The Tuesday August 2nd, New York Times Arts section has a page one story written by Robin Pogrebin about a woman named Erika Nelson who horror of horrors just lost her $2,000 grant from the state of Kansas that supports her mobile museum, which displays tiny models of big things. A tiny model of the world’s biggest catsup bottle is one of her most creative feature items. For this, some dumb bureaucrat gave her two grand of your money.
The story is accompanied by a half page picture of Ms Nelson and her panel truck/museum, along with a desperate lament for the loss of tax money for the arts. Money for the arts? This dame has a bizarre hobby. It has nothing to do with art. At the very least art demands a point of view. I am a tiny version of a big dumb thing is not a point of view. Not unless you’re a member of the Tea Party pointing out your group’s relationship to congress. But I digress.
There seem to be a couple of questions that are buzzing around this article and in fact the whole area of tax money funding the arts. The first is probably; is this art and if it is should we, in an economy overwhelmed with serious financial problems, be supporting it with tax dollars?
Whole books have been written about what is art and what is not. The current feeling, especially among the avant garde seems to be that it is art if the artist says it is art. This theory is strongly supported by a number of pundits who have declared that everything is art. Of course, making that statement reveals the mirror image of it, which is that, nothing is art. Both statements are obviously ridiculous so let’s try to bring some sanity into the equation by declaring that there is art and that there are standards of art by which we can define good art and bad art but that those standards are constantly changing, making it all but impossible to be objective about art.
Yes, a real mess, but fun. And strangely, the answer to this problem is also the answer to, whether we should be using tax dollars to support the arts.
The history of art and the support of artists is the story of great wealth supporting great art throughout the ages. Not tax wealth, but great individual wealth. Artists have always struggled, but historically they have, if they are good enough or politically connected enough, usually managed to find a patron. These patrons, unless an individual king or queen, have never been the state.
In the modern era this is still to a lesser extent true. It’s, to some extent, how we tell good from bad. I say to some extent because there are today, some artists, whose work, though supported by important patronage, reeks more of con than talent. I will insert here, as a point of personal privilege, the work of Brice Marden, whose white on white canvasses, though displayed at MOMA are an insult to the intelligence of the viewer. Again I digress.
The point is, that if an artist cannot support him or her self through the fruits of his or her labor, he or she should probably get a job at Walmart. There are lots of creative things going on there and a plethora of inspiration.
Is supporting the arts a good use of tax money? Probably not, first because our nation is currently in a huge fiscal hole and millions are unemployed. It would seem that feeding the children of those whose employers went bust is a better use of our dwindling resources than investing in projects created by those who have chosen to do what they are doing but have not bothered to plan how it will enable them to eat.
Another reason for the government not supporting art is that as soon as you put up your dough for any kind of project, you have a say in it. There is nothing more destructive of art than having anyone but the artist have a say in the creative process. Check out any movie with more than one credited screenwriter.
There is also the fact that a certain percentage of art is offensive to a large segment of the population. I have never believed in censorship of any kind, but if you take tax money to create something, which has as its intrinsic point of view, a position that is deeply offensive to a group of taxpayers, that’s just wrong. As an artist it is okay to offend any group you like as long as you’re not using their money to pay for it.
The great argument against this point is that our tax dollars go to support many things we don’t agree with or that offend us. I have always found that to be a specious argument. Yes there are many things, like wars, that each individual doesn’t agree with that get paid for with tax dollars. That isn’t a reason to add to the list.
All of the above lend credence to why the government shouldn’t be supporting art with tax dollars but the absolute killer argument comes about when we ask the questions, what art does the government support and how is that art chosen?
To understand the basis for this question you have to realize that there is a large contingent of would be artists whose greatest artistic achievement lies in their ability to write grant letters. Grant letter writing is almost an art form in itself, and over the years, its been my observation that the people who get the grants have a lot less to give creatively then those who don’t. I know a number of would-be artists who have lived for years on grants but have, to the best of my knowledge, produced nothing remotely approaching art.
The problem is with the process, and it’s a huge one. We are asking bureaucrats and paper pushers to decide, based on grant applications, which requests have value and which do not. This would be an impossible task even if the grant examiners had some sort of sophisticated background on which to judge art, which they do not. So what we end up doing is throwing much needed money at the “artist” who writes the most inviting application. It’s ludicrous.
On the other hand, there is some credit to the argument for supporting large, seriously run institutions like Lincoln Center or The Metropolitan Museum, which provide guided access to a substantial segment of the public that are paying those taxes. Of course those super institutions really depend on super donors, who outdo each other for the opportunity to get their names on a new wing or even a new theatre. This is a great use of the tax code since the tax deductions credited to most of these millionaire donors don’t really affect the tax revenue bottom line. Millionaire donors already have more loopholes than they can use.
I am sure that at this moment, any number of my friends, most of whom are in the arts or art related industries, are carefully inserting large sharply pointed objects in hastily constructed replicas of yours truly. I understand your sense of betrayal but I can only say that I have felt this way all my adult life and have written on the subject on a number of occasions. If you had read the earlier material, you wouldn’t be surprised now.