On the State(s) of (the) Arts

St. Paul, MN--In the surprisingly-lushly-appointed-but-not-opulent basement of Philip and Preston, who have so graciously allowed us to tread our muddy feet all over their home for the past three-or-four-or-five nights (honestly, we have absolutely no idea what day of the month or week it is anymore), and posting way too late at night to get up early in the morning. I've spent the weekend around people intimately involved in the bestowing of grants of various kinds, and who are experienced in, you know, the politics and shit (nothing gets you street cred more quickly than appending “and shit” to the end of every sentence you speak, although something of the effect is lost when you either: (A) write it; (B) write it on a blog; or (C), went to a white-person college), and I'm not really sure what to make of it all. It's the sort of thing you know goes on but that you ignore, if you're not involved in it, to the point where every time you're reminded of it you get a little jolt of surprise and memory at the same time, that this is practically the only system for distributing the money to support the arts, and consequently of distributing the arts, in America.

Speculative aside (i.e. footnote #1 if Blogger had footnotes): I'm sure this point has been raised since time immemorial, or at least since the early 1990s which is practically the same thing, but I first heard it a few months ago, and that's that the patron system in the arts was historically an almost exclusively Western concept. In most cultures, what we call “art” is thought of as an integrated part of everyday life (now obviously “we” refers to Europeans/Americans and I so totally do not want to get into the globalization shit right now but you all know what I mean, problematic though my terminology may be), not as a set of exclusive events (e.g. we're going to the opera (i.e. “art”) and then later we will go drink port and smoke some fine Balinese cigars (i.e. “not-art”, and do they make cigars in Bali?)), and consequently... well I suppose there have been a few consequences of this different kind of conception. One, which I will not address much here, is that art is seen as simply another type of consumption, a sort of hobby, be as it might a highbrow one. This is pretty clearly related to the second effect, which I find the most interesting, which is that in few other cultures in the world is the production and consumption of “art” so clearly divided among two groups: the artists and the audience. I'm too badly-read (I hope just too young, but I'm not inclined to give myself the benefit of the doubt) on this subject to analyze it in any depth, but it's a fascinating distinction, isn't it? We have people who specialize in making art. Now, one obvious problem is that the exclusivity of the “artists' club” can lead to a kind of resentment by those excluded, especially if we haphazardly speculate that the lack of this distinction in most other cultures points to a kind of basic human urge to create art, and that the sorting of people into “artists” and “non-artists” at let's face it a very young age based on developed skill at that point, and much though we might deny this it's pretty clearly true that talented young artists are pushed to further their skills in ways that the less-talented are not because the number of teachers is obviously finite, and while it clearly makes sense to encourage the talented artists to produce art we can clearly worry about what effect this rationing has on the untalented, must surely do much to engender such stances as the GOP likes to take regarding the NEA.

But let's not forget that third rail of arts funding: that the most popular arts and artists require no funding, no grants; that the market (such as it is) bestows upon these lucky few not just the resources to continue production of their art, but riches such that they might live like kings. The “popular arts” and their royalty exist in an entirely different world from those who labor in the shadows, and consequently it is difficult to conceive of the fact that the works of both these groups are put into the world for ostensibly similar reasons.

I'd like to continue, and indeed I might do so tomorrow, but it's been my experience that when I don't sleep before kayaking I can get pretty grouchy. Grouch. Also most of this post was a “Speculative Aside” which is bullshit.