Art, who needs it anyway–finale
This is the last of the series.
Please see parts one, two, and three below.

Massive cuts to government funding to the arts are but one result of the alienation of the public. In other words, who cares? If people no longer respect or even know about what artists are doing, how can we expect them to care if their tax money no longer goes to support these arcane activities? As I said before, I would not expect the government to pay the faithful for their church attendance or for the priests and ministers who deliver the sacraments and sermons. Then why should expect taxpayers’ money to support the rarefied indulgences of an elite and aging population who want to attend the opera, the symphony, and the art gallery? Or even a cadre of younger artists, who, instead of giving people what they want, insist in striking out in new directions creating challenging new art?

Like the television and rock concert producers, governments know what people want and where their support lies. Hence you will soon be able to spend up to $9000 for a seat to watch two guys beat the stuffing out of each other in an Ultimate Fighting Championship event at GM Place (“could generate millions for the local economy”). If violence of that sort is not your dish of tea, you could stroll over the new $500 million (and counting) casino at BC Place and relieve yourself of your excess cash. (Be careful, on your way, not to step on any of the homeless people trying to sleep on the street.) Oh yes, the Vancouver School Board has just announced the virtual elimination, “due to cutbacks,” of art and music programs. One or two parents have lamented this loss, but ultimately, who cares?

In case you haven’t noticed, our governments have become followers, not leaders. Look, for example, at the Harper government’s “tough on crime” legislation. As we speak, $2 billion is being spent on building new prisons. Bill C-2, which will probably be supported by election-shy Liberals and the NDP, calls for tough minimum sentences and more invasive control of drug use with penalties that emphasize retribution as opposed to rehabilitation. This in spite of all scientific and sociological research demonstrating that tougher sentences do not reduce crime. This government can push its own agenda by playing on the belief that we are living in a dangerous society. To convince people otherwise and to take a sensible and humane view would mean assuming a leadership role. It’s easier to ignore the fact that the crime rate has been steadily descending since the 1970s.

Because the Prime Minister was embarrassed by his pre-election remarks about artists at fancy galas, he has had his picture taken with a boy with a cello and he even sang a Beatles tune to his own accompaniment at, imagine!, a fancy gala. Remembering that he didn’t bother to show up at the Canada Council’s Fiftieth Anniversary celebration, I am not convinced. But he got a lot more media coverage from his singing and playing than he ever did from his no-show for the Canada Council.

This might be a good time to remind the reader of the difference between “market driven” and “product driven.” As we’ve pointed out, most popular entertainment as seen on television, movies, and rock concerts is based upon what the public wants, often determined by polls or by market surveys. Art, on the other hand, is, or should be, created out of the compulsion and imagination of the artist. As we have seen, the public may be confused and feel somehow cheated. The artists are playing tricks on them—and getting paid for it. Remember the anger expressed by some people when the National Gallery paid nearly $2 million for Barnett Newman’s “Voice of Fire.”? This very large painting consists of a single red stripe on a blue background. “My four-year-old could have done that,” people were heard saying, somehow equating the value of the work with the amount of labour involved. A lady I was talking with at a concert recently, said, “I don’t trust the modern stuff.” She explained that she had attended a concert of contemporary music and heard only dissonance and not a single melody. In the essay cited above, Ortega y Gasset also wrote: “We then have an art which can be comprehended only by people possessed of the peculiar gift of artistic sensibility—an art for artists and not for the masses.” For the most part, the public is acquainted neither with the arts of the past or of the present. And what’s more, they don’t care. No one even let’s them know that it exists.

It doesn’t take long to realize that the media are devoting large amounts of time and energy to talk about sports. Sports have taken over the public imagination with regard to accomplishment and civic pride. We hold up our Olympic athletes as role models for the young, and we cheer wildly when “our” hockey team wins the series. (Even though the players are mostly from elsewhere.). There is nothing wrong with this, but it is happening in a vacuum of reporting about the accomplishments of our artists. We have not celebrated the achievements of our artists, writers, and musicians, many of whom are better known abroad than at home. Who knows that 22-year-old baritone from Toronto Elliott Madore was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions? Who ever heard of Jan Lisiecki, the brilliant 15-year-old pianist from Calgary who has performed at Carnegie Hall and with major orchestras all over the world? He has recorded both Chopin piano concertos to great acclaim. He is International Youth Ambassador for UNICEF. Governor General Michaëlle Jean told him “You are an inspiration to children and adults across Canada.” Who knew? Why aren’t these artists and the many others, young and old, as well known as Sidney Crosby?

As long ago as 1948, José Ortega Y Gasset, in the essay cited above, wrote:

In these last few years we have seen almost all caravels of seriousness founder in the tidal wave of sports that floods the newspaper pages. Editorials threaten to be sucked into the abyss of their headlines, and across the surface victoriously sail the yachts of the regattas. Cult of the body is an infallible symptom of a leaning toward youth, for only the young body is lithe and beautiful. Whereas the cult of the mind betrays the resolve to accept old age, for the mind reaches plenitude only when the body begins to decline. The triumph of sport marks the victory of the values of youth over the values of age.

Arts groups have tried to lure back a bewildered public by trying some market-related tricks, pretending that they a “just folks” like everyone else. The Vancouver Symphony presents concerts of video game music, complete with large-screen video so you can see the musicians sweating it out. Vancouver Opera offers Manga versions of opera stories and a few young people “blogging” about the opera on opening night. The string quartet plays an arrangement of a Beatles tune. All this is well and good, but I’d wager that not one person has been moved to attend a regular symphony concert or an opera—or to come to believe that their taxes should support the arts—as a result of these slogans and condescending offerings. What we’re really saying is that we don’t believe that the product is good enough to sell itself on its own. We don’t expect you to sit and listen to an orchestra concert or a string quartet or to study up on an opera story.

If religious people can no longer persuade the wider public that church attendance will ensure a blissful afterlife, people who believe in Art have failed to make the case that participation in the arts guarantees a richer more fully-lived temporal life. We come up with flimsy slogans like “Creativity Counts” or “Don’t Torch the Arts” whilst flaunting grey squares to show how poverty-stricken a world we would have without Art. As if anyone cared.

We have failed to display a passion for and dedication to making Art. We have failed to engage the public with Art and artists. Our protests have been short-lived and insignificant. We have stood by while schools have eliminated arts programs. We have tuned out of the CBC’s erosion of music programming. We have failed to demand media attention for the arts at least equal to sports reporting.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. It took years of hard and constant work to get the environment onto the public agenda. People risked their lives; people went to jail and endured ridicule and hardship. They asked who cares? and answered: We do! And environmental issues have made it into the media and into public awareness. The government is compelled to respond, like it or not. Until we have the same kind of courage and determination, Art will stay in the background, an unnecessary frill, an elite indulgence. Why should tax money go for that?

In her 1953 book “Feeling and Form,” the philosopher Susanne Langer wrote:

An enlightened society usually has some means, public or private, to support its artists, because their work is regarded as a spiritual triumph and claim to greatness for the whole tribe.

How will we answer the question Who cares?