If there's no audience, does the show go on?
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post::Further thoughts from "Art for all. Free for all?"::
I've been mulling over the idea of what to do when no one is interested in specific art (not art in general). Does it mean the art is bad, or the audience is bad?
1. Art that isn't supported on its own. It could be that the
hoi polloi are all idiots and just don't know good art when they see it. There
are people that bear this out, and you simply don't want to get me started on
the topic of "deer/antlered animal art." However, generally speaking, if people
aren't interested -- not just in buying, but in even viewing or acknowledging or
admiring -- there might be a reason. I grant that people in my general
geographic area aren't interested in my art. I do sell to people in
other places. If you are making art that you absolutely can't find anyone to
buy...maybe you're making bad art, maybe you're just ahead of your time, maybe
you're a misunderstood and tortured genius. This could lead to an interesting
discussion on what makes "good art" and whether or not the general population is
able to understand what that is. My take, after years and many, many incidents
where people seemed like idiots, is that people know what is good and what
isn't. I would also say the general public knows better than the critics and
those immersed in some stratospheric "art world." It's hard to admit that I've
made my share of bad art and that's why it didn't sell. The general public might
not agree with each other and have different tastes, but taken across a broad
sample...yes.
I do agree. I wrote it. I was approaching it at an angle of why public money was being used to fund art that perhaps the public didn't have interest in. But, for purposes of not expounding too much and creating a very long blog post, I stopped at the one (rather long) paragraph. There is more to be said on this, I think.
In order to organize my thoughts, I decided to make a list:
- There is an elitism to some art culture that looks down on whatever tastes are prevalent in the public. That is, if the general public likes it, it must be bad; that an artist who finds wide success is a sell-out. This is not always true.
- There are artists who purposefully create art to cater to the broadest common denominator, to the broadest taste, for financial gain. By doing so, they actually are sell-outs.
- Some specific geographical regions will not support art outside of their sub-culture norm. This does not mean the artist is creating bad art, but art that isn't part of the normal cultural language. Non-sales or not being acknowledged is then, in that case, a punishment for staying true and not selling out.
- There are artists creating crap and passing it off as art by encasing it in extensive language and theory and fooling people who don't want to be thought of as common and therefore refuse to use common sense which screams that this is junk.
- People buy art because they like it, as an investment, because of some kind of status element whether they like the art or not, because they truly enjoy art and want to build a collection, to support an artist...
- People don't buy art because they do not like it, it "doesn't match the sofa", they see it as a waste of money, they can by images elsewhere at less cost, they don't see it as important or unique since we are a society already drowning in imagery, it doesn't seem to have any logical purpose (the "but what does it do?" question at art fairs)...
My take on this hinges on the concept of whether or not government funding of arts programs and artists is based on sustaining art or the artist. Is it about there being a market or buyer (i.e. making sure there is an audience) or is it about the show merely going on no matter if there is an audience or not? Is the point of the funding to sustain artists who aren't being sustained on their own work for some sort of preservation purpose, a kind of reaction against those artists who do find financial success? Is it a good idea to use public money to pay for art that the public might not support otherwise? Do we only end up creating a false market? Does the market have anything to do with this discussion on public funds for art, or not?
Labels: art life
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 6/29/2007 01:15:00 PM
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1 Comments:
Art is too important to be left to the marketplace. I say this as a good conservative, nevertheless one who gives two cheers for capitalism, whose religion is not money, and who believes markets determine price, not value. The market gives us pro wrestling. Yet clearly there are things more worthy of our time than pro wrestling. You would not want pro wrestling to be the predominant form of entertainment in our culture. And yet our culture panders toward the lowest common denominator, toward cheapness and vulgarity.
I’m not a cheerleader for government funding, but if that’s what it takes to keep the show going — to fund ballets, symphonies, artists — then I don’t have a problem with it, even given that some crap is going to get funded. I don’t see any other way. In a practical sense, the money is going to be given out anyway. It might as well be to you, to people who know what they’re doing.
William Carlos Williams was a doctor by day, poet in off time. Some say his poems are short because he wrote them between seeing patients. T.S. Eliot was a banker by day. He actually preferred the dullness and order of that work, thus freeing up his mind for after work, when his imagination exploded with innovation.
These are exceptions, though. I doubt many people have that much stamina.
By 
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July 01, 2007 4:46 PM
