Freezing cold

My studio has frozen during this cold spell - the clay is a rock solid, frozen lump. Luckily I had taken some nearly finished work into the house.

My sense of the value of practicing as an artist threatens to be freezing up as well, though not altogether a frozen lump as yet. I was talking to a colleague recently who was in an acute state of anger and frustration - the networks of favouritsm within arts administration, the rebuffs of past and potential patrons, the 'ignorant' masses who like 'rubbish' or don't care about art at all: the general alienation of an artist who works alone day after day in his studio, spending a minimal income on paints rather than food.

Such anger is fuelled, I believe, by an assumption that artists fulfill a 'sacred' role for which the expectation of acknowledgment and reward is justified. Where does this expectation come from? It is tragically unrealistic for so many, however serious their practice. Nevertheless, the fury and resentment is understandable to some extent given that it is so hard to define success in terms of whether an artist is good or not. Many good artists are unappreciated.

And what about the idea that artists fulfil an important role in society? On what grounds can the significance of the role be evaluated, and do all artists contribute to the fulfilment of this role, regardless of acknowledged status? Does an artifact only function as 'art' once it has received recognition or patronage as such, and if so, does the recognition of those without money or cultural sophistication count for less?

First, there is the idea that contemplating works of art is good for the viewer - an idea that goes back, I suppose, to Medieval religious iconography, with its educational role for the illiterate. Then the early modernist notion that exposure to art encourages 'virtue', or at least sophistication - an idea seeded, I suppose, in the need to educate the descendants of rough mercenaries into a dynasty of powerful princely rulers . Then, with industrialisation, the need arose to provide training to designers in order to manufacture competitive quality products. At the same time there was the desire to encourage 'virtue' in the general populace by access to art through public galleries. Art was definitely seen as a public good in those days. But now?

Admittedly the need for competitive design is stronger than ever in this age of digital design, advertising and fashion, and designers are presumably nourished by innovative 'fine art' production. But beyond market price, I am not sure how one would define the value of 'fine art' activity.

Within democratic capitalism the arbiter of value is sales figures - what people buy determines what is good. That would be simple if it were not for the role given to state art administration to guide and improve public taste by supporting and displaying the art people don't intuitively like. It comes with the proposition that this art is of a superior quality for the very fact that people don't want to buy it. As there is, however, so much art being produced that nobody wants to buy, you need academics and administrators to select the kind of art (or kind of artists) worthy of state support. Because state sponsored art has been thus judged more 'virtuous' in terms of public good or education, it's market value, ironically, ends up being much enhanced. As the prime virtue in liberal capitalism is monetary, this price inflation presumably serves the national interest.

The justification for selective state patronage of the arts is often underwritten by the proposal that the wrong sort of art production, and the wrong sort of patronage, is politically or morally unacceptable - a throwback to the socialism v. fascism, democracy v. totalitarianism, freedom v. repression cultural propagandas of the 20th century. Any theory about what constitutes value in the visual arts is likely to be housed within a fortress of dogma: it is war out there, promoting this treacherously ambiguous activity. Vulnerable souls can become little tyrants within their field, consumed with self-righteous prejudice.

Secondly, there is the benefit of the activity rather than the end-product. I was recently shown a painting by a young lad who displayed so much enthusiasm during art therapy sessions that it was decided to fund his higher education in art studies. The painting I saw consisted of inarticulate streaks of colour - but that was only my response: the lad is finding buyers, so others see value in his work. Yet it occurred to me that there might be some confusion here between different types of value, i.e. a celebration of the benefit to him gained through his enthusiasm for painting as opposed to a celebration of quality achieved within the work itself. Creative activity is undeniably beneficial in itself, whether to the individual for all kinds of reasons, but also serving the general good as a healing enterprise or one that fulfills social, behavioural and educational needs through projects of many kinds. There would be enough in that, except that it does not solve the problem of evaluating the benefit of the end product as opposed to the creative activity.

For many professional artists that I know, the compulsion that drives them on day after day is simply a dedicated search for quality. It might be that they themselves can't fully describe in words the quality they are chasing because it is a combination of elements articulated together in material form, so condensed in time and place as to be non-transferable to verbal or textual articulation. If they are clever, they select aspects which sound familiar enough to be well-received, or they might even fabricate some impressive promotional material - after all one is being asked to do this all the time, and it is given more weight than the actual work, which after all often only reaches its audience as a mere shadow of itself in reproduction. It might be that an artist will never find an audience for the quality they are seeking: there is no reason why this should be guaranteed.

Yet the artifact is of course honed with a viewer in mind, but the viewer as an equal, not a target, if that makes sense. It is the growing resolution of the artifact which speaks both to the artist and the imagined viewer, in other words, the emphasis is on the powers of expression embodied or revealed within the artifact. The artist serves the artifact, not the other way round. This is why I could not say about any of the artists I have in mind that their activity is (or was, some being deceased) selfish or egotistical, as some people might consider in view of the resources committed and the lack of return. It is depressing really, but also remarkable that they remain(ed) so committed. It is like the myriad of seeds nature produces annually, of which only a few fall on fertile ground.

The artist I most respect in this regard remains Eric Peskitt (deceased), who never once communicated any signs of paranoia about the lack of interest shown towards his work. In spite of his expressed understanding that he was unfortunate enough to be active in an era that was unreceptive to his concerns as an artist, he remained as totally focused on exploring the means by which he could achieve the quality he sought as if the most discerning and generous patron was at his door.