Kingsley Amis was never a fan of the Arts Council. Writing in this magazine almost 30 years ago, he described it as a ‘detestable and destructive body’ whose grants and bursaries ‘in effect pay producers, painters, writers and such in advance’. This, he wrote, ‘is a straight invitation to them to sod the public, whose ticket money they are no longer obliged to attract, and to seek the more immediate approval of their colleagues and friends instead.’ Thus state funding ends up strangling the very culture it purports to foster, leaving the country poorer artistically as well as financially.
A valedictory speech delivered this week by Liz Forgan, the outgoing head of the Arts Council, made clear that she regards arts as a government service — and government cuts as an attack on the arts. Worse, she seems to believe that, in Britain, the arts are appreciated only because children take exams in dancing, fine art, music etc. She is appalled that the government is now encouraging pupils to study more academically rigorous courses. This, says Ms Forgan, will leave children ‘dangerously exposed’. In her bizarre worldview, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has ‘almost the most important cultural job there is’.
The debate over arts has evolved much as Amis predicted. When government starts to take over provision of the arts, he said, bureaucrats will make an invidious distinction. On the one hand, you would have the ‘artists’ who produce serious, important, often impenetrable stuff — and so, of course, will need a subsidy. Then come the ‘entertainers’ who produce work which ‘is easy to understand, enjoyable and therefore popular — like rock music and John Betjeman’s poetry and whose very claim to the label “creative” is shaky.’ The entertainers are to be sneered at.
At the root of Forgan’s thinking is snobbery — the idea that ‘art’, as opposed to entertainment, is too complicated to be understood or supported by the ordinary public. Any time a politician questions the state’s involvement in the arts, a regiment of handsome, articulate and charismatic thespians pop up to say the brutish government wants to close theatres. Yet theatres supported by the Arts Council are vastly outnumbered by thousands of companies that manage to get by just fine on ticket sales and private donations.
Two years ago, the actor Kevin Spacey gave a speech at a Spectator event saying he had drawn two conclusions from his time as the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London. First, that there is huge and instant public demand for challenging theatrical productions — if they are produced with enough professionalism and flair. Second, that there are many other would-be benefactors willing to help theatres and galleries. Ms Forgan may consider it vulgar to attend an exhibition funded by BP. But the millions who go to the exhibitions it sponsors at the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery or the Tate are not so fussy.
To read The Spectator’s peerless arts pages is to know that, even in a time of austerity, Britain has one of the most vibrant cultural scenes in the world. The work of Randolph Schwabe is neither fashionable nor mainstream, as Andrew Lambirth observes on page 44. But the independent St Barbe Museum in Lymington is putting on a exhibition of his war paintings, supported by a firm of solicitors, Clarke Willmott.
The Royal Academy receives no annual government grant or state funding, yet it is able to lay on a Manet exhibition for little more than the price of a cinema ticket. Shakespeare’s Globe receives not a penny of taxpayers’ cash, and is thriving with profits of £1 million a year, despite the economic downturn.
The enormous success of the Sky Arts TV channel also refutes the notion that ‘highbrow’ art needs a public sector provider such as the BBC. Sky not only commissions original drama, it also relays opera in high definition from the Met in New York at 8 p.m. every Monday. The BBC still can produce news, drama and television of outstanding quality but it is growing harder than ever to justify its government financing. From The Killing to Breaking Bad, British viewers will have spent Christmas watching imported television dramas that are every bit as good as those produced by the BBC. It is impossible to argue that art from the free economy is inferior to that financed by tax money.
There is something almost comically old-fashioned about the idea of a Culture Secretary, as if Britain needed a commissar to provide intellectual stimulus to the masses. Many state-financed institutions, like the British Museum, are truly first-rate — and they think of ingenious ways to pull in millions of people. But other independent theatres and galleries can be just as clever. Government belt-tightening will not damage British cultural life, because so little of our culture depends on the government. The quality of British art is dictated by the genius and creativity of Britain’s playwrights, composers, musicians and poets — and, happily, there is no shortage of those.
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