Artists in Harness (Yosi Sergant)

Washington Post ^ | September 17, 2009 | George Will

[La Lydia]

"This is just the beginning," Yosi Sergant told participants in an Aug. 10 conference call that seems to have been organized by the National Endowment for the Arts and certainly was joined by a functionary from the White House Office of Public Engagement. The call was the beginning of the end of Sergant's short tenure as NEA flack -- he has been reassigned. The call also was the beginning of a small scandal that illuminates something gargantuan -- the Obama administration's incontinent lust to politicize everything...

Did the White House initiate the call...Or, even worse, did the NEA, an independent agency, spontaneously politicize itself? Something that reads awfully like an invitation went from Sergant's NEA e-mail address... They were exhorted to participate in a conference call "to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda." The first core area mentioned was "health care."...Two days after the call, the 16 and five other organizations issued a plea for the president's health-care plan.

The automobile industry and much of the financial sector have been broken to the saddle of the state...Now the Obama administration is tightening the cinch on subsidized artists...

Time was, artists were proudly adversarial regarding authority, the established order, etc. "Epater le bourgeois!" and all that. Now they are just another servile interest group seeking morsels from the federal banquet. Are they real artists? Sure, because in this egalitarian era, government reasons circularly: Art is whatever an artist says it is, and an artist is whoever produces art. So, being an artist is a self-validating vocation....

[La Lydia]

"Every five years, the art schools of America alone produce as many graduates as there were people in Florence in the last quarter of the 15th century."...

[Kieri]

This is personally chilling. I’m an occasional artist and have been paid for my work, and when I did a quick color sketch of Sarah Palin I took flak. It was right after the announcement she’d been tapped to be the VP nominee and I was thrilled (a fast drawing from me is NOT a good drawing!), but the art community comes unglued if you even hint of conservatism.

My darling daughter wants to go into graphic arts and loves it as much as I do. I’ve done the best I can to prepare her for an adversarial market — with the possibility of a few whispered supportive remarks.

[cubreporter]

Too bad. I’m sure there are lots of artists out there who use their creativity for good things and just enjoy putting their thoughts, ideas and images on canvas. We only hear of the sensatiional nonsese of some who are not artists at all.

[cubreporter]

Too bad. I’m sure there are lots of artists out there who use their creativity for good things and just enjoy putting their thoughts, ideas and images on canvas. We only hear of the sensatiional nonsese of some who are not artists at all.

[Since 2009-07-21]

Now they are just another servile interest group seeking morsels from the federal banquet. Are they real artists?


Will ignores or hasn't bothered to learn, like many others, that this "interest group" is only a subset; they ALWAYS make a lot of noise and they ALWAYS demand their "right" to the government teat. But it's a lazy thinker who assumes this group comprises the whole. The boring truth is that there are countless galleries out there splitting their profits with artists in a completely free-market way. Look at Santa Fe, for example. The place prides itself for being ever so progressive; but even THERE most of the galleries are full of inoffensive landscapes, florals, native-American kitsch, pretty trinkets, etc. and it all passes hands in the same free-market way stuff passes hands in malls and shopping centers. But then again that is a banality that doesn't serve political arguments on either side. There is also that other boring fact. Many artists are applying their skills AT WORK...industrial design, graphic arts, web design, etc.

[La Lydia]

I didn’t get that he was talking about ALL artists, just the ones that are so lame that they have to depend on the NEA for subsidies because no one who buys art in the private sectors wants their drivel. When I go to Santa Fe, I mostly skip the presumptious artsy-fartsy galleries, which you have described so well, and buy from the natives. When I lived in the West, I went to the Santa Fe Indian Market every year and managed to collect some gorgeous pots and some bronzes from the Shidoni foundry in Tesuque. Good art, fine art, will always find a market and doesn’t need the government to hold its hand.

[Since 2009-07-21]

Good art, fine art, will always find a market and doesn’t need the government to hold its hand.

Oh, I agree completely! I was trying to say that "art" that makes the news tells us very little about the art world as a whole, sadly. I met the guy who founded the Shidoni foundry, actually. I've never been to the foundry itself, though. I'd love to go out there and buy. Just don't have the money to even get there, truthfully. I went to Santa Fe a while ago; I was there for a week and the dry air messed up my sinuses big time, and yet the air and sunlight felt so good it was almost intoxicating!