Are The Arts Actually Important?
I railed a bit about state-sponsored art in the previous entry and realised I have to go back and explain a few things, so it's worth considering a few things about the arts. It's hard to know about arrangements in the ancient world and the dark ages but what we do know, we do so because of the arts and humanities. People wrote stuff down, and drew and painted depictions, sometimes sculpted them beautifully. We know about some of the most important historic figures in the ancient world through people doing what we might perceive to be jobs, getting paid to do arts & humanities. So much of what we've pieced together of the ancient world comes to us via the arts & humanities.
In fact, it is so drastic that you could argue any civilisation that doesn't produce or leave behind gobs and gobs of this stuff is doomed to obscurity, deserving or not. Even if it
looks like crap to us right now, all of this stuff in the arts and humanities matters. The only thing that is going to allow your name to echo through history is to write it down. The only meaningful communication you are going to make about the time you find yourself living with future generations, is to capture it in the arts. Photograph it, film it. draw it, sculpt it, record it, write it, shape it. And - unfortunately - all of this costs time and money, but every society would find it incumbent upon them to do this stuff we know as arts & humanities.
The demonstrable flip-side to this is that in his time as CEO of BHP Marius Kloppers directly invested in our artists so little, that in a thousand years time, nobody is going to remember his contribution to our society as a captain of industry (not that he's likely to care). He will not be a Theo Van Gogh. He will not be Francesco del Giocondo, the man who commissioned Leonardo DaVinci to paint the Mona Lisa. We
do know one Richard Burbage because he was instrumental in building the Globe Theatre in Elizabethan England. That's where Shakespeare played. We know so much of Lorenzo Medici and the Medici family because they sponsored so much in Florence. But any of these munchkins fronting up as Board directors for public accompanies in this country raking in millions, are chumps in history, exactly because none of them put their own names and reputations in to the arts & humanities. And I'm afraid corporate sponsorship isn't the same thing.
One of the coolest thing you can do in Sydney town if you make it big, is to go donate chunk of change to the MCA and keep it going. They put your name up there in the eastern foyer. Once upon a time I told a chef this idea, and since then he's become very wealthy but he's also done exactly that - donated money to put his name there.
But in most part, Sydney is a city of philistines and haters.
The Banality Of The Audience
If you go to the Medici palace in Florence, there's a little prayer room upstair where the Medicis spent time in quiet contemplation. It would have been mightily distracting because there is a fantastic fresco painting on 3 sides, 'The Procession of the Magi'. As a work of art, it is breathtaking and defies easy description. Yet, for a great part of history since 1459 when it was painted, only the Medici family and their inner sanctum would have been privy to see this thing. Today, you just go pay your entrance fee and walk right up and look, but for most of its history, this treasure belonged to one family. It reflects - in most part - the power and glory that was Florence under the rule of the Medicis.
It is privately sponsored art by somebody in power of the state, so in a broader sense it is state sponsored art. The rise of the bourgeoisie essentially powered the rise of the arts as something valuable; and when we say valuable, we don't necessarily have to narrow it down to that which is monetisable. After all, the glory of the 'Procession of the Magi' is not defined by its power to earn a buck.
Throughout the second half of the last millennium, the bourgeoisie have picked and discarded many forms of arts and entertainment as their chosen vesicle for glory. Thus we have high watermarks in the arts with names we can bandy about; whether that may be Shakespeare, or Picasso, they represent various inflection points in turns of Bourgeois tastes. Amongst the procession include things like theatre, orchestral music, ballet and opera, painting and sculpture. At each turn there were bourgeois captains of industry that championed the cause of these things, right up to the 20th Century when Industrialisation changed the bourgeoisie itself into mass consumers.
What becomes clear is that regardless of whether it is the state or private individuals sponsoring an art form or venture, what seems bloody apparent is the need to appease the banal tastes of the audience. If indeed Hannah Arendt is correct and evil is banal, certainly the audience for Wagner were most probably banal. If evil is banal, then banality is probably evil, although it is hard figuring which is the subset of the other. Can there be more evil than banality? Seems like there is much more banality than evil in the world.
If Van Gogh could not find a market for his work in his lifetime, then yes, the bourgeoisie buying art in the late 19th Century were banal. If you go watch the Opera or Ballet and take a look around at the audience, it is clear that the vast majority of the audience can be described as banal. Banality is everywhere consuming the arts & humanities. If you want to know who the phoneys that Holden Caulfield was so unhappy about in 'The Catcher in the Rye' were and are, they're the chattering classes with their support for the arts that they want to reflect upon them as people of worth in this bourgeois society. Therefore - inevitably and undoubtedly - the most banal (and therefore evil) of them all in Australia is likely George Brandis and his $104 million purse for artists of his choice.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It's a rare bit of work that rises above the banality of its audience. It is a rare artist who can produce more than one thing that rises above that banality. In most instances an art form is a mirror of the people supporting it, and in most instance of history, one is struck by the ever-growing banality of audiences. This side of 1970, with the complete breakdown of the classical hierarchy, we're left with a world where anything goes as long as there is money. Or, to quote 'This is Spinal Tap' wherein it is observed, "Money talks and bullshit walks". There's a lot of money out there for a lot of bullshit.
It's a curious thing how this bullshit transmogrifies around politics. George Brandis presumably likes classically sanctioned arts much more than the nebulous explosion of modern and contemporary art music, theatre, dantean whatever else. This in turn manifests the opposite call saying the traditional arts are somehow boring and over-serviced. But does one genuinely reject an art form for the audience it gets? Do we really reject Wagner as an artist for his Nazi fans? Do we really reject punk rock because of the punks? Do we reject Renaissance art because of those despots and tyrants who commissioned them? Do we reject pop art for its snide consumerist fanbase? Do we really reject the Australian Opera because George Brandis and people of his socio-economic ilk like it (or at least dutifully
pretend to like to keep up their facade)? Are we willing to tread the lines that were once trodden by the likes of Hitler and Stalin? Do we reject any art for the banality of its audience?
Yes, it's a rhetorical question. Of course we do not; and so we have to cop the George-Brandis-badged bullshit on the chin. Yes, it's banal - the worst kind of banality it is too - but banality itself isn't evil enough to condemn. In the mean time, the state, which is of the banal for the banal, by the banal, offers up plenty of opportunities to experience the arts.
A Further Note About State Sponsored Art
Everybody laughs at
Ken Done. I do too, but I admit it's a reflexive snobbery, and most likely unfair. I find it too pat when an industrial graphic designer sort of cobbles together faux-fauvist, infantile-looking paintings and proclaims himself an artist. It gets worse when he reproduces his art as teeshirts, tea towels, and coasters and sells them to unsuspecting tourists. It's enough to bring out all the cultural prejudices. The name Ken Done was enough to induce cultural cringe back in the 1980s. Ken Done the artist however has two things going for him that we must accept. He managed to sell his art regardless of the perceived quality or the reputation bestowed upon him. The state didn't pay for him to create this stuff; he just went ahead and did it.
The old lesson I learnt from my boss at Dentsu Australia was that you could measure the maturity of any industry in any country by the proportion of public money invested in the industry. By this measure, the arts in Australia might be very underdeveloped, given how much public money goes into the arts from the government. All those artists complaining about funds being cut might consider Ken Done's career a bit closer. It ain't pretty but you're really setting out to live on your talents, the least you could do is market it properly. There's simply got to be a way. And if you think Ken Done's art is pretty crappy and yours is better, then really you should do much better than Ken Done in the market place.
