Why Are Artists Poor? Part 12

1 'Two Cultures and the Scienti.c Revolution' (1950) in C.P. Snow, Public Affairs (1971).

2 Cf. Lavoye (1990).

Sacred Art

1 The term 'outsider art' is used for the work of artists who make art without prop-erly applying important contemporary (grammatical) rules. They may be self-taught or received their schooling at an older age or in an unusual educational situation such as a mental inst.i.tution, for instance.

2 Throsby (1994) 2.

3 The philosopher Laermans (1992) 64 reproaches the economist Grauwe (1990) for making mistakes by not making his notion of art explicit.

4 Cf. Danto (1964), d.i.c.kie (1971), Becker (1982) 34, 148-149 and 153-164 and Bevers (1993) 16-20.

5 Bourdieu (1979), DiMaggio (1987), Calcar (1984) andLamont and Fournier (1992). More references and details about differences in .ndings in Peterson (1997) 87.

6 By using the term 'asymmetry' I want to stress the asymmetry in the appreciation of each other's culture. In another respect however, behavior is symmetric: groups are the same in the sense that they orient themselves toward the art of groups above them on the social ladder.

7 See note 5.

8 Of these .ve a.s.sumptions the a.s.sumption regarding social coherence is the most questionable. Rapid changes in society can cause a reduction in the coherence of social values. Given all the rapid and radical changes in the media, this could be the contemporary scenario. In that case this thesis would not be valid, because coherence today is insuf.cient to maintain shared notions of high and low in the arts. If this is the case, the book's a.n.a.lysis loses its signi.cance. However, although I cannot prove my case, I shall try to make it plausible in the course of this book that there is suf.cient social coherence to support thesis of asymmetric judgment based on cultural inferiority and superiority.

9 Cf. Peterson and Kern (1996) and Peterson (1997) and the references they pres-ent.

10 Peterson (1997) 88.

11 Peterson and Kern (1996) 904 also found from their empirical data that "high-brows are more omnivorous than non-highbrows".

12 Bourdieu (1979) also cited by Peterson and Kern (1996) 904.

13 Peterson and Kern (1996) 904 state: "...omnivorousness does not imply an indifference to distinctions".

14 I return to the controversy in the Epilogue. A related argument is brought for-ward by Eijck (1999). He shows that people moving up the social ladder often do not adapt the art of people above them on the social ladder. Instead they take their own art along with them. And so their art rises in status. Nevertheless, sta-tus differences remain important.

15 Levine (1988) has described the historic process of 'sacralization'.

16 Hide (1979) defends this view. He quotes many well-known artists.

17 Cf. Uitert (1986).

18 Cf. Smithuijsen (1997).

19 Braembussche (1994) 238, Benjamin (1974). Instead of the term 'sacred' I could have used the term 'aura', which Benjamin used in connection with art. It has less of a religious connotation. However, most of the time I shall use the terms 'sacred' and 'sacredness', because the religious connotation of the term 'sacred' is 'telling' about art. Moreover, the term 'aura' has no adjective to re-place 'sacred'.

20 The English moralist and aesthetician Arnold (1875) (as Peterson (1997) 81 notes) already successfully propagated the view that the .ne arts embody the highest values of civilization.

21 Bloom (1987) 185, 188, 322 (also cited by Peterson (1997) 82-86). Writing about the distinction between high and low, Peterson gives other references as well.

22 Authenticity is a container word. Different uses contribute to an overall mean-ing. In this book the notion of personal uniqueness expressed in works of art is emphasized. Linko (1998) uses the term 'authenticity' also in the sense of per-sonal uniqueness. This is one of several uses of the term 'authenticity' as ana-lyzed by Peterson (1997) 205-209.

23 'Creativity' and 'originality', terms which are often used in relation to art, im-ply authenticity, but a work can be authentic without being original or creative. Amateur 'art', children's 'art' and 'art' made by deranged people are authentic, but not always creative or original.

24 In this particular case there were also bits of tape on the canvas, because the painting was un.nished and Mondrian was still experimenting.

25 Janssen (2001) 326.

26 On the one hand by strongly identifying with the artist the art consumer appar-ently becomes less of an authentic individual. On the other hand, however, tem-poral identi.cation and even symbiosis can contribute to the formation of per-sonal ident.i.ties.

27 In 1988, Hans-Onno van den Berg suggested the use of this term to me.

28 Bourdieu (1979) 53-56; Laermans (1993) 88.

29 Laermans (1993) 88.

30 Cf. Laermans (1993).

31 Bourdieu has investigated the notion of distinction with respect to the arts. He also emphasizes that art is remote from everyday worries. He relates this to a re-mote aesthetic in modern art and with a corresponding aesthetic disposition, in which an emphasis on form has replaced expressive and descriptive qualities and capacities. Bourdieu (1979) 28-32. Cf. Swaan (1986). As far as this special aesthetic is concerned, I do not agree. I think that in the long run expressive and descriptive qualities will remain just as important as formal qualities. Abbing (1989) 54-59.

32 Cf. Braembussche (1994) 181-290, Hegel (1986, 1832-1845), Adorno (1970-1986), Goodman (1954), Barthes (1988), Lyotard (1997, ed princ 1984).

33 Heusden (1996).

34 Unlike Lyotard, recent postmodern philosophers of art like Derrida, Bau-drillard, and Jameson no longer treat innovation as typical of art. Cf. Braem-bussche (1994) 292-314.

35 Cf. Doorman (1994) 211-213.

36 Goodman (1954). In the context of this book Goodman's approach is of special interest, but the outcomes would not be very different if I had instead elaborat-ed on any of the other aforementioned philosophers of art.

37 Goodman (1954) does not treat such broad changes. I therefore 'extrapolate' his approach.

38 Kellendonck (1977).

39 When this painting was exhibited in the Sensation Show at the Royal Academy in London in 1997, it caused a scandal. In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum of Mod-ern Art exhibited almost the same Sensation Show. This time Chris O.li's 'The Holy Virgin Mary' was the cause of a scandal, which forced New York's Mayor Giuliani to eliminate the funding of the museum.

40 Goodman (1954) 248. This contribution to cognition does not imply that art is formal or intellectual. Goodman ibid. 259 writes: "This subsumption of aes-thetic under cognitive excellence calls for one more reminder that the cognitive ... does not exclude the sensory or the emotive, that what we know through art is felt in our bones and nerves and muscles as well as grasped by our minds, that all the sensitivity and responsiveness of the organism partic.i.p.ates in the inven-tion and interpretation of symbols."

41 Goodman (1954) 258.

42 Modern audiences, well educated in the languages of the arts, show little amazement, as if they have already been exposed to these new metaphors. Gen-erally speaking, the expressions of aesthetic experience have become more con-trolled and subdued in the high arts. Nevertheless, when art is really new, feel-ings of wonder can be suppressed but not eliminated.

43 Goodman (1954) discusses the terms 'dense' and 'discrete' in relation to art and science.

The Denial of the Economy

1 According to Peterson (1997) 84 this elite view of popular culture has been per-sistent throughout the twentieth century. Peterson offers many references.

2 In chapter 10, the unusual choice to divide government activity across all three areas will be clari.ed in some detail. The choice implies that the area of forced transfers differs from the area of redistribution as noted in Polanyi (1992, 1957) and the government sphere as noted in Klamer and Zuidhof (1999).

3 O'Hagan (1998) 133-39 and 157.

4 O'Hagan (1998) 133-39 and 157.

5 Meulenbeek, Brouwer et al. (2000) 41.

6 One would expect that the broader the interpretation of art, the more important the market becomes. This is, however, not necessarily true. In artistic areas that receive few donations or subsidies, artists often donate their time by working for low incomes or free. But, because there are no reliable .gures on the amount of gifts that come from the partners and friends of artists and the amount of self-subsidizing including artists using money earned from second jobs for their art, I have ignored this type of gift. Moreover, as will be discussed in chapter 6, it is not immediately clear how much of these subsidies are gifts. Nevertheless subsi-dizing by oneself, family, and friends is particularly strong in areas where artists are primarily self-employed, such as pop music, literature, and the visual arts. If these subsidies were (in part) included in the overall gift, the percentage of gifts would not necessarily become smaller when literature and pop music are includ-ed.

7 Lottery revenues are certainly not a gift to the arts from those playing. Govern-ment regulations impose taxes paid by the lottery players and this money is pa.s.sed on to the arts as a gift from the government, even though government has delegated the distribution of the money to semi-independent inst.i.tutions. See also O'Hagan (1998) 152-3.

8 The comparison also applies to teachers, doctors, and scientists. I interpret the intervention of governmental bodies with the activities of these professionals as the purchase of services from these groups by the government, which are trans-ferred to benefactors, or as mediation in the sale of their services to others and not as gifts. It can be argued that subsidies for education and health care belong to the gift sphere. In that case, the gift sphere in the arts remains larger than that of other sectors with the exception of health care and education. Even when we consider health care and education, the presence of a large gift sphere in the arts remains exceptional because in the health care and education sectors the gift follows from a social obligation (cf. Swaan (1988)), while no social obligation ever developed with respect to art.

9 People or inst.i.tutions receive gifts. The arts cannot receive gifts. Nevertheless, it is common practice to speak of gifts to the arts (and subsidies for the arts) and I shall do the same. In a metaphorical sense these are 'gifts to the arts'.

10 Often people use the terms 'Patron' and 'Maecenas' without distinction, or with meanings that differ from mine. Cf. Kempers (1998).

11 Cf. Bevers (1993) 9-57, Hitters (1996) 71-105 and Pots (2000) 85-248.

12 The term 'value' is used in many different ways. Here it suf.ces to say that in this chapter I am primarily interested in higher order values. As will be ex-plained in section 3.3. higher order values relate to general virtues and vices of different states of the world.

13 Klamer and Zuidhof (1999) and Staveren (1999) discuss certain virtues of the gift sphere in more detail. McCloskey (1996) treats bourgeois and market virtues at length.

14 Cf. Hide (1979).

15 At .rst sight, sharing implies what the economist calls non-rivalry, which is an oft-mentioned attribute of a collective good as opposed to a private good. Cul-ture appears to be a collective good. Not sharing culture and similar collective goods, which could be shared without extra costs, is usually deemed as unfair. But upon closer observation, however, we notice that non-rivalry hardly ever exists. Most culture exists because there are others who do not have this type of culture. If it is shared with those outside the own group, it loses value. The con-sumption by others goes at the cost of the in-group's consumption. Thus, we ob-serve that rivalry is very present in most (sub)cultures.

16 With respect to the diffusion of art Swaan (1986) 35-8 has argued that the em-phasis on super.cial forms of diffusion of art and the necessary failure of actual diffusion increase the income of the group of art lovers by demonstrating the other groups un.tness for art.

17 Swaan (1986).

18 Williamson (1986) has drawn attention to large-scale idiosyncrasy within the market sphere.

19 Simmel (1978 princ. ed. in German 1907). Simmel calls it the reversal of means and purpose.

20 Klamer (1996) 22-24.

21 In this respect, there is a difference with religious services, where consumers 'pay' with voluntary gifts. The same applies to street artists who receive gifts.

22 In discussions, Klamer explains his earlier statement (Klamer (1996) 22-24) that 'the arts are beyond measurement' in that the exact valuation in monetary terms devalues (or increases) certain values of art. Braembussche (1996) pres-ents varying points of view in philosophy on this subject. For instance, in social science Smith (1988) takes the opposite position of Klamer.

23 Bourdieu (1990) 98-134 and Bourdieu (1997, 1996).

24 The latter is my translation of the German t.i.tle of the play: Bring mir den Kopf von Adolf Hitler. Another less funny, but better-known example would be the Jew in Fa.s.sbinder's: Der Mull, die Stadt und der Tod (The Dirt, the Town and the Death).

25 The high status of the artist does not depend on the artist being a member of a successful professional. As will be explained in chapter 11 the artistic profes-sion has little status compared to other professions. In this sense the status of artists is ambiguous. Anheier and Gerhards (1991) remark that a status indeter-minacy exists in the arts.

26 Cf. Abbing (1989) 135.

27 The term 'economy' is used in a wider sense than the term 'economic' is used in, for instance economic sphere, value, capital and power. Economic in these com-binations is used in the sense of monetary. For instance, in the economic sphere a.s.sets and transactions can be measured in terms of money. An economy howev-er, refers to the way people choose and organize means in order to reach certain ends. Cf. Becker (1976) 3-14. Therefore, not all economies need money.

28 The medical profession is an example. Here the borderline between the two spheres is permanently in .ux as professionals ask which medical services can and cannot be traded. Different standards apply in both spheres, but the plural value system is hardly asymmetrical.

29 The denial of the economy refers, above all, to the economy in the market sphere, but it can also apply to the economy in the gift sphere. For instance, artists, art companies and donors pretend to be sel.ess, but de facto many donors seek publicity and artists and art companies do everything possible to increase their chances in the donations and subsidies system.

30 On the basis of the characteristics that differentiate gift from trade, the majori-ty of present-day sponsorship activities are closer to market exchange. A quid pro quo has arisen and exchange rates have also emerged. Firms pay cultural in-st.i.tutions for the right to advertise their brand name in a.s.sociation with the par-ticular cultural inst.i.tution. Some cultural inst.i.tutions actually publicize the 'prices' they charge for different levels of sponsorship, which correspond with different levels of logo- and name recognition in posters, catalogues, etc. Never-theless, parties publicly continue to play the game of giving. In this respect spon-sorship has a special attraction that pure advertising does not have. It enables the sponsor to a.s.sociate with the gift sphere. And because the a.s.sociation with the gift sphere impresses the customers of the sponsoring company, this be-comes attractive in a commercial sense as well.

31 The artist's character is related to the 'habitus', which will be discussed at some length in chapter 4.

32 Bourdieu (1992) 121-128 uses the expression 'sense of the game' ('sens de jeux'). From a different point of view, Hutter (1996) also applies the notion of play to economics.

33 Bourdieu (1977) demonstrates and explains this double standard in more de-tail.

34 Cf. Kattenburg (1996). Notwithstanding the business instinct of Warhol, Kat-tenburg draws attention to the religious aspect in Warhol's work with its em-phasis on transformation.

35 Velthuis interviewed gallery owners for other purposes; see Velthuis (2002).

36 Bourdieu gives many descriptions of the stiffness of newcomers opposed to the ease of 'born n.o.bility'. Cf. Bourdieu (1979).

37 Cf. Laermans (1993).

Economic Value Versus Aesthetic Value

1 This is the opinion of Woude (1987) 309. This is not an undisputed opinion. Nevertheless, even if the real number is much higher for instance, .ve times as high or 5% the percentage of surviving paintings is still amazingly low.

2 Cf. Velthuis (2002a).

3 Throsby (2000) 45-50. In his admirable attempt to widen the horizon of econom-ics, Throsby lets cultural value complement economic value. However, I think that by introducing a second major concept into economics is too high a price to pay for a relatively small increase in explanatory capacity. I .nd it more useful to let the term 'economic' stand for an approach rather than a scope. In this re-spect, I agree with Becker (1976) 3-14. In this chapter however, I shall also use the term 'economic' in the limited sense of monetary or .nancial.

4 Cf. Velthuis (2002).

5 Price is not always an adequate indicator even when it comes to paintings. In par-ticular, it's inadequate when market value refers to the value of an oeuvre and is compared with the aesthetic value or reputation of the oeuvre. For instance, the average price of a painting by a highly regarded painter, deceased or living, who produced (produces) many paintings annually, can well be lower than those of a less-renowned painter who painted very few paintings; nevertheless the sales of the most renowned painter can still be higher. Moreover, it appears that in a lo-cal market like the Dutch visual art market, an average artist's success is more likely to be revealed by the large number of works sold and not in higher prices. This is con.rmed by the data that Rengers and Velthuis (2002) gathered for their article.

6 In writing this paragraph, I am indebted to Velthuis (2002), who speaks of two models of price and value: an independent spheres model and a hostile spheres model. He mentions Bell, Steiner, Fry, and Fried in a.s.sociation with the .rst, and Kopytoff, Burn, Hughes, and Klamer in relation with the second.

7 This applies to subsidization in general. It does not apply to all forms of subsi-dization. For instance, subsidy schemes in which subsidies are linked with per-formance in the market evidently do not a.s.sume a negative relation.

8 Grampp (1989) 37.

9 A much weaker proposition, which underlies thesis of correspondence between aesthetic and market value, is that price signals quality. Price is one of many sig-nals consumers perceive. A higher price is generally a signal of higher quality. This line of thinking comes from Veblen (1934) and Leibenstein (1950). Velthuis (2002) applies it to the visual arts.