Hey Buddy Can You Spare A Dime... on the Cultural Economy?
Examining Governmental Support of the Arts in the United States and Japan
© Daniel Pugh 2008
An Unusual Consensus in Outstretched Hands
As an artist peeking into the world of business I can report strange occurrence in the global economy more extraordinary than the imagination of Surrealism’s founding-father, André Breton1. Investment banks, the monstrous animals they were, have gone extinct. The Champions of commerce: deregulations, Alan Greenspan, cheap money, Freddie Mae and Mac, once held high on the shoulders of the common man, are now much maligned. CEOs stand in Congressional soup lines; and, suddenly the mantras of Free Market Capitalism are reminiscent of Kurt Schwitters’ intentionally unintelligible sound poem “The Ursonate2.” Regrettably, because of America’s global reach, the absurdity of this situation is touching economies around the world. And so, the US Fed has transfigured into the hero of the marketplace. Governmental intervention is on the move, possibly for the long-run. As manufacturers, bankers, and Wall Street come to grips with this new situation, it is interesting to note that artists have long desired just such intervention on their behalf.
Governmental economic support for the arts varies widely across the globe. The effectiveness of that support often has a direct correlation to the cultural ideology of a country. Specifically, this article looks at the troubled history of the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States and its conflict with the underlying American mythos of the self-made individual, in comparison to the seemingly successful Japanese Living National Treasure model, which has helped to define Japanese culture at home and abroad.
Before proceeding, it is important to first clarify how art is being employed in the context of this article. Art is the...production...according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.3 This is an intentionally broad definition meant to incorporate not only dance, theater, painting, sculpture and other established fine arts, but also craft and the folk arts. The exclusion of crafts and folk arts from the Western art schools and many museums is due to subtle distinctions that are meaningless outside of the critic’s head or artist’s studio.4
...Artists...Why?
Art is expensive, and for the artist, federal funding can mean the difference between production and poverty. Undoubtedly there is free market capitalism in the art world; however, practices and preferences of many Western Countries, especially the United States, encourage an artist-as-persona/celebrity culture that is unable to support the general population of artists and artisans. The result is an excess in supply of skilled labor in an environment with seemingly scarce demand. Thus, America under-utilizes a vast resource for bettering the aesthetic character of our country.
The nature of the artistic process further complicates matters, for it is not the intention of the arts to produce reliable, easily-marketed merchandise. Artists are often touted as great innovators, although the diffusion of that innovation is of little, or secondary importance to the artist. Furthermore, as a result of the massive financial overhead of running galleries and museums, these outlets provide only limited space for showing truly innovative artists. Current models prefer marketing and exhibiting well-established and known artist that will draw larger crowds.
Even the arts' closest related business activity, research and development (R&D), is not an appropriate model by which to examine the value and/or activity of art. Unlike R&D in the business environment, the arts do not pledge future blockbuster products that repay initial costs ten-fold. The arts are pure R&D only. It is often several generations, if at all, before aesthetic ideas filter from the artist studio and into the mainstream. Consequently, the economic rules of supply and demand suggest that most artists, many art schools, galleries, and museums should cease functioning, liquidate assets and go find gainful employment.
Naturally, intelligent and hardworking Americans would ask why an activity with few economically beneficial outcomes should receive government funding. Among the standard responses is that art is valuable for its own sake, or that art is good for us culturally. Derived from a 19th century Romanticist slogan l'art pour l'art, “art for art’s sake” is intended to affirm the intrinsic value of the arts. This philosophy is fraught with disconcerting quandaries, but for those involved in the making of art, it better articulates the character of the artistic process than do the alternatives. The two prominent alternatives, economic and educational justifications tend to lump the arts in with vocational training, after-school, and daycare programs.5 This is not to disparage vocational training, after-school, or daycare. Each has an important role in helping Americans operate as individuals and en masse. What is at issue is the tendency of our culture to over-simplify the larger cultural challenges and concepts into bureaucratic programs. Inside a bureaucratic program, economic and educational justifications are employed not to argue the merits of the arts, but the utility of its by-products (i.e., children acquiring, evaluating, organizing, interpreting and communicating information6).
America, Land of Freedom... Unless You Offend Me
As a country founded by immigrants willing to risk life for opportunity, the United States has developed an underlying cultural mythos of the self-made individual. Individualism is an ideal that permeates American popular and political culture in the form of the tough, go-it-alone cowboy and limited federal government.7 However, there have been ominous and contradictory circumstances, such as Global Communism, that realign aspects of American ideology toward undertakings that require collective effort. In 1965, during the Cold War, the National Endowment for the Arts, like NASA, was developed in order to increase American global prestige and bolster the patriotic fervor of the citizenry. Support for the arts was seen as a means of demonstrating the United States’ commitment to creativity, freedom and individuality. Unfortunately, since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been a push to de-fund the Endowment. Arguments for de-funding have been on moral and economic grounds and are deeply rooted in the culture wars of the last two decades. The controversy in the 1990s surrounding Robert Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic photography and Andre Serrano’s “Piss Christ” resulted in the Endowment ending the practice of awarding grants directly to individual artists,8 although neither artist at the center of the debate had received funds directly. Unprepared to mount a defense of individual expression, proponents of the NEA have managed to keep the Endowment afloat, although greatly weakened, via the economic and educational justifications referred to earlier.
Current NEA practice is to provide funding for the arts on a programmatic level. Funds are awarded to state and local organizations who distribute these while observing soft censorship, i.e. avoiding potentially contentious subject matter. The result is governmental encouragement of well-worn modes of art making, which are less innovative by nature. And so the Endowment’s claim that it promotes the risk-taking ideology of the United States is confused and misleading at best. “To some the NEA appears too conservative and safe in its support; to others it appears elitist; to yet others it appears trendy and ‘politically correct’ at the expense of quality.”9 For the generation of American artists coming up post-1990s, the Endowment appears less an opportunity and more of a hassle. The perception is that for all intents and purposes, the federal government views artists as average self-employed individuals to be taxed at +35%, or as convenient political collateral (as either scapegoats or poster-children for freedom, whichever is needed).
The Japanese & Ningen-Kokuho
Japanese artists practice within a distinctively different governmental support structure. Like the United States, there are academic, gallery, museum and private opportunities open to Japanese artists; however, the cultural veneration of artistic process as part of the Japanese heritage and tradition has resulted in definitive governmental support of the arts. Principal among the National Diet’s support is the Ningen-Kokuho (translation: Living National Treasures, or LNT) system. Living National Treasure is the informal title that Japanese mass media bestow on artists who have been deemed a bearer of an Important Intangible Cultural Property under the 1954 Cultural Property Preservation Act.
The LNT system is an outgrowth of Edo and Meiji era kokugaku, or literally "national studies", the study of Japan by the Japanese themselves.10 In 1954, near the end of the American occupation of Japan, the LNT system was developed to protect and promote specific artistic practices deemed both essentially Japanese and at risk of disappearing, due to limited economic viability. The cultural veneration of process as heritage and tradition is deeply rooted in the Japanese national identity.11 An example of this veneration is in the intentional deconstruction and detailed rebuilding of Shinto shrines every twenty years. For the Japanese, this ritual passes to the next generation not only traditional building methods, but it also preserves communal memory and the achievements of one’s ancestors.12
Appointment to the LNT system is for life, although the individual is not the intended recipient of the honor, only their skill, technique and knowledge. As of November, 2005, there were one-hundred and thirty-one bearers of Important Intangible Cultural Properties in the Performing and Applied arts.13 Over fifty art forms have been registered under the program, and the threat of disappearance due to limited economic viability is no longer a criterion for consideration. In fact, inclusion of an art form in the program now assures it a prestigious status, commanding exorbitant prices for its best practitioners (often the LNT themselves).
LNTs receive an annual stipend of 2,000,000¥ (approximately $20,000) to assist in the practice of their art form. Likewise, an LNT’s local Prefecture is expected to provide logistical and/or financial support to their practice. In return for the stipend and local support the LNT are asked to maintain the traditions they represent: teach the method to others and provide one exceptional piece per year to a national exhibit. Furthermore, the LNT system provides indirect support to the greater Japanese art community by nationally promoting the arts on a large-scale. Especially in the ceramic arts, the LNT sets high standards of quality that are recognized globally. In addition, LNT are distributed randomly through Japan and their workshops and studios regularly become a cultural draw to a Prefecture, providing the financial support from tourists to local economies. . The importance placed on the LNT program by Japan was demonstrated when The National Diet maintained full support of the LNT program even through the major recession of the mid-1990s.
The Japanese system is not without its faults. There can be only one person or group (in the case of theater or dance companies) as a bearer of any one of the Important Intangible Cultural Properties at any one time. Consequently, accusations of elitism pursue the program. Compounding the problem is public misunderstanding of what is being promoted by the program. As noted by Aoyama Wahei14 in his article Critique of Japan’s Living National Treasure System, the original purpose of the law that enacted the program was to protect Japanese traditional culture and
“In no way was the law intended to be an award that confers a higher status to an artist for contributions to his art, nor did the law designate the artist himself as a treasure; rather, the treasure was the traditional techniques he possessed. The law was not to praise, but to protect.”15
This misunderstanding does result in art celebrities not unlike those in the United States. However, the core difference in Japanese and American artistic cultures– that of process vs. persona–suggests that the Japanese system as a whole will not easily be recast in the celebrity-centric mode.
More than an Ocean between...
It is reasonable to expect that legislative efforts to support the arts will always be open to criticism. A portion of any culture’s citizens will hold views that are counter to the society in general. Aesthetics tend to be judged subjectively, even when backed by concentrated scholarship, and are dependent on individual preference and experience. But if the arts are deemed to be worthy activities for a great society, then that society must find the means of supporting its artists financially without hindering them creatively. Essential to the process is a recognition of and respect for cultural ideals. The Japanese Government has done well in defining and developing a model of support for the arts based on Japanese values. The Americans have work to do.
Dictating Terms!
It is too simplistic to claim that the success of the Japanese model and the letdown of the American is due to the diametrically opposed origins of the two national identities, communal or individual. Nor is success or failure a matter of the Japanese predilection for tradition, and its well worn paths, as opposed to dynamic shifts common to the American arts. The troubled history of the National Endowment for the Arts is the result of a paradox. Individualism as cultural doctrine shapes a society where people praise the artist for having a unique vision, but insists that the artist conforms to arbitrary, economic stylistic and moral standards to receive financial support. Apparently, unless faced with dire circumstances, Americans are reluctant to support anyone or anything with which they disagree. Such are the limitations of Individualism.
And so, America: In these unusual and dire times artists all across the country demand a bail-out of the National Endowment of the Arts. ...Not because it makes educational or economic sense, but in the pursuit of a paradox: publicly financed, individual expression. And be forewarned, if America continues to turn its backs on the NEA, artists will refuse to share their cardboard boxes and tricked out shopping carts when the rest of the country is finally thrown out on the streets.
Notes:
1 For an overview of André Breton’s thoughts, work and life see the Wikipedia.com entry for “André Breton,” Wikipedia.com, “André Breton,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Breton (accessed: January 16, 2009)
2 To listen to a recording of “Ursonate” visit: ubu.com, “Kurt Schwitters,” http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/schwitters_kurt/Schwitters-Kurt_Simultangedicht-kaa-gee.mp3 (accessed: January 16, 2009)
3 Dictionary.com - Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), “art,” Random House, Inc.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art (accessed: December 05, 2008).
4 Opinion bases on author’s 17 years of experience writing about, reading about and creating sculptural, digital, conceptual and ceramic works.
5 For an egregious example of this trend see: Arnold H. Packer, “Arts and Earning a Living,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 30, No. 4, Special Issue: The Aesthetic Face of Leadership (Winter, 1996), pp. 99-114 Published by: University of Illinois Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333183 (accessed: November 11, 2008)
6 ISBN: p 108
7 The interconnectedness apparent in the current global recession suggests a reexamination of Individualism is in order.
8 For an overview of the controversy see: Bob Chatelle, “The NEA: What Must Be Done.,” PIC Newsletter, November 1994, Volume III, issue i. Stable URL: http://mysite.verizon.net/vzex11z4/nea.html (accessed 12/07/2008)
9 V. A. Howard, “Funding the Arts: An Investment in Global Citizenship?,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 83-95 Published by: University of Illinois Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333788 (accessed: November 11, 2008)
10 Washington State University - World Civilizations, Japan Glossary “Kokugaku,” http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GLOSSARY/KOKUGAKU.HTM (accessed: November 14, 2008)
11 Robert Pettman, “’Anti-globalization discourses in Asia,’” in Critical Theories, World Politics and ‘the Anti-Globalization Movement’: the politics of global resistance, ed. Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca (London: Routledge, 2005) 77 - 86
12 ISBN, p81
13 Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology “Cultural Properties Designated by the Japanese Government,” http://www.mext.go.jp/english/statist/06060808/pdf/158.pdf (accessed 12/07/2008)
14 Expert on Japanese ceramics and proprietor of Toku Art Limited, Tokyo,
15 Aoyama Wahei, “A Critique of the Living National Treasure System,” e-yakimono.net,
http://www.e-yakimono.net/html/lnt-critique-aoyama.html (accessed 12/07/2008)
© Daniel Pugh 2008
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