The arts are being crippled by conformity
A new report shows that the last place to find rebellion is the arts world
In the popular imagination, artists are rebels — free spirits flicking Vs at authority while basking in the freedoms of Western democracy. But today’s creative class looks less like a band of iconoclasts and more like a guild of nervous bureaucrats. A new report from Freedom in the Arts (FITA) reveals institutions gripped by fear, where opinions outside the pages of The Guardian are about as welcome as a progress Pride flag in Gaza.
FITA surveyed nearly 500 respondents working across theatre, visual arts, literature and music. The report found 84 per cent don’t feel free to express their politics. Nearly 80 per cent report harassment for stepping out of ideological line, and 78 per cent agree with the statement “people working in the arts wouldn’t dare own up to right-of-centre political opinions”.
Report authors Rosie Kay and Denise Fahmy — one a choreographer, the other a former Arts Council insider — learned first hand the price of nonconformity. Both were professionally kneecapped for thought crimes that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in the pub.
The problem may be familiar, but the whole piece is well worth reading for the way in which it so thoroughly castigates current artistic pretensions.
These dinner party bores seem to believe that we are on the cusp of a fascist uprising, and that the best way to deal with this is to suppress difficult conversations lest the impolite masses rampage through the dessert course. Consequently, the straplines and programmes of the UK’s major galleries have all the joy and creativity of a Stalinist five year plan. The Tate’s strategy boasts of an intention to “increase our holdings of women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, minority artists and artists of colour.”
11 comments:
" The Tate’s strategy boasts of an intention to “increase our holdings of women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, minority artists and artists of colour.” "
Go woke go broke, I hope.
...and that's why I am in favour of defunding the Arts Councils. Luvvies dispensing patronage to other luvvies is a recipe for institutional conformity.
Artists don’t need to express an opinion - or even open their mouths - to fall foul of the thought police.
A relative with inside knowledge tells me that, in the art world, traditional landscape painters are regarded as politically suspect - ‘Hitler painted landscapes, you know…’ - while, for those who have adopted less controversial media and styles, charging for private commissions is regarded as immoral and marks the artist out as a despicable lackey of the ruling classes (large taxpayer-funded grants or public sector commissions are, by contrast, entirely respectable).
Artistic pretensions ... aye, there's the rub. When is art wow ... and when contrived shock value?
I wonder whether the woke curating and policing of the arts is due to overproduction. Our leisure-filled affluent lives allow huge colonies of people - usually middle class and educated - to churn out masses of "art". Lacking an interest in art or being "uncreative" is low status.
Some principle or criterion is needed to choke off the supply; even our midwit middle class is not daft enough to pretend that all is of equal merit.
In the past, that principle was more to do with technical expertise: can you compose using counterpoint and correct harmony, does your poetry scan, can you do faces, etc. Now, it's whether your left wing credentials are sufficiently well displayed.
Years ago we got off a U-bahn train to find a busker playing Bach organ pieces on his accordion. I thought - that's giving me more pleasure than anything the Arts Council has funded over the years. So scrap the Arts Council and give five scholarships a year to young Germans (or anyone else) who promise to play Bach at our railway stations. If it's a huge success, increase it to six.
Jannie - I hope so too, it would be well deserved.
DJ - that's the root of it, luvvies dispensing patronage to other luvvies.
Macheath - interesting but not surprising. Fortunately, amateur artists still seem to be doing their own thing.
James - and even shock value is becoming too transparently contrived.
Sam - yes there does seem to be a huge level of overproduction and far too many bizarre and degenerate attempts to stand out in a crowded market.
dearieme - that's a good, practical idea. Years ago we can across a busker playing pre-war American folk music on a cigar box guitar. I'd have voted for him.
Jack Vettriano died recently. For some reason, despite being of poor working class stock, the establishment shunned him. Hoi poloi loved him, so he ploughed his own furrow. He never whinged about this treatment.
I always wondered what it was that he had done wrong.
There can hardly a person in UK who does not know and admire one of his works.
Doonhamer - I've always assumed that popularity was his great sin. Having his work reproduced so widely - the wrong people like it. Another problem is that many of his works exude a strong sense of style in what arty folk see as merely commercial - again because it is too popular for them - style is supposed to be exclusive.
My deah, Representational Art! Ugh!
dearieme - Oh I do agree, only fit for cheap Christmas cards.
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