a crimp in state arts
funding, they cripple or eliminate longstanding core programs. Government is
redefining its relationship with the arts while arts supporters are left
sputtering their economic impact factoids and wondering why no one seems to be
listening. (Pssst, have you heard that more people attended arts events last
year than professional sports events?)
The reason the economic
arguments don’t make any difference is because 1) the arts cuts aren’t about
money, and 2) they’re all about money. They aren’t about money because saving $5
million or $10 million or $20 million on an arts budget is a puny thing when
you’re trying to close a deficit measuring in the billions. The arts are a good
financial investment—and a cheap one, too, compared to many of the investments
governments make. Proposing to eliminate arts funding isn’t about recapturing an
extra few million that would have been spent on arts—it’s about making a
statement: politicians demonstrating how serious they are about budget cuts. The
arts are a highly visible target, and cutting them is a symbol of political
resolve to solve a difficult problem.
InsertArt(1915362)The cuts are
all about money because arts administrators have made them about money. The
culture wars of the late ’80s and early ’90s jolted artists, but more important,
they terrified leaders of
America’s arts institutions, who feared that their ability to raise money was in
jeopardy. Republicans made “zeroing out” the National Endowment for the Arts an
official plank of the party’s election campaign, and the culture wars became an
ideological political crusade that seized upon incendiary images of crucifixes
soaked in urine and chocolate-smeared performance artists to fuel partisan
outrage.
In response, the art world
ducked for cover, vowing to cut out the controversial art—at least for
public-funding purposes. A succession of appeasement-minded NEA chairpersons
traveled the country preaching the Neville Chamberlain doctrine, stressing
populism, traditional values and above all, inclusiveness. Grants to individual
artists disappeared, and arts funding seemed to become an exercise in PR for the
arts.
How then to sell the arts to
lawmakers weary of controversy? Back in 1965, Congress created the National
Endowment for the Arts, proclaiming that “democracy demands wisdom and vision in
its citizens.” Americans have always been distrustful of elitism, but in the
early days of the NEA there was a vision to sell: American culture could be the
envy of the world (and beat the Soviets, who invested heavily in art and
artists). The brash American spirit that had helped win World War II and rebuild
Europe could be embodied by a culture that could produce superior citizens. The
idea that government could also help bring the arts to every part of the land
was heady stuff, and since 1965, some 4,000 state, local and regional arts
agencies have sprung up across America.
But by the late ’80s—with
postmodernism and conceptualism making it difficult (if not impossible) to
declare artistic standards that most people could go along with,
multiculturalism eroding a sense of traditional cultural canon, popular culture
dominating like never before and the culture wars turning entire art forms into
toxic Superfund sites—appealing to a sense of excellence didn’t seem like an
effective strategy.
Instead of promoting culture as
a means to “wisdom” and “vision” (the NEA’s traditional pitch), the arts were
paired up with social “goods”—arts as educational tool, arts working with
troubled kids, arts promoting neighborhood improvement. To get an arts grant, an
arts organization had to show its chops with whatever social agenda du jour was
on the table. At the same time, arts agencies across
America began assembling the bricks of an economic argument for the arts that
would appeal to politicians.
It was not an unsuccessful
strategy. The NEA survived the culture wars, state and local arts funding soared
and billions were spent in the ’90s on new theaters, museums and concert halls
in an orgy of arts construction.
But—as the current arts-funding
crisis suggests—the survival strategy might have topped itself out and
ultimately killed public arts funding. By my estimation, a pure case for public
funding of art for art’s sake hasn’t been made in more than a decade. By
reducing arguments for art to economic impacts and by attaching art to laundry
lists of social goods, art’s been undersold, stripped of inspiration, vision
and, yes, wisdom.
Playing art as economics forces
you to play by economics’ rules. That means drawing bigger audiences every year.
That means improving your financial situation each quarter. And it means that
others will continue to run their equations of profit and loss even when you’d
rather they not (like now). Art may be a great economic investment, but if it’s
not an investment someone chooses to make, you’re out of luck. Sorry, just
business.
You can always tell a theater
or symphony orchestra is on the ropes when it starts worrying more about getting
people in the seats than it does about inspiring audiences; that’s the point it
has become a follower rather than a leader and that’s when it slides into real
trouble.
America has extraordinary artists. But for a decade now, public arts agencies
that should have been promoting the best artistic vision have instead been
following behind the public, trying to find a denominator that, if not lowest,
is most common. The arts are not most common. The arts ought to lead. Public
arts funding is important—for better or worse, money is how government signals
what it thinks is important. But arts funding in America has been broken for a
long time; if it doesn’t find some compelling vision to inspire rather than
follow, it won’t just be broken, it will be gone.
The official line on how the
NEA funds the arts
http://www.arts.gov/pub/how.pdf?bcsi_scan_322B973F62C1491B=0&bcsi_scan_filename=how.pdf
**********************************************************************
And finally, for a sound bite
culture, a collection of arty quotes…
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Art
* "A community without artists
is not a true community, only people living in the same vicinity." ~ Byrne Piven
* "Abstract painting is
abstract. It confronts you." ~ Jackson Pollock * "Abstraction is an exercise in
a pre-assured failure. It is a futile attempt to communicate the
non-communicable" ~ Derek R. Audette
* "After a few months in my
parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I
discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of the
these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to
destroy entire civilizations." ~ David Sedaris Me Talk Pretty One Day
* "All art is autobiographical;
the pearl is the oyster's autobiography." ~ Federico Fellini,
Atlantic (December
1965)
* "All art is solitary and the
studio is a torture area." ~ Alexander Liberman, The
New York Times (13
May 1979)
* "All colors are the friends
of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites." ~ Marc Chagall
* "Any great work of art ...
revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the
extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world—the extent to which it
invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air." ~ Leonard
Bernstein, "What Makes Opera Grand?" Vogue (December 1958)
* "Art does not reproduce the
visible; it makes things visible." ~ Paul Klee
* "Art has got nothing to do
with taste." ~ Max Ernst
* "Art has two constant, two
unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life.
All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John." ~
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari
(Pantheon 1958)
* "Art is made by the alone for
the alone." ~ Luis Barragán, Time (12
May 1980)
* "Art is spawned from the
process that arises in the seeking of an __expression", Daniel Blomqvist (4 May 2006)
* "Art is the signature of
civilizations." ~ Beverly Sills, NBC TV (4
May 1985)
* "Art is the triumph over
chaos." ~ John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever Knopf (1978)
* "Art is the Queen of all
sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world." ~
Leonardo Da Vinci
* "Art is what is
irresistible." ~ William Saroyan as quoted by William Bolcolm in "The End of the
Mannerist Century" (2004), The Pleasure of Modernist Music, Ashby, Arved, ed.
ISBN 1580461433
* "Art means to dare—and to
have been right." ~ Ned Rorem W magazine (10
October 1980)
* "Art, like morality, consists
in drawing the line somewhere." ~ G. K. Chesterton
* "Art produces ugly things
which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand,
produces beautiful things which always becomes ugly with time." ~ Jean Cocteau
* "As an artist, English is my
second language." ~ Anonymous
* "Buy old masters. They fetch
a better price than old mistresses." ~ Max Aitken, recalled on his death (9 June 1964)
* "Creativity is the subtle
theft of another's ideas." ~ Jim Oblak
* "Dead artists always bring
out an older, richer crowd." ~ Elizabeth Shaw, On a fauvism exhibition that drew
2,000 people, The New York Times (26
March 1976)
* "[Discipline in art is] a
fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is
drawing." ~ Henry Moore, recalled on his death, (31 August 1986)
* "Drawing is like making an
expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence." ~ Henri Matisse, Christian
Science Monitor (25
March 1985)
* "Drawing is the honesty of
the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad." ~
Salvador
Dali, People (27 September 1976)
* "For a long time I limited
myself to one color—as a form of discipline." ~ Pablo Picasso, On his blue and
rose periods, Picasso on Art
* "Good artists borrow, great
artists steal" ~ Michael Berens
* "Great authors should be
read, and not met." ~ Will Cuppy
* "He searched disorder for its
unifying principle." ~ Brian O'Doherty, On Stuart Davis, abstractionist whose
work prefigured pop art, The New York Times (26
June 1964)
* "I do a bale of sketches, one
eye, a piece of hair. A pound of observation, then an ounce of painting." ~
Gardner Cox on his portraits, Washington Post (31
May 1975)
* "I don't live in the present,
I Am The Present" ~ Paul Palnik in Mystic Creativity (1996)
* "I don't paint nature, I am
nature" ~ Jackson Pollock
* "I don't really have studios.
I wander around—around people's attics, out in fields, in cellars, anyplace I
find that invites me." ~ Andrew Wyeth, Time, 18 Aug 86
* "I dream my painting, and
then I paint my dream." ~ Vincent van Gogh
* "I'd rather use art to climb
than anything else." ~ Robert C Scull, When asked if his purchases were for
investment or social climbing, recalled on his death (1 January 86)
* "If more than 5% of the
people like a painting then burn it for it must be bad." ~ James McNeill
Whistler
* if the subject of art
will be a broken jug
a small broken soul
with a great self-pity
what will remain of us
will be like tears of lovers
in a small dirty hotel
when wallpapers dawn
~ Zbigniew Herbert in Why the
Classics ~
* "If you want to know what
true art is: Go outside on a clear night, wait until it gets very, very dark,
then look up! You will see no rules of composition, no evidence of superior
technique. Yet, you will be staring into the very face of pure, unadulterated
beauty and wonder. That is the unattainable Ideal for which I must constantly
strive." ~ Derek R. Audette
* "Impressionism is the
newspaper of the soul." ~ Henri Matisse in Matisse (Rizzoli 1984)
* "In short, if newspapers were written by people whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should believe in art." ~ Virginia Woolf in The Three Guineas
* "It holds up in one object or
one surface, in one bright, luminous and concentrated thing—whether a beer can
or a flag—all the dispersed elements that go to make up our lives." ~ Robert C
Scull, On his collection of pop and minimal art, Time (21 February 1964)
* "It is not about which artist
is more skilled than which other artist. It is about creating what is in you to
create. A lack of confidence in oneself is like a thief, It steals from the
world that which might be worthy." ~ Derek R. Audette
* "It is only after years of
preparation that the young [artist] should touch color—not color used
descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal __expression." ~ Henri
Matisse, Christian Science Monitor (25
March 1985)
* "[It] is that rare
impressionist painting where people don't judge the light, but rather are judged
by it." ~ Alexandra Johnson, On Terrace at Sainte-Adresse by Claude Monet,
Christian Science Monitor (1
October 1980)
* "[It was] like the wild child
who belongs in a delinquent home." ~ Lowery Sims, On status of modern art
collection before $26-million, 110,000-square-foot addition to the museum,
Manhattan Inc. (August 1986)
* "Light is impressionism." ~
Gae Aulenti, On positioning galleries for impressionist and postimpressionist
paintings at the top of her design for
Paris's Musée
d'Orsay, Time (8 December 1986)
* "Most artists are
surrealists. ... always dreaming something and then they paint it." ~ Dong
Kingman in Twenty-two Famous Painters and Illustrators Tell How They Work (1964)
edited by Mary Ann Guitar
* "Most Christians' view of
evangelism are along the same lines of the propaganda campaigns of Nazi Germany.
They have this 'us against them' concept, and they destroy art. They want to
make films and music that make their philosophical position look good, which is
not the same as art." ~ Frank Hart, leader for Atomic Opera
* "Most painting in the
European tradition was painting the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our
subject matter was the person behind the mask." ~ Robert Motherwell in The Times
(17 November 1985)
* "No matter how much utter
disdain I have for the work of a particular artist, I would still rather that he
had created those works than hadn't" ~ Derek R. Audette
* "No matter how substandard
you feel your skill or talent may be, If you never produce your art, the world
will always remain deprived of it." ~ Derek R. Audette
* "Pop art is the inedible
raised to the unspeakable." ~ Leonard Baskin, Publishers Weekly (5 April 1965)
* "The Art Snob can be
recognized in the home by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls,
quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. This is followed
either by complete and pained silence or a comment such as 'That's really a very
pleasant little water color you have there.'" ~ Russell Lynes in Snobs (1950)
* "The Art Snob will stand back
from a picture at some distance, his head cocked slightly to one side. ... After
a long period of gazing (during which he may occasionally squint his eyes), he
will approach to within a few inches of the picture and examine the brushwork;
he will then return to his former distant position, give the picture another
glance and walk away." ~ Russell Lynes in Snobs (1950)
* "The entire 'my art is better
than your art' thing really gets under my skin. The fact of the matter is: Your
art IS better than my art... at being what it is. So what? It just so happens
that my art is better than your art, at being what it is."~ Derek R. Audette
* "The function of all art ...
is an extension of the function of the visual brain, to acquire knowledge;
...artists are, in a sense, neurologists who study the capacities of the visual
brain with techniques that are unique to them." ~ Semir Zeki
* "The name of Leonardo da
Vinci will be invoked by artists to prove that only a great artist can be a
great technician. The name of Leonardo da Vinci will be invoked by technicians
to prove that only a great technician can be a great artist." ~ Alex Gross,
East Village
Other (1968)
* "[The object of art is] to
make eternal the desperately fleeting moment." ~
Tennessee Williams
* "The philosopher sought only
to discover, the artist to perfect" ~ Winwood Reade
* "The purpose of art is not
the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but rather the gradual,
lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity." ~ Glenn Gould
* "The role of art is to make a
world which can be inhabited." ~ William Saroyan, Recalled at his Broadway
memorial service, The New York Times (31 Oct 83)
* "The studio, a room to which
the artist consigns himself for life, is naturally important, not only as
workplace, but as a source of inspiration. And it usually manages, one way or
another, to turn up in his product." ~ Grace Glueck, The
New York Times (29
June 1984)
* "The whole beauty and
grandeur of Art consists ... in being able to get above all singular forms,
particularities of every kind [by making out] an abstract idea ... more perfect
than any one original." ~ John Constable
* "There is no more sombre
enemy of good art than the pram in the hall." ~ Cyril Connolly
* "This museum is a torpedo
moving through time, its head the ever-advancing present, its tail the
ever-receding past of 50 to 100 years ago." ~ Alfred Barr, Newsweek (1 June 1964)
* "Three men riding on a
bicycle which has only one wheel, I guess that's surrealist." ~ Dong Kingman in
Twenty-two Famous Painters and Illustrators Tell How They Work (1964)
* "We can forgive a man for
making a useful thing, as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for
making a useless thing is that one admires it immensely. All art is useless." ~
Oscar Wilde
* "Whats the difference between
art and pornography... a government grant!" ~ Peter Griffin, Family Guy
* "When the established members
of academia start becoming vocal as to how poor your art is, then you know
you're on to something." ~ Derek R. Audette
* "Whores are the most honest
girls. They present the bill right away." ~ Alberto Giacometti, On his choice of
models, quoted by James Lord in Giacometti (1985)
* "Without tradition, art is a
flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse." ~
Winston Churchill, To
Royal
Academy of Arts, Time (11 May 1953)
That’s all folks
Colin
