Comments on: The Unneeded Crocodile Bird

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By: Alison

Alison — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:59:11 +0000

Further to Dan’s point about rotating and viewing public art, I work for a regional museum and art gallery where our policy means that any member of the public can access items from the collection that aren’t currently on display and items can be brought out for viewing at our study centre. Resources like this are fantastic for engaging the general public with local collections, encouraging them to be enthusiatic about art and their interests. Without government funding these sorts of resources wouldn’t even exist.

Sam’s argument picks on a few specific examples and completely ignores all the great work that relies on government funding, particularly outside of London. One of our best received temporary exhibitions of recent years has been a series of contemporary solo shows by local artists, it such a blanket statement to say that the majority of the general public don’t have any interest in post-modernism.

We should be fighting for better allocation of funds, NOT arguing that funds should be stopped! It is totally naive to think that if we get rid of funding that our nation will suddenly start creating this magical artwork that the country loves. If you remove the funding some of our country’s greatest talents will never see the light of day and it will be due to something as simple as lack of funding. We shouldn’t be so quick to slam down the results of this art funding, once it’s gone we’ll find it incredibly hard to ever get any back!

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:37:35 +0000

Hullo, i think, in response to winnie’s point, that it is patronising to suggest that there is “elitist art” that wouldn’t appeal to the “plebs” of society. Isn’t it every person’s right to at least have access to art before they determine whether they like it or not? In fact, there seems to be rather an anti art feeling surrounding this whole discussion. All art was progressive in its day and seen as fantastic to some people and utter trash to others, very few people liked the Impressionists. The whole point is that art is subjective, you can’t tell which is good and which is bad, opinions about it change from one century to the next. But this is what makes it so ineresting and stimiluating, if art gets people discussing different opinions about it then surely this has some intellectual value. We think its the government’s responsability to educate us in maths and literature, so why not in art?

Yes its true that most public art is locked away, but thats only because there is limited gallery space, therefore curators rotate the art work round in exhibitions so that each piece at least gets a viewing.

I don’t agree with the idea that most art is produced with profit in mind. Artists wouldn’t become artists if they wanted to earn lots of money these days. In the past it was different, artists could earn quite a good living. Yes, lots of art was comissioned by private individuals, but the biggest patron of all, especially during the Renaissance, was the Holy Roman Catholic Church – a big board of old duffers all deciding on what they considered best for public interest – rather like the government.

By: Eli

Eli — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:07:48 +0000

I’m not sure that Art by ‘artists’ such as Damien Hirst would ever be funded by private investors. I would suggest that this sort of art is a consequence of state interference and in the event of the elimination of state funding, conceptual works would be replaced by works of beauty (discernible and symbolic beauty) – Art to please the majority of the public.

By: Winnie

Winnie — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:32:04 +0000

I don’t think Sarah quite gets the point. The galleries and quango boards may well spend lots of public money, as she says, in their attempt to pull in “members of society who feel excluded” by art. This does not mean that the sort of elitist art commissioned by these bodies will ever appeal to anyone. And it is disingenuous to say that private investors lock their art away because all the audit reports show that most public art is locked away and a lot has actually been loaned out and simply lost. As for the upkeep of the galleries, most of them originally came with huge endowments and trust funds and if the public bodies stopped commissioning stuff, the art budget would go further for routine maintenance. And if Sarah doesn’t like the ‘extravagently wealthy’ interfering in art, she will have to reject the whole of the Italian renaissance.

By: James

James — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:09:52 +0000

Even though this may be seen as keeping to the party line (I am treasurer of TFA for York uni in the interests of full disclosure) I have to say Sam makes a persuasive argument. If you sat in on our discussions you would see that we do not necessarily agree upon everything. However, I do agree with him on this point. (I am, of course, not speaking as a representative of TFA here but as a private individual.)

Frankly Sarah, if you look at the motives behind a lot of what we would take as art nowadays, it was created with profit in mind. If I may cite “Ways of Seeing” by Berger, this would provide ample examples. Even though the critique the contributers provide is based upon the ideas of Marx, I have no problem using them – some of them are particularly relevant to this discussion. Even much of the art which was funded by the state in earlier centuries was done so by the (now) extraordinary powers of patronage and taxation which would not normally be seen as prudent now.

If museums and galleries do not provide what the public wants then there is no economic case for keeping them. Of course there are other criteria by which art can be judged, but when it comes to the public purse, I would rather go by purely fiscal metrics than that more arbitrary method by which some paradigm owning mandarin (a la Kuhn) somewhere decides what deserves funding.

A good case in point is the current music scene. Mostly it is outside what is considered ‘art’. And this appears to be what is successful!

But the crux of the issue is: private individuals, who are _spending_their_own_money_, will have a better idea about what deserves funding than some woolly notion of a public good.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:20:06 +0000

I work in the public arts sector and see at first hand exactly how government funding is spent. The majority of spending goes towards keeping open the institutions we already have and frankly, it is hardly enough to scrape by on. Vast amounts go on the running, staffing and promotion of the gallery, particularly aiming it at certain members of society who may feel excluded by it and helping to enrich their experiences of it, not as Westrop put it on “immensely rich organisations that often cater to a very limited section of society”; nor on Damien Hirst’s shark, which I might add was commissioned and paid for by Charles Saatchi and is now hidden away in his private collection. It is naive to think that offering these art works up to private individuals will encourage philanthropy. In recent years, art has become the choice of investment for extravagantly wealthy individuals who don’t appreciate it for its beauty, but only for its market value. Artwork such as Van Gogh’s paintings have been sold for millions and then locked away in vaults. Even with government funds, the gallery still relies on the donations of local people to keep it running. Most people, however, see it as the responsibility of the government to keep galleries free and open, as ACE’s survey shows “79% of the public agree that the government should provide funding for the arts”. Public art galleries make very little income, we barely break even, but our purpose is not to generate income but keep our doors open to the public.

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:03:44 +0000

Art probably always has been a job – for instance, think of all those Renaissance jobbing freelances and their wealthy individual patrons. That commercial relationship produced some of the most enduring art of all. But I agree that the state now uses our money to employ artists with apparently little regard to merit in pursuit of trendy but misconceived ’social policies’. If ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty…’ then this is hardly surprising , because, as we know to our cost, our politicians have no acquaintance with either of those values.

By: Winnie

Winnie — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:30:58 +0000

Brilliant article and absolute nonsense from Emily. For Goodness Sakes, who does she think founded the great museums and institutions we enjoy. Not a single one was publicly funded. As for the ‘outreach’ stuff in schools, it was always done , even more and better quality before all this progressive public funding. And with respect to that Bling skull, it should be asset stripped and the proceeds donated to reduce our soon to be £ 1.8 trillion public debt by however small an iota; or our children will be too busy starving to notice or care about art at all.