A politician in my country says that artists who get money from the government, should do something in return. They have to reach a wide audience so not only the elite can enjoy the arts.

He says they have to make more democratic art, so the common man can enjoy it too. Don't you think this would make those creations too superficial? I think it should be done otherwise, make a big campaign to get those people into art. Or make a tv program about art, directed at those "common" people.


What about projects that don't reach the majority of the population, they don't deserve support or what? The popular ones, that do reach the majority are going to be watched/visited anyway. So they can get money more easy. The ones that don't reach the mass can't, so they're even more entitled to government support if you ask me.

What do you think?

(BTW, you are allowed to welcome me to sciforums since this is my first post ;) )

Welcome to sciforums, Heidi's Puppy. We welcome folks as a matter of course.

The only catch here is who is paying for it. Whoever funds the art has the right to stipulate how the art will appear. If the artist has a beef with that then they should not take the money. It matters not if it is a government or an individual. That's the way it works...

I don't think artists should get any money from the government at all, but that's getting too political.

I don't think artists should get any money from the government at all, but that's getting too political.

Agreed. But if they do, they should have to make "public art" - if thats what you call it.

And Welcome Heidi! Post long and happy:)

I disagree. If the government is going to fund art, they shouldn't stipulate how it appears. That's kinda beside the point.

I mean, our government spends hundreds of dollars on a screwdriver. Do you think such an impersonal force could adequetly dictate artistic standards?

I don't. To quote the inside cover of October Rust:

"Functionless art is simply tolerated vandalism

We are the vandals"

If the government is going to fund art, they shouldn't stipulate how it appears

Oh thats not what I meant. That would take away from their artisticness (is that a word?) Anyhoo, what I meant was... I have never heard of the government funding artists, why would they? I figured if they did it was because the art was going on display somewhere (mall, shopping squares, etc.) and if they werent getting anything from the artist, what would be the point?
Did I confuse you as much as myself?:D

And do governments really fund private artists? For what reasons? Is it the same as asking for a grant or loan from the government to start your own business?

Art does not have an obligation to reach a wide audience. However, I recall that P.J. O'Rourke once wrote that it is inappropriate for adults to try to have sex with children, and that it is equally inappropriate for children to have sex with adults, and that the world would be better off if people could figure out these two principles.

In a similar vein, I think the audience does have an obligation to recognize when art is not intended for them or for others.

As one of my best friends once told me after I showed him the movie Closet Land: "If you ever do that to me again with no warning, I'll barbecue you!" ("Barbecue" in this case being a reference to the film itself, but I enjoyed the opportunity to give my unflappable friend nightmares.)

If we look to the 1980s, the strange tale of the Parental Music Resource Center rises to the forefront. The PMRC was a powerful anti-expressionist lobby operated by two senators' wives: Tipper Gore and Susan Baker. Apparently, Tipper Gore became offended at the content of Prince's Purple Rain. She had given a copy of the tape to her daughter for her birthday. Imagine her alarm when, later that day, she heard her seven year-old singing "Darling Nikki", a song that includes lyrics about a woman masturbating in public.

By the end of the drama, "Luke Skywalker" would be arrested, Twisted Sister would make an appearance before Congress, and Ozzy and Metallica would be held accountable for suicides. (Both won their day in court, as did Judas Priest, which hopefully was the end-all of those damn trials.)

I intend to keep a library at hand for my child that includes some stuff other parents might not appreciate for a young one; I remember in Davis' The Girl With the Silver Eyes, the heroine was told by her mother to not read a book because it wasn't for children; having read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, I disagree. The book is a pretty good one for a 12 year-old to read. It's funny, crude, and also very dignified, but that's just an opinion. Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a horrifying review of warfare, but I'm not afraid of a child reading it. Clive Barker's Weaveworld, however, despite being one of the finest fantasies ever written, should not be read by children. At some point, it crosses the line.

Sculpture? I think the "Falling Woman" statue so controversial to New Yorkers is appropriate for children; taking tragedy and putting it into an abstract mystery is often a healthy psychological approach. The mere presence of nudity, such as this sculpture or Michaelangelo's "David" should not be a deterrent to children. However, I wouldn't let a child into the house of a guy I know who hunted two of everything in order to satisfy his desire to mount the carcasses mid-coitus.

Nor would I take a child to see certain violent movies. A bit of flash is okay now and then, but the ten-minute rape scene in Irreversible seems like something one ought not subject a child to. (Haven't seen the film yet, but I do recall one critic's classic line that he was glad he didn't eat his lunch because that film would have made him lose it.) My favorite Closet Land probably should not be viewed by children; the bleeding cruelty that emanates from those images give nightmares not for any sense of gore (it's civilized in that respect) but for the amount of human suffering depicted. (My friend, at age twenty-two, went on a drinking jag after seeing Closet Land, and if i mention it now, he still gives me an angry look.)

An individual piece of art certainly isn't intended for everyone, or even a wide audience. A piece of sculpture I made in 11th grade still exists among a friend's collection because it was simply the most sexual piece of art she had ever seen at the time of its creation. Strangely, this octagonal pillar surrounded by a hellish base of what appears to be breasts and buttocks in sort of a Freddy Krueger presentation pressing out of the larger "heap" base served to fuel certain sexual concepts in her mind. Nonetheless, I find the piece strangely benign and would still leave it in view of my daughter if I owned the piece.

Take H.P. Lovecraft, for instance. There are many people who are bored senseless reading Lovecraft's heavy lexical exhibitions. The stories seem nonsensical and campy to those who don't appreciate Lovecraft. Yet his proponents point toward heavy symbolism and some of Lovecraft's non-fiction writing to demonstrate the artistic value of the imagery--there is a good deal of legitimate psychology playing out in the fiction. And that art, while not the most popular, appeals greatly to those to whom it appeals, and sets such a high standard that Arkham House, Lovecraft's primary publisher, has attracted other artists over the years to imitate and pay tribute to Lovecraft's work. Steven King, T.E.D. White, and others have written "Lovecraftian" stories to honor the artistic value of Lovecraft's work. Yet nobody will pretend that Lovecraft is everyday reading in the sense of being an Oprah Book Club selection.

An artistic statement should in some way acknowledge the artist's own perspective. Whether this is through exaggeration, understatement, straight depiction, or symbolic denial, the artist's "signature" is demonstrative in quality art. (Again, we can look to Lovecraft for an example; Arkham House has published many volumes of stories which feature one story by Lovecraft and fifteen stories in the same vein written by August Derleth; in the present-day, there is an online petition somewhere asking publishers to cease this practice. The point is that many people I knew figured that out because when they read the stories, there was something wrong, and some of them happened to look at the fine print on the copyright page--it's there in black and white that Lovecraft did not write these stories. And it's quite obvious to one who is familiar with Lovecraft's writing.)

That personal statement is, at its core, an opinion, and will not be shared by all. This is expected.

As to people of restricted "sensibilities" (profane art is sometimes said to be offensive to sensibilities, a cute phrase for "offensive to my opinion") they must realize that the whole world does not revolve around them. Just because they don't like a piece of art doesn't mean that others shouldn't.

Take for instance offensive "music". In my day it was Twisted Sister, 2 Live Crew, King Diamond, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, and also anyone critical of the would-be censors. (I was denied, by Camelot Records in Puyallup, Washington, at age 17, the purchase of King Diamond's Abigail as a result of the PMRC-inspired warning labels.) In the present, it's Eminem. As with the past, such attention increases the sales of such art. Also, as with the past, it is a curious sensation to watch people rush toward something condemned as offensive; I find the American (at least) rush to depravity a curious statement about human nature. Nonetheless, an interesting question arises there: Would Eminem want his daughter listening to his albums?

In that vein, I can think of at least one fantasy writer who did not let her children read her books. I remember in high school telling K___ that I had found a copy of one of her mother's books. K___ told me that she hadn't read it, that she wasn't allowed to.

I understand, having read the book. The author uses her children for character models in the book. All three (at the time, now there's four) are clearly present, though I can only say this from having met them. At the end of the book, K___'s character, trapped into a community circumstance she does not want (marriage), commits suicide. I think I understand why the author didn't want her children reading the book for a while.

But I wouldn't restrict this book from children. The castration of reindeer using one's teeth is a little queasy, but it's considered a legitimate moment, as such castrations have happened in history many times before. Even the suicide is fairly benign; it's heavily symbolic and doesn't really stick out in any sensational or gory way. It's a tragedy essential to the story's value.

The final point being that art should not be intended for a wide audience. Typically, the broader audience an artist aims for, the more general terms the artist must convey. Generally speaking, the wider the intended audience, the less the art has to say.

Mel Gibson, for instance, is currently directing a film called Passion, which deals with the final twelve hours of the life of Jesus Christ. Sounds like a possible mega-ticket, right? A Catholic-heavy passion play? Then again, the script is not in English. It is not in French, German, Russian, Chinese, Punjabi, or otherwise. The script, apparently, is entirely Latin and Aramaic. Now, I'm there. This had better be one hell of a dramatic performance by the actors, and better be one hell of an artistic product from the director, or else nobody, not even the Sunday-school Catholics, will have a clue what's going on. But I cannot say that Gibson is shooting to reach an audience as wide as Lethal Weapon, or even Braveheart. In fact, my opinion is that he's shooting to make a definitive statement among a narrow audience in hopes of tweaking the paradigm. This is a difficult artistic undertaking, but in such a case it's art at its highest. Art bears no necessity of being comfortable or even comprehensible. It becomes valuable because it is compelling, and compels us to interact with it. Watching artists attack paradigms is always fun, but those artistic works are not intended for a broad audience. They're intended to have greater impact among a more narrow audience.

Think about the highest expressions of art you know. Compare it to the most popular expressions of art you know. Is there any difference in the nature of the art? Typically there will be. The wider the intended audience, the less you can say because you have more limitations to acknowledge in the intended recipients.

I think of a number of authors acclaimed by their peers who do not enjoy certain degrees of commercial success: Joyce Carol Oates, considered the best writer in America by her peers; Jack Cady, well-known for his honesty, his manner of expression, and ironclad dedication to the art of writing; Randall Kenan, whose stories, while striking, and whose writing, while brilliant, examines issues not regarded as widely among readers. (It's hard to describe Let the Dead Bury the Dead; it's a good book.) It's kind of like music only not as much. A lot of people get into an older band, for instance, because their favorite young lions talk about how good that band was. It doesn't work that way as often with writers. Cady gets favorable reviews from Peter Straub and others in the genres, but the praise of bestselling authors is not enough to jack up sales. Of course, Singleton is a heavy read. And that's part of it. A lot of really good artists just aren't willing to sacrifice their expression to the demands of the buying public. And that's fine with them. It is more important to them to write honestly and well than it is to sell mountains of books. In a perfect world, good art and high sales would go hand in hand.

But art is not intended for everybody, so it isn't. As we've found with both television and politics, the harder you try to reach or please everybody, the less you have to say.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

And, yes. Governments really do fund private artists. Why? Because it's beneficial to society. In the US, at least, you cannot leave art to the hands of private companies. Entertainment, such as the art we get from the TV networks, radio stations, and major movie studios, has no obligation to integrity. Its goal is not necessarily to communicate, but to make money. One of my favorite scenes in any movie comes from Mark Huestis' Sex Is, a documentary about gay men and the spectre of HIV It opens with C-SPAN footage of Jesse Helms denouncing the National Endowment for the Arts (during the fallout from Serranos' "Piss Christ" photograph of a crucifix in a jar of urine, a 1986 exhibition that politicians still found time to criticize in year-2000 legislation pertaining to diabetes and indigenous American tribes). Helms is trying to say that there is no place for sadomasochism in art, but he cannot pronounce the word "sadomasochism." As I recall, he finally managed to get the word out: sah-DOH-muh-SOCK-ism. And then the screen went black save for the words, "This film was produced in part with a generous contribution from the National Endowment for the Arts". And then the credits roll over a massive display of men on men that included things I'd never imagined before.

But that's not the whole of it. Governments pay private artists for propaganda. We cannot discriminate morally, though, against any form of artistic expression. The Supreme Court has a fairly tough standard in the US; it must be offensive and without any redeeming social value before it is declared obscene. Of course, the standard has been applied to Twisted Sister before (Under the Blade, a 1983--I think--album was banned for sale in the US).

Nobody, for instance, could convince me that "Piss Christ" was obscene. Nobody, in fact, could give me a reason for it. And Sex Is, for all its boldness, still managed to paint a human face for homosexuality and cast a compelling portrait of HIV. These both seem of higher artistic value to me, for instance, than Brett Easton Ellis' novels, which attained bestseller status a couple of times. When the corporation pays for art, it expects a financial return or else something nice to hang in its HQ foyer. When the government pays for art, though--at least in the US--it cannot prohibit you except for fairness in terms of funding availability. The NEA should not award one artist, for instance, the whole of its grant resources, and it doesn't.

My neighborhood community is taking part in a project to build some kind of paved plaza. They're letting schoolchildren take part in the manufacture; the only design restrictions ensure that the tiles fit into the pattern; they will be mapped and numbered later. These are public schools, so government money is going toward these endeavors ... I would hope that it should continue to do so.

Just a couple of notions on government and art.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

A politician in my country says that artists who get money from the government, should do something in return. They have to reach a wide audience so not only the elite can enjoy the arts.

I agree. If the artist sucks away the money of the tax-payers, the artist should do something for those tax-payers.

But in general...

I think art must primarily appeal to its creator, and to its intended audience, whoever that audience is. Some art is produced for crowds. Some is produced for a single person.

My only real problem is art which isn't really art, produced by artists who aren't artists, for the purpose of making money or of becoming famous. I'm referring to those art student losers with no skill or talent who think wearing a beret and talking about the evils of capitalism as reflected in Melrose Place makes them artistic. I recall one of those idiots put a square of green paper on a wall once and tried to call it art.

Art that can be fully understood by everyone is hardly art at all. Art and populism don't really mix.

Originally posted by You Killed Jesus
Art that can be fully understood by everyone is hardly art at all. Art and populism don't really mix.
The Statue of Liberty, given by the French I believe to the USA. That's a piece of art, designed to represent freedom and justice to the masses. I'm pretty sure most of them can understand it. And I'm pretty sure it took a lot of artistic talent and skill to create.

Good point.

For modernist and postmodernist art my statement rings true, perhaps?

If the artist sucks away the money of the tax-payers, the artist should do something for those tax-payers.But they do, Adam.

Imagine your world without art.

Did they ever sell black and white labeled "generic" foods in Australia? Like a white can with black letters that said, "Beer"? Or a white bag with black letters that said "Rice"?

The larger stuff I know you can imagine, but I wanted to point out exactly how deeply that runs.

Art inherently improves society (as a general concept; a specific piece of art ... that's a different question).

On the other hand, I'm all for the removal of government money from art just as soon as the government exempts artists from taxation. If they don't get, why should they give?

Some governments think art to be important enough to exempt actively working artists. I'm told this is the case with Ireland, but I've never confirmed it. But can you imagine walking through the concrete canyons of our cities with no art?

Certes, without government money, art would exist, but I'm trying to point out to you why governments find art important enough to support with money. Perhaps some people would be happy if the only artistic expression available was in advertising, and if nothing aesthetic could be seen for free (e.g. statues around my city, murals under bridges, our troll (http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/WASEAtroll.html) under the bridge°). I can't imagine the streets devoid of incidental art, nor having to pay money to walk up a street because something artistic can be seen along the way.

Without active government endorsement of art, society suffers.

A passage which I have quoted before, which seems quite appropriate now:Assume, as legislatures and senators and citizens' committees and PTA's sometimes do assume, that literature and art are useless. They have no practical purpose. They put no beans on the plate. No one wants his child to be a writer or an artist, because many writers and artists cannot even make a living unless they take a secondary job. Let us put the writer and the painter--also the musician, the actor, the composer, and the sculptor--back into the workforce. Let's rid the world of these unprofitable endeavors.

First, let us burn all the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Let us take Nefertiti from the Berlin Museum and sink her back into the Nile. Let us finish the job the Turkish and Greek armies started, and blow up the remains of the Parthenon. Let us raid the museums of Europe, burning the Mona Lisa, the Rembrandts, the Renoirs.

We do that. We lift our heads and look around. Civilization still proceeds. The cars still run, the highways function, and the trains are nearly on time.

Good. Now let us destroy every recording by Louis Armstrong, Keely Smith, Janis Joplin. Let's get rid of Rhapsody in Blue. Burn the works of Beethoven, and turn all the guitars in the world into planters for geraniums. We will burn the paintings of Reubens and the novels of Dostoyevsky. Next we will dispose of Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Martin Anderson Nexö. We will get rid of Shohi Ooka, Nikos Kazantzakis.

We do this. We lift our head. Nothing has changed. The trains still run almost on time.

Let us torch the work of Auden, cummings, Frost, Arnold, Amy Lowell, Donne, Emily Dickinson. Let us take the Elgin marbles and use them for the foundation of a motel. Let us renovate the Sistine Chapel, turning it into a useful place for the sale of merchandise. Let us ban dancing in Hawaii, ban dancing in China and Japan and Austria. Let us murder the work of Abram Tertz.

We do this. We lift our heads. Something has changed.

Somewhere, at some time in the destruction, something happened. We stopped our forward move toward being humane, and are slipping quickly backward to the state of animals.

The trains still run nearly on time, but we do not. What sustained our hearts and hopes is gone. (Cady, 18)Notes:

° Troll under the bridge: That's a VW Beetle in its hand.

Cady, Jack. The American Writer: Shaping a Nation's Mind. New York: St. Martin's, 1999.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

Originally posted by tiassa

Some governments think art to be important enough to exempt actively working artists.

I believe Tasmania has such a policy. No tax, or something like that.

Government cost: $68,000 dollars in investigations of artist over 5 years.

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tiassa

'Nonetheless, an interesting question arises there: Would Eminem want his daughter listening to his albums?"

"VH1: How are you going to explain "Kim" to your daughter Hailie?

Eminem: I've never played that song for her. That's one song that I won't play for her because it might give her nightmares. But there is going to come a time when if she hears that song, she may ask questions. I have to cross that bridge when I come to it. There are certain things I won't do in front of my daughter or let her know about. I just let her hear most of the "f*ckety f*cks."