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{ Monday, July 28, 2003 }

Funding models for art and artists

Yesterday we ran into Ben and Corey walking down the seawall, and met Peter and Neil, who were with them.

Peter is a painter, recently moved here from New York. We were talking about how much money there was in New York in the 80s and how much of it was going to artists. We talked about the public funding models in Holland, in the 60s and 70s and how they apparently created an atmosphere of complete acceptance of cultural product, and thus mediocrity. Peter said he couldn't think of a single artist who'd been funded in this manner who had made lasting work, and that those who did had worked outside of this system. I told him about an artist I worked with in New York who had several patrons -- whenever she was completely broke, they'd send her a check to keep her going, buy a painting for two, take her out for dinner. She was a perfectionist and painted 10 canvases for every one that she'd keep, so her shows were few and far between. We both agreed that struggle, for all the suffering it produces, often results in good art, and that it weeds out the uncommitted artists. I remember something that Kiki Smith said in an interview, that the artists that succeed are not necessarily the most talented, but those with the strongest personal necessity to make their art. And I think this is often true.

Neither Peter nor I knew what the best model for funding artists was. Too much dependence on selling, on art-as-commodity, was clearly corrupting, but, in Peter's experience, public funding often created a morass of mediocrity. I quite like the patronage system of old. The Dia Foundation is most like a patronage system.

LINK | 12:11 PM | TB

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{ COMMENTS }

Uh... New York as the epitome of the art world? excuse me, there is a whole shitload of crappy art in New York City that was funded by patrons with no taste, and artists that couldn't paint even there were numbers on the canvas!

This is just elitist American thinking, and also ironic that it is coming from two Americans who are in Canada -- and I assume also working as artists in Canada.

Of course public funding creates crap art as well -- but at least with public funding you have a more diverse group of people creating crap, instead of just your average set of white guys or girls (or for that matter the token black) creating a lot of crap.

In Canada everyone gets to create crap equally!

Susan | July 28, 2003 12:35 PM

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Actually, Peter is a Canadian who was living in New York, now returned home after 23 years. (Aren't you a Canadian living in New York too?) We never said New York was the epitome of the art world, we were just comparing our personal experience. Though I will say now that yes, there is more art, and arts funding, in New York, than in any other single place in our hemisphere.

Caterina | July 28, 2003 12:42 PM

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I made it thru apprenticeship and grad school running on deep, personal necessity, but sales to patrons and a few foundation grants didn't hurt. The two reinforced each other.

The numbers of my friends who teach in the hinterlands and compete for foundation grants from NYC is not small... and I know of no winners. Add to it that the amount of funding isn't that large, in real terms, and it is cause for some kind of lament, for their collective sake. Among some, the receipt of "name" funding like Dia is like winning the green-card lottery, but to what actual gain (entry to the Land of the Most Serious Resume?) I often wonder.

tim | July 28, 2003 12:57 PM

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No, I'm a Canadian living in Groton, Connecticut (Submarine Capital of the World.)

Certain Canadians become instant Americans upon leaving Canada (after all, most Americans expect you to give up your minimal Canadian identity within a year of being here anyway.)
Mostly it is talentless Canadians who, by simply living in the NYC area, somehow have now acquired talent.
(Myself included obviously -- boy, when I go back to Canada, am I going to LORD it over people that I lived in the Submarine Capital of the World!)

The reality is, that although NYC might have the most arts funding, per capita Canada probably has more. Yes, there are a lot more libraries, etc in NYC, but per capita, Canada is more literate, and people have more access to public information.

Yes -- quite a few Americans always throw that back at me when I criticize their country while living in their country. That's why I threw the original 'why criticize Canada while you're in it' attitude at ya to begin with. But it really is my pet project -- to criticize America while I'm here -- because it just really pisses Americans off. It is such a pleasure to do so however. It really is living dangerously in the kind of atmosphere that exists here these days.

Susan | July 28, 2003 2:09 PM

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Lasting work. Doesn't that require recognition at the time of making? In order for the work to last it has to be preserved, to be preserved it has to be recognized as worthy. Isn't there something already mediocre there? The accepted contemporary becoming tomorrow's mediocrity? All those stories of vanguard struggle, nip and tuck, just-in-time recognition. Fauvist and Ash Can. And further back, who knows what we missed in the bottleneck of Church patronage? The constricting taste and predilections of the merchant princes, in any age, so little gets through.
Imagine Guernica, painted exactly as it is, in 16th century Italy. But then imagine a taverna in Parma where the madman who paints that unacceptable vision eats at Parmigianino's table. The trickle-down theory of art patronage.
The idea that financial struggle might be necessary to produce the suffering that's necessary to produce great art is about as bourgeois as it gets. Great art has been made under the influence of alcohol, benzedrine, heroin, masochistic agony, sexual repression, tuberculosis, madness, war, deformity, and religious delusion, as well as poverty. And much more great art has been lost to the damaging influence of those same agencies.
The same could be said for patronage, private or public, meritocratic or blind. Sue Coe and David Hockney both transcend the marketplace, and patronage, and their heirs will too. Bad art is like bad wine, not that big a deal.

Michael Griffin | July 28, 2003 2:13 PM

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Funny, Susan, sounds like you have enough of a classic Canadian inferiority complex to match our colossal American elitism. And you know, I can't remember the last time I was in a museum - here or in Europe - and saw work by an artist who was raised, taught and worked in Canada... God, what gives you all the right to be so full of yourselves? Europeans can have their high horse because they have a past. But Canada? Susan, besides all the money and the many tasteless people here, I'll grant you, who wield it, New York has the Met, MOMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Dia, PS 1, and hundreds of galleries that buy good art. It has Parsons, Pratt, the Cooper Union, FIT and the Arts Students League. And it provides a cultural nexus to the other arts, so often undervalued, and missing in small art colonies, where artists tend to sink into stifling ghettos.

Besides, public funding is no guarantee of quality, as you point out, and it's a new thing under the sun anyhow. Plenty of history's greats did fine without it by, for instance, getting a JOB. It builds character, and weeds out the crap. Maybe it should be an entrance requirement to art school. The sense of entitlement today among artists is disgusting.

Vivian | July 28, 2003 2:55 PM

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Is the relationship between artist and patron perhaps a major factor for many artists? For artists working in the mass arts, perhaps the relationship between artist and public?

I have real doubts about the virtues of suffering for one's art--it is only artists who have finally made it who speak well of it. Surely there are better ways of weeding out the uncommitted?

Randolph Fritz | July 28, 2003 7:02 PM

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Vivian, I totally agree that some artists' sense of entitlement is irritating. Big deal, so your an artist. Quit your whining and get to work. All will be revealed. If you are lucky when you are still living. As for artists who are all over museums in Europe and America who live ,work and teach in Canada , Rodney Graham,Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas are three who you must be casually familiar with. It is an odd turn of phrase don't you think that a nation with an such a well known inferiority complex would be so full of themselves.(?)

Ewan | July 28, 2003 9:44 PM

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I hadn't imagined it'd be so easy to add nationalism/patriotism to a discussion about how to deal with life as an artist. See, I learned something.

But seriously, I think if you want to be an artist then first of all it doesn't matter where you're from. Also, if you're an artist I think you want to create the art for yourself first. Making a living out of it can only be the second step.

Being a European (a German to be more precise) I'm in favour of public funding of art. That doesn't guarantee you good art. But before we talk about good art we need to talk about what "good" means in this context anyway, right? People like to imply that most artists generate crap and I think that's simply no way to think about it. I happen to live in Pittsburgh, where Andy Warhol was born. Is his work crap? It's cheaply made, isn't it? But it's successful, and immensely so. So how do you want to deal with it? Would you have funded his work before he was popular? If yes why? If no why not?

The main problem with funding art is basically a problem well known in the world of business: You don't know a priori what is going to be successful and what isn't. Venture capitalists can give long talks about that. In the end, you'll always end up throwing money at people who will not be successful and there'll be a few who will be successful and who might create the next "cool thing". The problem is completely independent of whether you want to spend public or private money on it.

It seems to me the main question is whether you want to spend money on it at all. If you don't then I'd argue you have some serious problems because a society without art is quite empty. If you look at the oldest traces of humanity a lot of the stuff we still have - like paintings in caves - is art work. If you do I think it's time for people to realize what is being gained from having an atmosphere where there are creative artists around. In a sense, the one artist which ends up at MoMA contributes only on a somewhat superficial level because all the non-MoMA artists still contribute to a society where "non-productive" work is being accepted. Just think of all those places - like New York - where there are tons of artists. New York has its reputation not only because of the few very successful artists.

PS: I need to add that I'm a photographer looking for exhibition space. So I guess I fall into the "artist" category which might make it convenient to dismiss my comments if you don't like them! ;-)

Jo:rg | July 29, 2003 7:45 AM

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Harlan Ellison: The people who tell you that starving in a garret is good for your art are publishers so they can give you a penny a word and not pay you a decent rate.

That said, I do agree with the artist Catarina quoted. Many writers I know say there were many more talented writers all around them as they came up; but the successful ones are the ones who persisted.

The universe doesn't recognize talent or justice, but it does respect energy and persistence. Those traits always seem to win out. (The fire in my belly is an ulcer-- ah well.)

Mike | July 30, 2003 6:54 PM

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