Patronage in the Arts

John Roberts

In part the artist is forever a mendicant mountebank. Like the priest he dispenses a service which is literally invaluable. No Industrial Award can be established for creative acts nor can artists be graded by merit acording to the provisions of the State Services Act. Of course, the Arts, like anything else from sex to prophecy, can be brought within the confines of a cash nexus which would delight a cost accountant, but as with prostitution and palmistry, we have an uneasy feeling that this does not necessarily provide the highest level of intercourse between customer and client.

At his highest level the artist has strictly nothing to offer, for he is talking to himself. Those who overhear and are instructed, edified or amused no doubt derive great value but they are not in any strict sense getting a contractual return for any service or support they have given the artist. Nor can they claim such a return.

There's the rub with patronage. Joan Plowright speaking at the Drama Conference held during the Edinburgh Festival last year is reported to have asserted the claim of the artist on society for the "right to fail." Brave words but untrue. The artist has no rights against society. Society can do without him or it can demand that he succeeds according to its own criteria. In the matter of following his own will the only right the artist has is the right to starve In a welfare state, moreover, if he tried to assert this right society would probably force feed him like a goose.

It the artist can make money while he ascends the brightest heaven of invention, there is no problem. If not, he is a beggar looking to the grace and favour of society or more accurately to its uneasy conscience. There is certainly no evidence that one or the other method is the more dependable source of masterpieces. Rainer Maria Rilke sponged off rich women and wrote great verse. Mozart distilled the essence of pleasure from sound and died trying to fulfil his commercial obligations. No friend, and certainly no patron, followed him to a pauper's grave. Bach dutifully performed his kapellmeister's duties including the composition of peerless music and died modestly esteemed, full of honours and surrounded not to say crowded out by children. Charlie Chaplin made millions in the entertainment industry as well as masterpieces of cinema.

No, there is no "right to fall." is there still a duty to patronise and if there is how should it be performed? Which artist is to be preferred above others? If the Wellington Repertory Society want to stage the "Merry Widow," importing a Viennese ballroom stone by stone to the stage of the Opera House, should the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council give them financial support in preference to the V.U.W. Contemporary Arts Group who want to do a Tongan mystery play accompanied by nose flutes? Who is to judge?

The answer is no-one and everybody. In this matter de gustibus non est disputandum. More specifically the Queen Elizabth II Arts Council, which is, for this purpose no-one and everybody, has the taste which, in the particular instance, we cannot dispute. In community patronage the problems are political not aesthetic. If you do not like the choice made by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council you have the right to press government either to order the Councillors to choose differently, or to change the Councillors. This happened when the members of the old Arts Advisory Council were given their marching orders by the Government at the time of the Council's levitation to the ermine-padded heights of regal nomenclature. From what little I knew about the work, personalities and judgement of the two sets of Councillors. I applauded the Arts Advisory Council and I distrust profoundly the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council. As a citizen and voter I have done precisely nothing about it. That is my right.

We come to this conclusion. There is no abstract obligation on the community to patronise, the artist. There is an opportunity for any citizen (including of course that rarissima of aves, the artistically inclined politician), to exert pressure on government to assume such an obligation. There is no abstract value by which one artist is to be preferred above another as a recipient of patronage. There is only the judgement of those set in authority over us with this saving grace that in the long run we may be able to set others in their place.

This does not of course, end the argument, I have been talking of the relationships of society to artist but patronage has many meanings including the relationship of the individual to the artist. Here of course the only obligations are those that are self-imposed. Corporate patronage, as it is representative has a duty to investigate to compare, to evaluate. This limits the artist and keeps him honest.

The great advantage of the private patron is his relative freedom from external pressures. Similarly the artist's only concern is to keep his particular goose laying golden eggs. Whether he does this by chicanery, flattery or abuse, the world has no interest. While I have no evidence that private patronage produces more masterpieces on a cash for genius basis than other methods, it certainly does not inhibit the artist. Consider Michael-angelo and the Medici's or Wagner and the poor suckers who tried to help him.

Naturally, the patrons must have one indispensable virtue—viz money. But it need not be unlimited. After all, if Fauves had not had Berthe Weil it would have been necessary to Invent someone even more impoverished. Still wealth is handy, and there is no escaping the fact that in this coun-try our egalitarianism, admirable in most ways, limits the supply of soft touches. Moreover, it is regrettable that our few rich, in escaping the terrors of a genteel education, normally have one of two kinds of taste—bad or deplorable.

Is there no hope for patronage of the kind of art discriminating people such as you or I consider good, or life enhancing, or pinnacled high in the intense, inane or whatever?

There is but it does not spring from forms of artistic virtue laid up in heaven. It is a function of lively, diverse and intensive, education. A community does have a positive obligation to supply this to its citizens in preference to motorways and rugby stadiums or even Orion anti-submarine weapon systems disguised as aeroplanes.

This is a right we can assert positively in the sure hope that the instructed and open mind will demand refreshment. If he cannot pay for it himself he will have the wit and skill to get the community to do so. Therefore, to adapt Guizot's advice, if you seek to have your way with society, donnez-vous de l'instruction.