|
© Donald Richardson,
1999
The Australia Council for the Arts is currently searching its
soul to see how it can better convince the Australian public
of the value of the arts, but - is it asking the right questions?
Is its inquiry likely to yield answers that can be acted upon,
or will the exercise be just be another circular talk-fest?
The Council and the advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi (which
it has commissioned to undertake the inquiry) are reflecting
in public on whether the Council's definition of 'the arts' is
too narrow. Perhaps widening it to include popular things, like
strip-club dancers and Kylie Minogue CDs will make more of us
like the arts.
But - is this the right approach? Will focusing on people (whether
dancers, singers, painters or potters) yield positive results?
Are the arts people, or are they things that people
make or perform?
POPULAR ART AND HIGH ART
The work of painter Ken Done is often discussed in the context
of 'popular' Vs 'high' art. Done has had a remarkably successful
career in advertising and fabric-design but, in recent years,
has again taken up 'fine-art' painting. Yet, focusing on him
as a person rather than on what he produces means that he is
practically ignored by the fine-art establishment of critics
and galleries.
But, isn't Done the perfect instance of one person being able
to be both an artist and not an artist at will? Is it not obvious
that the product is what can be 'art' or not - not the
person.
The history of the arts abounds with similar examples: painters
who have to earn their livelihoods drawing newspaper adverts,
opera composers who keep bread on the table by writing TV jingles,
sculptors who mass-produce pottery to support their preferred
work, novelists who read newspaper proofs at night and write
by day. So - if Saatch and Saatchi are concentrating on people
rather than what they make or do, are they wasting the Council's
money?
It is true, as the new Managing Director of the Council, Jennifer
Bott, says in the June issue of Alert (the Council's bulletin
devoted to 'promoting the value of the arts') that many Australians
are alienated from the arts. They think it is not for them -
that entry to art galleries is only for the invited, that the
theatre is only for the wealthy. They disdain the ABC's arts
programmes as 'too difficult'. Classical music is not entertaining
enough.
The Council deserves to be commended for undertaking this inquiry,
but you can widen a definition to include anything and everything,
and the danger here with the arts is dumbing-down or bowdlerization.
The Council must never forget the imperative of quality.
(We remember with chagrin a government strategy to do away with
state operas and save money by sending videotapes of Sydney performances
to the states!)
Perhaps, rather than widening the definition of 'the arts', refining
it/them would be more rewarding.
DEFINING THE ARTS
This is not say that - in spite of the Council's constituency
- any theorist has yet actually defined 'the arts' in
a way that has universal acceptance. But, it takes little reflection
on the works of a Ravel, Cézanne or Eliot - as
distinct from theoretical statements - to establish that artists
in the modern period work on the principle of individual, free,
self-referential (even self-indulgent) self-expression. This
is the true essence of art as it has come to be in the twentieth
century - in whatever medium. Further, it is no less than the
paradigm for life itself in this modern world.
Not only has this state of affairs given creative people the
right to work in this way, but - in a market economy - it has
also given them the privilege of starving in garrets. Hence,
the need for government patronage, such as that provided by the
Council.
However, it must be obvious that very few things in the entire
universe of what humans create, or have created, are actually
'art' in this restricted - although valid - sense. Most created
things are made with a specific, practical function in
mind. This includes buildings, furnishings and kitchen gadgets
as well as books and magazines, vehicles and freeways, clothing
and advertisements (however 'artistic' these may be) - in fact,
most of what we encounter in everyday life. This functionality
places them theoretically in the area of design, not art:
they are all designed for a particular purpose.
ART AND DESIGN
Entertainment, too, comes into this category. What distinguishes
it from art per se is that its function is to entertain.
And, to do this, it must sell . So, it is the rare work
of entertainment that is conceived - or, at least, produced -
without consideration for its saleability. Books and pop CDs
will only be published if a market can be guaranteed for them
in advance. In the theatre, bums on seats is the bottom line.
This leads to the view that another thing the Council should
question is its own structure. Why is the Design Board separated
off from the arts boards? Don't designers work legitimately as
colleagues of the artists in the theatre and dance, in the new
media, in the community? And in all of the arts areas there are
artists who work to design briefs in advertising and other aspects
of the communications and entertainment media. In this guise,
they are operating as designers, not artists per se.
The public hears very little about the Design Board. Does
the current investigation cover this shadowy organisation as
well as the arts boards?
THE 'ARTS INDUSTRY'
This brings up the matter of the so-called 'arts industry',
a term used by the Council and much favoured by the present government.
But, as the above will have established, there is absolutely
no similarity between how true artists work and how and why industrialists
produce goods. Whereas artists create disinterestedly, without
thought for how their end-products might sell (although they
hope they will!), no industrialist produces a single article
unless and until he has carried out some sort of market-research
to ensure an at least even chance of making a profit from the
enterprise.
There is no such thing as an 'arts industry' - the can be
no such thing - although there is an arts market. This
is the realm of the theatrical agent and producer, the commercial
gallery, the book publisher, the authors' agent and the recording
and entertainment industries. Thus, entertainment may justly
be called an 'industry' - but not the arts - and to conflate
the two threatens the validity and integrity of the arts.
Practitioners of the arts surely need their marketers, just as
the producers of any other product do, but the making
of art must be distinguished from marketing it before
we can intelligently promoted the arts to the Australian public.
It is in the theatre arts that we see the subtlety and complexity
of the relationship between the creator, the producer and the
marketer of the arts. None of this is reflected in the present
structure of the Australia Council.
A HIERARCHY
Here, too, we see clearly a fact that the politically-correct
are reluctant to admit - that there is a hierarchy in the
arts. If we consider disco-dancing to be an art, does it
have the same status as Swan Lake?
Those of us whose personal experience of the arts has graduated
us from an early, easy appreciation of the Impressionists to
Picasso and Duchamp or from The Beatles to Stravinsky or Philip
Glass realize that we have gone through a process of positive
personal development. It is not elitist to admit this, but a
celebration of our humanity. The Council must recognize this
hierarchy as a fact - must admit the inadmissible, say the un-sayable.
It needs to recognize and promulgate that progression through
the arts is a natural thing which all may share - and encourage
them to do so.
'COMMUNITY ARTS' AND EDUCATION
While it seems logical that there should be separate administrative
structures for the visual arts, music, theatre, literature, Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander arts and - perhaps - new media and
dance, community arts is nothing more than a bureaucratic
category of arts administrators. There are no arts that are practiced
'in the community' that are not already covered by other categories
- theatre, music, visual, literature - so why have a separate
board for 'community arts'?
While there is good reason for an administrative structure to
assist in planning and running festivals and community events
(which the Community and Cultural Development Board is), there
is a danger that - as far as grants to practitioners are concerned
- this board will only sponsor amateurism. This has happened
with the Country Arts Trust in South Australia, where it is almost
impossible for a professional artist to receive support for an
activity unless it is at the instigation of a local - amateur
- group, and professional input is often minimal or compromised.
If the reason for having a structure for community arts is to
encourage the populace to appreciate and participate in the arts
then, clearly, this board has failed in its purpose - otherwise,
why have the current investigation?
What community arts should be about is educating the general
public in the value of the arts. But, the current inquiry
is unlikely to suggest a remedy because Saatchi and Saatchi have
specifically rejected the education approach. In Alert
2 (June, 1999), they state that their purpose is not to
educate, but to stimulate. This is a curious statement, for
any effective education will stimulate in some sense, and stimulation
alone (while it may work in advertising) only results in unthinking
reflex actions - hardly what will truly promote the value of
the arts in the community!
So, not only are Saatchi and Saatchi asking the wrong questions,
but probably they are the wrong people to ask them.
|