TOUGH TIMES FOR THE ARTS?

In our increasing habit of measuring, compartmentalizing, quantifying, and objectifying nearly everything in American culture, the arts have been especially targeted. It seems to me that this compulsion has been a mixed blessing, for the visual arts in particular. Perhaps this could be the fault of our Puritan work ethic which we inherited from northern European ancestors. Was it the Dutch and their commodification of art? Or those pious, fundamentalists who stepped ashore at Plymouth Rock? Whoever they might have been, they set the stage for what we accept now as the “norm” – the separation of art and state. And it happened without an act of Congress.

One way or another art has become a product to be bought and sold. In the current economic mess we have inherited, priorities are being sorted out on an astonishing scale. It’s triage time for all things financial. Consumers and government are making the critical decisions; what can be saved, what should be saved? What needs to be saved. The arts are now a part of the dilemma. As I see it there are two distinct groups that make up the “art scene”: the fine arts and the commercial arts. Like it or not, they have been and continue to be tied to the fortunes of the economy. Each is linked to a cycle. In the private sector discretionary funds are down, endowment resources have been savaged. In the government sector we’re trillions of dollars in the hole. Obviously in this culture, the arts aren’t going to rise to the top of anybody’s gotta save ‘em list. It’s too bad Western civilization didn’t retain, realize, or understand its primal needs for art as an integral part of our lives as a whole.

On the other hand, it could be said that art business is in the same boat as every other business that is not directly connected to “basic survival” needs like food, shelter, and clothing. Regardless of the era or social system, those survival needs must be met. There have been times and places in human history however, when the arts were so much a part of life, that the word “art” didn’t exist. The arts were essential to survival, record keeping, spiritual life, and orchestrating social behavior.

Our European cousins have done a better job of holding the line on where the arts fit in. Due to their longer history perhaps? Closer in time and place to origins? At any rate, private and government support for the arts exists as a much higher priority there and elsewhere, than in the U.S., and that’s sad for Americans. It’s sad because the disconnect has always existed in America, less noticeably during flush times, but painfully clear in hard times such as now.

We are fortunate to have escaped so far with an arts sector still intact, even though it is badly shaken. So where does that leave us as individual artists? We will innovate, adapt, and overcome as we’ve always done. That’s what creativity, and perseverance is all about. As long as we enjoy the freedoms to thrive or fail based on our own abilities, the arts will survive because deep down, at some primal level we know we need them.