A new study by the Rand Corporation analyzes the fairly recent phenomenon of "selling" the arts based on their instrumental effects (like an enhanced local economy, or higher student test scores) as opposed to their intrinsic value. The study, entitled Gifts of the Muse: Re framing the Debate of the Benefits of the Arts, concludes that in promoting the arts across the country there has been too much focus on broad economic and social benefits.
The report places the origin of this kind of thinking in the early 1990s, and offers alternatives. The assumption is that there are just not enough people enjoying art.
One recommendation is that "attention and resources be shifted away from supply of the arts and toward cultivation of demand" . The summary of the study gives several suggestions for the "promotion of satisfying arts experiences" including the need to develop the language needed for discussion and acknowledging the limitations of current research. In other words, like alot of research, the study concluded that more study is needed (a little job security, there).
But the money quote is right here:
"Research has shown that early exposure is often key to developing life-long involvement in the arts. That exposure typically comes from arts education… The most promising way to develop audiences for the arts would be to provide well-designed programs in the nation’s schools."
So, rather than paying artists to produce more art that nobody looks at, we should strap students into specially designed art-appreciation chairs and refuse to release them until they grasp the "surrealism of the underlying metaphor" ("Welcome, Billy. Are you ready to have a satisfying art experience?").
This is wrong-headed for several reasons. For one, there is no shortage of art in kids’ lives. They are practically choked with art. Animé, comic books, movies, tattoos… heck, they are bombarded with art through cable television. Sure, it is generally of a low quality, but in a culture that has elevated subjectivism and relativism to the level of religious dogma, how would an art teacher even begin to help these kids distinguish "good" art from "bad" art? The very idea of good or bad art is anathema to the current art establishment. It’s all good, Billy, in it’s own way. Graffiti is as valid an expression as the Sistine ceiling. We have been feeding people this line for years.
Funding for the arts indeed began to come under (quite justifiable) attack around the early 1990s, as the preposterous excesses of goverment funded art began to come to light. The arts bureaucracy unwisely aligned themselves with the purveyors of artsy anti-religious hatred and pornography. Now they find themselves somewhat against the wall in trying to justify continued funding.
If the art establishment in this country had not been peddling ugly, meaningless art to the public for so long I doubt that they would find themselves in this position. Graffiti may not really be as good as the Sistine ceiling, but it is as good or better than Mark Rothko or Willem de Kooning.
Beauty is the key. People are starved for it. Alot of animé is quite stunningly beautiful, which is why kids respond to it. Give the people beautiful art and they will respond to it. Continue with the present course and the arts will always go begging for funds.
The report can be found online in the full version or just the summary.
(Warning!! Evil File Format – PDF)
Warning!! Evil File Format – PDF
Not you too…
“The most promising way to develop audiences for the arts would be to provide well-designed programs in the nation’s schools.”
The key is well-designed. If you take kids on an historical tour of art, and then try to tell them that this modern stuff can compare with the beauty that they saw that came before – they’ll laugh at you. Kids are smarter than you think, and aren’t easily led astray by ‘sophistication.’
I have not heard anyone claim grafitti was an honest expression of art for decades. The heyday seemed to be in the 1970’s, but the idea was completely rejected by the early-mid 1980’s. Everyone now has the same opinion of it as we did before the 1960’s, it’s vandalism, except for maybe a handful of radicals that no one listens to.
The great problem for art today is that many artists seem to be talentless or have no training or skill. The problem with modern art is not that modern art can’t be beautiful, it’s that while the original masters like Picasso were classically trained and skilled, later modern artists never saw the need to be. Thus while Picasso’s art was based on intentional distortion of form for specific meaning, later artists just didn’t know how to draw period.
If you really want to look at beuatiful art and be acquainted with an organization who wants to renew artistic standards, go vist the Art Renewal Center: http://www.artrenewal.org/
Chris, I read some Vatican cardinal insisting grafitti was wonderful art just two years ago in my diocesan newspaper. I figure he was late in on the trend, as cardinals trying to be hip and modern usually are.
Wait! Just because something is vandalism doesn’t mean it’s not art.
I’m reminded of the Chesterton passage where he points out that it’s the rich, the cultural elites, that are filling our public spaces with ugly art, that is, with advertizing. The poor never voluntary paint a picture in praise of Colgate or Penzoil.
Thus, this may not be great art, but it’s darn site more interesting than this (and those are just really random examples – I know way better ones exist), because the graffiti is something that someone painted because they liked it and not because they were being paid to praise some almost-worthless product.
Which isn’t to say that advertizing is never art or that all graffiti is. Advertizing’s just extremely limited because there’s only so much you can put into a work in praise of Coca-Cola®, whereas there is a heck of a lot of human experience that might go into a work of graffiti.
The major problem with graffiti (besides defacing someone else’s property) is merely that the people who do it are given very little in the way of good subjects. Thus they don’t know to do much beyond the iconic, logo-ish railing against the sick society they live in.
Believe me, if there was more true faith and love in the inner cities, we would see some gorgeous and fascinating pictures of Our Lady, hopefully painted over some grotesque billboard trying to convince us to buy Pepsi or use MasterCard.
By the way, I’m in no way implying that it’s impossible for advertizing companies to hire these guys to paint graffiti in praise of a product. Those with desire for money and no morals will do pretty much anything. (That may be what’s going on here.)
But maybe the illegality will keep most of the “legitimate” artists in this country (that is, all who have sold their talents to produce crap of one kind or another) from participating in a way that might rebound against them. (That is, the owner of the property might sue them and take all their money away.)
Actually, I think that there is a false distinction between commercial art and fine art. As Sturgeon’s
law states, “90 percent of everything is crud”. That goes for advertising art and illustration, too. Most fine art is awful. Norman Rockwell was an illustrator, but that didn’t keep him from being one of the truly brilliant artists of the last century.
I don’t think we should let perceptions about the artist’s alleged purity of intent influence our judgement about their art.
Actually, most of the last half of the twentieth century’s great art was done as illustration. I’m perfectly willing to contend that science fiction and fantasy artists were those great artists; and the academic art world is slowly beginning to see the light on that point.
I still remember going to the Chicago art museum and then walking back to see the retro art show at the Chicago Worldcon. There was no conflict; it was just that I could get a lot closer to the great art at the hotel! 🙂
I may have overstated my case. I didn’t mean to imply that commercial=not art, and that non-commercial=art. I just meant that most of the art that we produce is for “something else’s sake”, a something else that often isn’t worth the amount of money and time and talent devoted to it and which doesn’t provide enough rich meaning to make a truly good work of art.
The interesting thing about illustration is that it’s a work of art devoted to another work of art, not to the artist’s own ego or a commercial product.
The primary way I’ve seen to develop appreciation for the arts is by doing it…in other words, allowing kids to paint, draw, sculpt, play instruments, and encouraging the behavior. It can’t be forced, of course, but if a kid shows an interest, they should make it possible for a child to explore it.
And, while they may not be able to do some art well, they learn to appreciate it. At least, that’s how it was for me and all the others I know who do art. As I learned to play the piano, I started watching great pianists like Vladimir Horowitz play on PBS. As I learned to draw and paint, I took classes in art history, and traveled to Florence to study Renaissance Art. Of course, these things weren’t forced on me.
Sadly art and music are the first things they cut these days in schools, isn’t it?
I think a Catholic education should make art and music a big push if for no other reason than to teach our amazing artistic culture in the church.
Speaking of which, Tim, I hope you take a look at my site, Catacombers.com. It’s for encouraging Catholic artists to create, and giving us a meeting place, a clearing house for ideas, a place to share. Maybe you can come and hang out sometime.
–Ann Lewis
http://www.catacombers.com