Those Crazy Art Dollars

Understanding Arts Funding and a Modest Proposal: a "Painting in Every House"

The annual budget battle over federal funding of the arts has swung from apocalyptic to apologetic in recent weeks, but a middle path will be the likely outcome. While some art advocates have warned that the Republican-controlled House seeks “elimination” of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), others have avoided such doomsaying, conceding that some cuts in funding will be part of a “shared sacrifice” to lower the federal deficit.

            Next week (Feb. 28) the U.S. Senate weighs in. The final budget for the NEA is likely to come in somewhere between the Obama administration’s request for $146 million and House cuts that push it down to $124 million. NEA funding is clearly not what it used to be, having reached around $190 million in the early 1990s. For ordinary people, however, the numbers—these millions and millions—are a blur. The NEA has instead become a vivid political symbol. Each year the question is whether its fortunes are rising or falling and who is to blame. Who is pro-art and who is anti-art?

            What gets obscured is that NAE funding is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the arts. As advocacy groups such as Americans for the Arts attest, the federal government spends about $1.4 billion every year on “nonprofit arts,” a very broad category (from museums and symphonies to education and culture). The nonprofit art sector generates $166.2 billion in annual “economic activity,” according to Americans for the Arts. The activity underwrites 5.7 million jobs, which produce $12.6 billion in federal income taxes. In short, federal investment in arts has a good return.

            Now that we are in the billions, it is always difficult to understand how in the "art industry" (the term everyone uses now) the nonprofit efforts are distinct from the real engine of America’s art economy: the commercial music, movie, advertising, and entertainment industries. Compared to this vast sector of profit-making corporate arts, what is the financial impact of nonproftt arts, which include the fine arts funded by the NEA? (I provide no answer).

            At this point, it is helpful to recognize that most arts funding comes from the private sector, the world of philanthropies and public investment motivated very often by tax exemptions (as well as love of art). That is why groups such as the National Association of Schools of Art and Design feel the battle to keep pro-art tax policy may be more important than NEA budgets. The success of “indirect” funding of art, often by tax incentives, is pointed to by economist Tyler Cowen in Good and Plenty, a book that elaborates on how well the American system seems to work (compared to Europe’s direct state-funding system). Although the new head of the NEA, the arts businessman Rocco Landesman, is surely fighting for the best NEA funding, he also has taken a distinctly “supply and demand” market approach in his leadership. He wants to show with “facts” how art investments improve urban communities; he is seeking incentives for why people will put their money into the arts.

            At a moment like this, I offer a simple and utopian version of art economics. It stems from my observations of the grass-roots art markets—from the star-studded art fairs of Art Basel/Miami to street craft festivals and art student gallery shows.

            What if every middle-income household in America went to one of these and bought a painting or two to ennoble (i.e. decorate) the house? The numbers would look like this: half of all U.S. households make at least $50,000 a year, adding up to 85 million households (half the total in America). If in the next decade, each of these households bought a painting, sculpture, or craft for $200, that would infuse $11.6 billion into art world pockets (nearly three times more than the NEA has spent in its forty-five-year existence).

            This visionary calculation, of course, is irrelevant to the way art culture and careers really operate. For a start, where would we find 58 million paintings and sculptures? More to the point, only a few artists get rich or do well in the art system. The vast majority struggle through. Nevertheless, this “a painting in every house” logic puts a focus on public support of the arts. In this equation, many artists will have to swallow a bitter pill, however. They will have to produce attractive “couch paintings,” because as art sales since the Impressionists (and even with Picasso) have shown, people buy attractive works, not “difficult” art. To make a living and still be an artist, there’s another pill that often has to be swallowed. Individuals who have stable families and live sober lives, sociologically speaking, are more financially stable. On the other hand, those who chose the “bohemian” life tend to have less financial security. So today’s artist has a choice: to become bourgeois, pay the bills, and continue making art, or to be bohemian, celebrate that mystique, but risk a long-term ability to make art.

            This is a “lifestyle” debate not heard at art schools or during the annual NEA contest.

Art Professors Talk ‘Gown and Gown’

Attending the College Art Assocation’s 99th Anniversary Convention

New York—The history of higher education is littered with colorful stories of “town and gown” conflicts, disagreements between boisterous college campuses and their staid communities (or between the academic ivory tower and the village marketplace). At the recent annual meeting of the College Art Association (CAA) in New York City, it was charming to see that a parallel “gown and gown” contest is alive and well among college art educators. Of course, the annual CAA event (Feb. 9-12) offered a great diversity of top-flight panel sessions, receptions, chances for job shopping and interviews, and a book fair. Yet one resounding theme seemed to carry across the four days of frantic diversity: the happy disagreements between object-based art and Conceptual Art.
            Here’s a sampling of the gown and gown exchanges over object-based art and the rising dominance of conceptualism in contemporary art:

            ▪ At the session on “The Crisis in Art History,” the discussion often aimed at how today’s generation of students believe that art history began a few years ago, or as one speaker suggested, “since the last tweet.” Of course, teaching art history has benefited from the new technologies: beautiful images can be seen on computer screens and voluminous art history encyclopedias can be scanned for facts. However, this high-tech sensibility may also be eroding appreciation for the slower, tactile appreciation of older mediums, from stone and oil paint on down the line. Not everyone on the panel agreed with the term “crisis”—preferring to list “problems.” However, it was a consensus that even among the humanities on campus, art history is getting less prestige and less funding. The solution seems to be to get the “town” excited about art objects (their history and seeing them in museums). Excitement in the town (the public) may generate more profile for art history among the university gowns.

            ▪ The sellers of art materials were at the CAA in full force. They also held a panel session (“Artists and the Art Materials Industry”), inquiring into why art departments (and their students) are not fascinated by the material culture of art: its chemistry, techniques, and tools. For the average art student, of course, it’s usually budget. They will buy the cheap paint and paper when they have the choice. However, a more philosophical reason was also raised at the well-attended session. At a time when contemporary art means “conceptual art,” the art object has become downgraded. To focus on the art object and its material properties, it was argued, is to risk being accused of crass capitalism, even oppression, since modern art theory attributes so many historical sins to objects d’ art. When these ideological issues arose, the passions grew stronger. These teachers love their materials!
            ▪ For passion, however, two sessions on “foundation” issues in art schools and art departments served up still livelier menus ("Introducing Postmodern Thought” and “Studio Art in CAA's Next Century”). In first year Foundation courses, the goal is to give young artists the basics, basics that will last a lifetime. At this level, skill and studio training (and perhaps mastery of materials) would seem very important. However, according to some voices, conceptual art is again undercutting this kind of more traditional approach. As a consolation, it was pointed out that the art world has entered a kind of “post-postmodern” stage (less ideologically rigid), and also that students and the public still respond positively to displays of traditional art skills (even if some art professors, tenured during the Conceptual Art boom, do not agree).

            ▪ A final example of the “gown and gown” dustup over art came at the vastly attended session on “What Is Visual Studies? An Open Forum,” in which twelve articulate experts participated. The denouement came, however, when Intel research scientist Tim Mattson, who does visual research, explained friendly enough that art theorists may have lost the ability to talk with empirical scientists. When a scientist speaks of an “image,” Mattson said, it is well defined: say, a rectangle made up of a finite number of color pixels. However, for the denizens of Visual Studies, an “image” is nearly indefinable, or at least so fluid in its definitions that the language becomes more akin to poetry or psychoanalysis. It was a rather striking exchange of views at this fascinating CAA panel—and proof that the “modern” and the “postmodern” are still trying to communicate with each other in the visual arts.

The Art of Making a Book on the Visual Arts

Thirty-seven years ago I graduated from a state university art department in California with a degree in painting. Drawing and painting were the things I loved, and was fairly good at, but they would not be the career that I ended up following. That career would be writing. Art became a pleasure on the side. Finally I've come full circle and have written my first book on the visual arts, indeed, a book about an art-student-turned-journalist spending a year at a top art college. As narrative non-fiction, the story is about the school, its people, the educational programs, and the contemporary art world (not about me, of course). This blog will keep an eye on the book's progress, and the author's thoughts, as Art Schooled: A Year Among Prodigies, Rebels, and Visionaries at a World-Class Art College goes to press in January 2012. Thanks for your interest. -- Larry Witham