Fields That Demand Integrity
Kevin Drum questions my most recent post on the NEA conference call. In it I wrote:
…the call wasn’t about furthering controversial elements of President Obama’s agenda, but it was about deliberately politicizing art — that is to say, encouraging artists to advance particular public policy goals rather than enabling them to spend their time and energy creating works of truth or beauty to the best of their ability….It is that effort that I find objectionable, as should anyone who values art or the autonomy or creative people.
Mr. Drum replies:
So if this conference call had been with, say, a bunch of educator types, urging them to promote public service among schoolkids, would that have been OK? Or how about law enforcement groups? Or veterans groups?
Because I don’t quite see the difference. Artists don’t exist on some kind of pristine plane of their own and they don’t do their work in a vacuum. They’re all part of the same culture as the rest of us, and they react to it and try to influence it just like everyone else.
Look. Were high school civics teachers asked by Department of Education bureaucrats to tweak their lectures and pedagogical material to make volunteering seem cool, I’d object to that too — though if a “volunteering outreach czar” independently encouraged a bunch of teachers to promote service opportunities by hanging pre-printed posters on bulletin boards within their classrooms, I’d likely count myself untroubled.
In the former example, the actual job of the teacher — educating children based on facts and sound pedagogy — is corrupted. It is made subservient to a propaganda effort. Even worse, that effort is being coordinated by administrators who ought to count educating as their sacrosanct, undiluted goal, one that is incompatible with pushing propaganda efforts on the side.
Perhaps my interlocutors can better understand my concern if I use a journalistic example. Imagine that the Queen of England and President Obama are touting a new effort to reduce the rate of smoking. Via government officials close to those leaders, the heads of the BBC and NPR are informed of the effort, and asked to coordinate a conference call to include all journalists in the news organizations. On the call, the reporters are encouraged to make smoking seem uncool in their stories. Does everyone agree that it is inappropriate for the head of a news organization to abet that type of request, and that insofar as it is honored, the journalism produced — and the core reason for the news organization’s existence — will have been corrupted?
Artists aren’t uniquely apolitical people, nor are they so fragile that they demand kid gloves, but there is a relevant quality at stake here that is common to art, education, journalism, and science — all are pursuits that require integrity if they are to maintain their worth. It is in society’s interest to preserve this worth — indeed it is so valuable that people are always trying to co-opt it for their own ends.
Just as the university operates on the proposition that it is valuable to preserve places in society where truth and knowledge are pursued for their own sake, the NEA exists in part for the sake of uncorrupted art. The university administrator would undermine his mission if he asked his leading professors, “In the course of your social science scholarship, could you play up the importance and coolness of volunteerism?” So too, the NEA administrator undermines his mission when he asks, “In the course of making your art, could you make volunteering cool?”
Your interlocutors aren’t going to get it, and unfortunately due to your political allegiances they’re not going to hear it coming from you.
And this is (yet another example of the of) NEA functioning to preserve the status quo, exactly as it is intended to do.
It’s bread and fucking circles for the chattering classes.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 11:45 AM · #
Drum has been bizzare on this. He asks that question, and the obious answer is, yes! You don’t ask law enforcement or education or HHS to “push the president and push his administration.” Maybe you set a big set of priorities at the Cabinet level (“we’ll be hiring a bunch of dudes to work on Internet child porn and reassigning some other dudes from anti-terrorism cases to that” or “we’d like to encourage charter schools”) (and damn if I know what a federal “veteran’s group” is) but then people sit at their jobs and, as I’ve now pointed out too many times, don’t think about the President’s political agenda. Period.
What’s funny is, Drum (correctly) pounded Bush and co. for trying to get the Justice Department (“law enforcement groups”) to “push the President and push his administration.” It’s amazing how fast the standard has changed.
Tony, I see the point you’re trying to make but I can’t see how it’s right. I’m most comfortable talking about jazz and maybe modern dance and at least in those cases it’s wrong to see federal funds as enshrining some kind of mainstream and crowding out new visions.
The reason for that is the NEA money pot really is small and the mechanism for leveraging them (when some idiot administrator isn’t trying to leverage them politically) has to do with a lot of partnering with and support to smaller (and often local) organizations, which do the bulk of the lifting. So the NEA supports, for example, the Monk Institute, which is one of the big ways a young musician with new ideas is going to get heard. The NEA basically routes money to organizations run by the field’s Great and Good and so they decide what’s artistically worthy.
To which you could easily answer, yeah, and that’s the problem, because it’s inherently status quo — the current leaders in the field are going to be conservative and want to fund what sounds like them. That’s a good argument but the first place it falls down is, I think even without government funding that’s going to nail you: arts are, yeah, dominated by schools and ideas and to have a good chance of making it you’d better find a signifcant critic who wants to push you or get respect from a school/tradition with some clout. Or luck out and find yourself a powerful patron. It was ever thus, and we may not have had Michelangelo without Julius nor Faulkner without Crowley. Sucks.
But the other place it seems to fall down, at least in jazz, is that the eminences grises seem to be pretty quick to enthusastically support new ideas and outsiders. You hear some amazing and really fucked-up stuff coming out of the Monk Institute or Berklee. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with old tigers of bygone decades like Kenny Burrell and Herbie Hancock and all those guys seem acutely aware and interested in the avant-garde and support the hell out of every new thing they hear, and they seem to’ve maintainted constant communication with the more avant-garde and less well exposed of the previous generation as well (say Arthur Blythe or Julius Hemphill or Henry Threadgill or David S. Ware). Those guys seem as aware of the “fringe” and the counter-revolutionaries as any of the crowd you used to see at the Knit.
The counter to this I suppose is that there’s always the NEA/NEH backing of the Wynton Marsalis/Stanley Crouch arts purity patrol (and their big assist from Ken Burns) and I think that’s a perfect example of the kind of damage you’re worried about. But much as I hate those guys I just don’t see it as so damaging: there was a big pushback from the jazz community (still going on) and do I really think that those guys’ agenda killed off the form? Not really: you had Matthew Shipp and John Zorn and Ben Monder and Maria Schneider and M-BASE and all kinds of fucked-up stuff come out while they were pushing it, and I find it hard to believe that the American music audience is awake enough that those fringe players would have had more support than they did if there’d been no Lincoln Center. It also helped that the eminences grises are, as I said, exceptional (it’s hard to take seriously Wynton Masralis condemning work of a type, say, Roy Haynes or Ornette Coleman seems interested in: I mean, in that company, who the fuck is Marsalis?) So I guess we’re a little dependent on great artists continuing to be interested in great art even if it defies theirs — but again, it was ever thus, and I don’t believe that throwing of some public support behind those great artists (1) squashes a lot of dissent (the marketplace does that: congrats on your empty pop and snoozer smooth jazz, bitches) nor (2) represents an unwise allocation of funds. And in fact when Crouch decided to take on Dave Douglas, who’d become a stadard bearer of some of the new avant-garde (and a guy who’s interested in promoting every kind of weird shit: I went to pick him up once and he was talking with a hotel clerk about Qawwali music, then you’d see him at Down Home records all the time), Crouch got rapidly and solidly defenestrated.
Even attempts to rigidify the form are hard to sustain. You went through a brief period of a lot of extraordinarily talented young lions playing stuff so drearily formulaic and passe under the 1980’s-early ’90s return to “purity” that one feared for creativity, but in the end they, and jazz, broke out. It’s hard to keep talent down!
It helps that NEA seems to recognize this problem. As I recall, one of the very first NEA Jazz Masters was Sun Ra! And Ornette Coleman! And that while the neo-classicsts were just getting enthroned, and Wynton was going around running his mouth to the gravely nodding “chattering class” about how, well, that stuff’s not real jazz. The system seems to be working!
So, it’s not that I trust the government: it’s that I trust a lot of the small arts organizations out there, and what you want (and try to get) is an NEA director/Smithsonian director/ etc. who’s not so much a political flack but rather someone extensively networked in that community — and the prferences of those people, even without the NEA, are going to doiminate, no?
All this argumentation fails if the Great and Good old men (and women) of jazz are so much more farsighted and accepting than those of (say) film. I accept that that’s possible.
— Sanjay · Sep 30, 01:53 PM · #
Sanjay, you just sooooo don’t get it, and I honestly don’t know what words I could string together to help you get it, except to say that your “arguments” are mired in status quo assumptions, and that’s the whole fucking point. In the world as you imagine it, everything you say is mostly true, except the whole fucking point of Important Art is to imagine worlds that don’t exist yet. So the NEA is successfully fostering a thriving and forward looking jazz scene. Wonderfuckingful. Are your horizons really that small?
I don’t care about jazz surviving and thriving, and I sure as hell don’t care about film surviving and thriving. Fuck jazz and fuck film too. I do care about the gubberment picking winners and losers, or even having their thumb on the scale.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 02:33 PM · #
But I guess that;s my point: I don’t think the government is picking winners and losers. I think they’re handing clout to arts organizations like the Monk institute, and letting them pick winners and losers. And I think that, that arts organizations and established artists/critics “pick winners and losers,” has always been the case. Young? Play guitar? Have good ideas? Then you better try to get Berklee — not the government, Berklee — to agree with you or you have a real harder uphill climb than you already do. The government is now making that differential stronger, but it’s not picking the winners and losers: Berklee is.
— Sanjay · Sep 30, 02:40 PM · #
And this is what makes me crazy, why is it that Jim Manzi can understand marginal effects and under this rubric he can make cogent appeals cogent (if not convincing to me) appeals about being cautious about carbon and climate change, but can’t even acknowledge marginal effects of laws related to culture.
Why is it you, Sanjay, can completely torpedo Jim’s TOE/Fitness/God nonsense, but can’t apply the same rigor to the cultural eugenics you advocate for?
It’s the last 10% that kills, and that’s why the NEA “powerful leverage” is so destructive.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 02:41 PM · #
And this.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 02:45 PM · #
Am I missing something? Tony, for someone as battered by the “eugenics” of the corporate-controlled marketplace, you seem surprisingly forgiving of it. I’m sure you don’t think there is someplace that exists outside of interests and power and selection? Certainly the NEA exists in the final analysis to support the status quo – I would hardly expect government funded insurrectionist pamphlets to start coming around – and I’m not surprised at all to hear an administration trying to put certain values and messages on the NEA agenda. I worked for PBS during the Bush years after all. But there is interesting art that emerges from the unruly edges of a process like this – just as it does on the edges of the marketplace – artists will be artists. And I’m glad there are institutions beyond the corporate and religious making rain for artists.
— Chris Lucas · Sep 30, 03:33 PM · #
Chris! So glad you stopped by this thread. For the benefit of TAS, Chris has been one of the most important voices of devil’s advocacy in my developing my TITA presentation, and it and I benefited richly from his various challenges and provocations!
RE: Am I missing something?
Well in a word, yes. I would never call the corporate-controlled marketplace “cultural eugenics”. Until it’s backed by a monopoly on violence, a breeding program is just a breeding program.
RE: PBS
Don’t get me started
RE: Institutions
Says Conor: “the NEA exists in part for the sake of uncorrupted art.”
I deeply and profoundly reject the notion that commerce is corrupting. More over, I would argue that in the realm of something as ephemeral as “artistic merit” or cultural significance” it is insulation from commerce that is corrupting.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 03:51 PM · #
It’s mind-boggling to me that, in a world where Kanye West sells millions of records, Miley Cyrus sells out arenas at $500 a ticket, and Michael Bay can reliably churn out blockbusters, someone can actually say with a straight face that art is a ‘field that demands integrity.’ If anything, it’s striking how well art can function with absolutely no integrity at all.
And the NEA’s budget isn’t ‘modest’; it’s a complete joke. $150 million in a country of 300 million people with a per-capita income of $50,000 is less than a rounding error. If 1% of the people in this country decided to spend 1/10 of 1% of their income (i.e. $50 a year) on Important Art Uncorrupted By Politics, they could completely replace the NEA’s budget, grants, local partnerships, administration, paperclips, everything. Take the time you’ll spend ranting about keeping art pure from government influence, go take orders at McDonald’s instead, and you’ll earn more than that. Eminem’s broke-ass fans have figured out how to keep him in mansions and limos without corrupting his artistic vision, yet somehow the supergenius PhD’s who love experimental jazz and modern dance can’t figure out what it takes to keep the musicians and dancers they love both fed and uncorrupted, except to bitch and bitch and bitch (on a blog!).
— Bo · Sep 30, 04:02 PM · #
And less I be accuse of not accounting for the negative space around my position, I don’t think there’s any great damage done by the government funding of cultural institutions; schools, museums, performance spaces, etc; and in fact I think it’s valuable.
I think the government should be out of the business of funding new work. Yes, I understand that’s going to make for some blurry lines here and there. That’s not what I’m talking about.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 04:10 PM · #
“Eminem’s broke-ass fans have figured out how to keep him in mansions and limos without corrupting his artistic vision, yet somehow the supergenius PhD’s who love experimental jazz and modern dance can’t figure out what it takes to keep the musicians and dancers they love both fed and uncorrupted, except to bitch and bitch and bitch (on a blog!).”
Word.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 04:11 PM · #
I hate to repeat myself, Conor, but did you look at the names of the people on the call? They were mostly an assortment of commercial artists, designers, ad agencies, media figures, promoters, publicists, etc. They’re not the kind of folks who spend their days reflecting on truth and beauty. Most of their day job work is about communicating specific messages on behalf of clients. So to keep pushing this as an “artistic integrity” issue is just willful ignorance.
Furthermore, the call happened because community arts folks had been asking for these kinds of opportunities, looking for ways to take a greater role in public life.
— Kevin Erickson · Sep 30, 05:16 PM · #
Tony, you can’t have it both ways: either you take Bo’s value and say it’s a piddling amount of money, why can’t you make it some other way, or you say, no it has a HUGE impact.
And it does have a HUGE impact: Bo, you’re just wrong. It’s not like I wouldn’t like the NEA’s budget to be an order of magnitude bigger (and on trends before it got bogged down in the culture wars, it probably would’ve been — which is why the administration’s bungling here is alarming). But it’s large.
It’s large because it serves very few people and it does so where monies are few, at large return for money. I mean, if I ran down the street, knocked on doors, and asked how many families had been to an art museum in the past two years, my guess is I’d be lucky to get about 2.5%. Same for seeing a symphony orchestra, or a dance performance. You are serving very very few people.
And the income expectations aren’t the same. You open with Miley Cyrus, Kanye West, Michael Bay. Well, sure. The biggest names among the jazz guys don’t move money in that league. My guess would be that Ornette Coleman’s yearly earnings are a “rounding error” relative to Miley Cyrus’. But that’s why Coleman is in NEA’s bailiwick and Cyrus isn’t: when they give here some sort of Master’s award you’ll have a point. So: it’s big money because it’s a very small population and a few-orders-of-magnitude lower earnings expectation. I mean, I’ve been in Joe Henderson’s house. “Eminem” wouldn’t have used it for a garage. If Pearl jam gets back together after years and records a crap album there’ll be reviews everywhere, even from otherwise smart people like Suderman. When Human Feel got back together after years and recorded a very interesting album there’s nothing even though Eddie Vedder, on the best day of his life, isn’t half the guitarist Rosenwinkel is. Similarly I can’t imagine anyone thinking USA, which Matt Frost was at some point reading, isn’t great art, but you’d better believe that the entire money that’s been spent buying it over the last decade is less than they’ll spend picking cover art for the next stool Dan Brown passes. The art we’re talking about — the art that’s relevant here — does have integrity, and operates on a tiny budget. I mean, shit, man, I’ve seen Ron Carter — Ron fucking Carter — thinking through options to fix up a bass that broke while on a plane, and worrying about what each cost!
But the biggest reason it’s a lot of money is where it goes. I do shell out — in money and in kind — for arts charities and I buy tickets to jazz festivals, and there’s money from me and people like me. But as I pointed out before that’s not what NEA does. I had a buddy who tried to set up an annual Oakland Jazz Festival: got a lot of in-kind donations and the like but couldn’t get federal money ‘cause, well, it’s in Oakland. SFJAZZ didn’t used to get NEA money either. On the other hand if you want to keep a jazz program running in rural Nebraska: that’s why we have an NEA. And then they’ll typically provide funding that goes in with your local organization and its existing fund base, and give you a forum so you can tell artists you’re there. The NEA doesn’t bring Chick Corea to Manhattan, so much as it helps keep jazz piano clinics going in Dayton. That’s the kind of thing it’s hard to do with my money (say) because I don’t have contacts there and, oh please God, never will.
In symphonic music it’s worse. Even in major cities, without some kind of large charitable donation, orchestras almost won’t play modern composers at all! It won’t draw the crowds another frickin’ Mozart fesitval will. That form would be completely, totally dead without funding from groups like NEA.
NEA knows this. They’ve taken a lot of deserved pride in how much art simply wouldn’t exist without their help.
It’s cheap but supportable! Keeping antiquities safe in Baghdad, say, would’ve costed piss. A “rounding error” relative to all the other invasion costs. And most of us think it’s scandalous that it wasn’t done. Well, this is the same: our cultural treasures aren’t what the Dirty Projectors produce, they’re what Uri Caine produces: and we value them, and want them to be accessible, at least a little, to as many of our people as possible.
— Sanjay · Sep 30, 06:12 PM · #
“It’s cheap but supportable! Keeping antiquities safe in Baghdad, say, would’ve costed piss. A “rounding error” relative to all the other invasion costs.”
Agreed. But paying an Iraqi composer to write a new symphonic work might have been a worthwhile investment in propaganda. If you want the NEA funding propaganda, that’s certainly an argument your entitled to make.
And I think I did say it has a big impact, and precisely for the reasons you think it’s such a good idea. That thumb on the scale takes the oxygen (well money actually) from artist that don’t get public subsidies. Your commercial pap vs. worth artist argument is either disengenous or naive of the entrepenural realities of being an artist (I reckon the later.)
It’s not your beloved jazz vs Hanna Montana (or whatever stand-in you want for “stuff people like that I think is low.) It’s your beloved jazz vs something you’ve never heard of.— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 06:30 PM · #
It’s cheap but supportable! Keeping antiquities safe in Baghdad, say, would’ve cost piss. A “rounding error” relative to all the other invasion costs.
But what about the Iraqi jazz musicians? The Mosul Interpretive Dance Troupe? The Iraqi Symphony? The guy who dunks Muhammad dolls in urine? Would they all be properly protected? I need more context before I decide.
— Bo · Sep 30, 08:24 PM · #
“They were mostly an assortment of commercial artists, designers, ad agencies, media figures, promoters, publicists, etc. They’re not the kind of folks who spend their days reflecting on truth and beauty. Most of their day job work is about communicating specific messages on behalf of clients.”
And that’s who the NEA is supposed to encourage!
Let the market take care of “truth and beauty.”
It’s not like there is any difference in culture and society, beauty and utility, or campaigning and integrity. It’s all just supposed to help make the government’s job easier.
I just don’t see why conservatives can’t get on board with making artists get off their high horses and working for the fatherland like we all should be doing anyway. I thought they were the ones who loved Norman Rockwell and his wholesome celebration of American values like directing citizens’ responsibility, industriousness, and health concerns toward serving the greater good.
It is too bad they are so blind to the power of art (i.e. marketing), or else maybe Bush wouldn’t have lost so much support in his war on terror. Where were the posters of evil muslim radicals covering our women in hajibs?
Where was the billboard of Saddam flying planes into the Sears Tower?
Why no ads celebrating our rightful power and sworn duty to serve our honor and humanity by liberating oppressed people and their oil from volatile dictators?
Where were all the paternal Uncle Sams ordering us to report unpatriotic activity and sacrifice for liberty, justice, and the American way in Iraq?
Once again the conservatives were just too incompetent to see the potential of engaging with and recruiting creative types to do something for the national interest for once.
Just think of how much better and prouder our military and cops will be once we start celebrating their noble service and courage in the arts (i.e. advertisements) as cool once those who tell us what’s cool get their hands on it.
I mean, check out the crap they used to fund and encourage: these ‘artists’ were lost in ambiguity and an inability to create a clear, coherent message. What am I supposed to take from free-floating images, vague metaphors, and shapes, exactly? Give me a slogan – tell me what to do and think.
If these ‘artists’ can’t get it together and paint things that resonate with the average man then it’s up to the government to dictate their message so at least someone besides hoity toity art critics can pretend to “get it” and “appreciate it.”
— Hank Toupee · Sep 30, 09:46 PM · #
Maybe your jazz friends need to read this, Sanjay:
Why I’m Not Afraid to Take Your Money
— Tony Comstock · Sep 30, 09:55 PM · #
I’m not contributing much to this, but I’ll just clarify that I also reject the idea that commerce is necessarily corrupting. But I also reject the idealization of market, esp in an advanced corporate setting, as freedom. Concentrations of power, whether commercial, political, technical, or religious, are susceptible to corruption, perhaps endemically. Governments have no monopoly on violence, unless you define violence so narrowly as to fit a definition useful to other forms of power, and commercial power – with ready access to state power – has certainly shown itself willing to use violence to reach its ends. All that is to say, since we’re talking about art and ideas and not molotov cocktails, if we are in a competing field of power relations in the production of art and ideas, I want a agency of the republic – esp one positioned at the unpredictable interface that comes with arts funding and artists at work – to have a hand in the game.
— Chris Lucas · Oct 1, 01:12 AM · #
If the question is, “Do you trust the modern corporate economy to ensure that all pregnant women have adequate access to prenatal care?” my answer is, “No, I’d like an agency of the republic to have a hand in the game.”
If the question is “Do you trust the modern corporate economy to ensure safe drinking water and hygienic disposal of sewage?” my answer is, “No, I’d like an agency of the republic to have a hand in the game.”
But if the question is “Do you trust the modern corporate economy to ensure that Important Art does not go unfunded”? the answer “I’d like an agency of the republic to have a hand in the game.” seems like a non sequitur. But maybe that’s just me.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 1, 01:45 AM · #
Then of course there’s this
“Serious journalism has never been profitable and never will be.”
Bring on the NEJ! Because a great country deserves great journalism!
— Tony Comstock · Oct 1, 03:02 AM · #
NEP too, for us rogue philosophy guys (after all, nobody ever talked about Art-kings).
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 1, 04:37 AM · #
I’ve heard of mambo kings and art fags, but never art kings. If you’re gonna be a square you ain’t a gonna go no where.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 1, 10:54 AM · #
I’m with Lucas. In part I just don’t get Tony’s contention: it seems to me like the vast history of art across himan history and geography is largely one of state patronage (and in fact, unfortunately, propgaganda: this is true even of Shostakovich, say, or at least Stalin would’ve liked it to be true.) So it’s clearly nonsensical to say the hand of authority represses the development of new forms: it hasn’t from the bust of Nefertiti to the compositions of Russian modernists.
I also don’t think that you crowd out a lot of fantastic totally new creativity because frankly I don’t think people with fantastic awesome new art ideas that existing art insitutions and criticism don’t support and/or fund, are cruising to get screwed anyway. Those innovators appear to be motivated by inner fire, not wealth, or at least I hope they are because they sure as hell ain’t getting wealth. The biographies of most great artistic innovators, as far as I can tell, at least start out pretty depressing. So I don’t hav a lot of faith in arguments that by funding ohter stuff I’m screwing them worse, and probably — as in jazz — I’m actually creating a larger community that serves as a kind of antenna for innovation.
And I think that while corporate influence doesn’t have to corrupt, it strongly pushes against Art. I turn on the TV or go to the summer blockbusters or flip on the radio and for some reason I’m not wowed by the ability of the Market to generate halfway decent art. In fact what I hear is not art so much as it is “product.” You want a band that keeps crapping out the same, predictable shit, and makes your consumers feel nice and happy and nostalgic for that shit you you cna relicense it endlessly to nostalgia stations and know what you’ll get next time: experimentalism sucks and empirically looking at the market, it’s discouraged.
Plus I think the idea that the market supports artists in any way well is also questionable. As far as i can tell the market does wonders for distributors and packagers and editors and so on, but can screw artists with amazing cheerfulness.
— Sanjay · Oct 1, 12:48 PM · #
Okay Sanjay, you win. Now send me some of that Important Coffee of yours.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 1, 01:57 PM · #
It needs a government subsidy.
— Sanjay · Oct 1, 02:23 PM · #