This morning, I was reading something Vasari wrote about Lorenzo de' Medici's patronage of the arts. Lorenzo asked a master painter to send him young apprentices who had promise in sculpture. The patron housed the young men, gave them food, and provided them with training from a master sculptor there in the de' Medici household. As the young artists developed, he supported them with a salary.
Here in 2014, our situation as artists is very different. It's a miracle to find the rare grade school that offers any child the opportunity to show some budding promise in art prior to college. Some high school art students do receive scholarships on the merit of their potential, but most pay their own way through college in order to learn art. Of course, these days, the majority of what a young art student pays for art school comes from taxpayers, in the form of student loans, and few art students will ever be able to earn enough to repay four years of schooling at $25,000 a year in tuition. This seems like the ultimate public support for art. In reality, though, instead of feeling supported, young artists begin their careers feeling impossibly burdened with debt. For a studio major, college rarely leads to any immediate opportunity.
When artists graduate, far from receiving a salary, they continue to pay out of their own pockets for the right to be artists. For example, artists are expected to pay entrance fees to compete for acceptance into shows. This can be quite a burden over time; some artists spend thousands a year just on entrance fees while collecting mostly rejection letters instead of invoices. Many art administrators have little reason to consider the livelihood of these artists; the end objective of a group show is the art, not the artist. Though the host organizations would like to take some commission from sales, group art shows often lead to few if any sales since few organizers of group art shows have strong relationships with collectors, and rarely are art shows promoted as a display of product for purchase. More often, the art functions as pieces of a thematic collection that enriches the public, enhances the community, and increases the host organization's (and the curator's) prestige. This is a tough deal for an artist. Mixed in with other artists, one has the opportunity to shine, to stand out, to become familiar to the art world over time. Or one simply becomes another bright note in the droning of the crowd.
Looking back at Vasari's account we see a big difference between patronage in the past and financial support for artists today. I'm no expert on how things were in the past, but I get the sense that artists today are expected to humbly provide art for our communities, to raise the status of our cities, to encourage unrelated commerce, and to entertain our children. Artists are expected to add novelty to our landscape, to add pageantry to our ideology, and to provide party favors for our bacchanal. In contrast to our reverence for actors and professional athletes, few people care about the well being of visual artists. Instead, we artists are expected to be grateful that we are allowed to make art. We artists are supposed to be willing volunteers. In an age when making art is considered a pastime, making a lot of it and making it well is viewed as a dream come true not a calling. Art-making is largely recognized as consumption and play rather than business. Ironically, as self-interest and accumulation of wealth by artists is increasingly frowned upon, collectors and administrators become increasingly indulgent and, paradoxically, the content of art itself becomes increasingly self-indulgent (which reinforces the capitalist ideology of the art-administration/collector complex).
So here we are left, in a competitive and self-interested world where we fend for ourselves as artists, disconnected from each other (in contrast to the united art movements of the past) and left under-compensated while the rich toy with our visions on the secondary market. If we are lucky, after we receive success, then we will be given a grant in recognition of our achievements. But we have to come up with the money ourselves, first. We have to figure out how to make a living as an artist before we will be rewarded with commissions and grants.
I read once that Leo Castelli advanced his artists money prior to sales to support them in their artmaking. I read recently, too, of a European model in which artists receive a salary to produce art, and the dealer keeps the art made during that period. These are forms of support that value the artist, and understand that the artist comes first and the art will come second. These models, like Lorenzo's model of patronage, understand the potential for great art in an artist, and understand that a good way to get that art made is to support the artist.
I recently stumbled upon a Web site for some sort of foundation for artists—I honestly don't recall the name. On their About page, however, they talked very passionately about how artists do not get the support they need and that they can't make great art because they have little financial resources to get started. The site lamented the fact that artists have no leg up when beginning their careers because they are not valued. The site sought to create value for artists so that they might get this support in the future.
But after searching all over the site, and finally finding my way around it with some help from Google, I found that the foundation offers no direct aid for the struggling artist who is looking for help. Like Lorenzo, the foundation asks master artists to send creators of talent their way, in order that the foundation can give them financial support. But the foundation makes it clear that they are only interested in hearing about established artists who make a significant living off their work. In other words, this foundation only wants to reward artists who are already supported. Apparently, their method of creating value for the artist in general is to support and promote particular artists who are already successful. This is meant to educate the public on art, I suppose, with the conceit that the established artists are making the best art.
Obviously, I think there is a problem with this model: it doesn't support young people who show a proclivity for and a leaning toward art. And those may be the actual artists, rather than the folks who function well in a competitive economy, or the folks who relate better to contemporary theory.
Castelli and Lorenzo had something in common. They started with a recognition of talent and then they fostered that talent. Historically, there are lots of ways artists can receive support. Today, support for art comes primarily from art administrators. But how are these administrators fostering artists? Unfortunately, the artists most likely to succeed in a world controlled by art administrators are the artists who are most like art administrators. Lorenzo was a patron. And patrons are not art administrators—they are, ideally, collaborators of a different kind.
Today's administrators of contemporary, collectable art love artists, too. They like to work with, and hobnob with, and rub elbows with artists because such art promoters often think of themselves as artists. Indeed, often they are trained as artists and their creativity translates into their work as organizers. They create great displays of the machinery they operate but sometimes end up squandering the display space inside in the process. For some of the more offbeat curators, what they do place inside is more about art than art. For many art world wheelers, dealers, or collectors, art is the trappings of their lifestyle: signifiers of anything from freedom, to progressive ideals, to opulence. And it is far more likely that they will support artists who support their lavish enterprises and self-absorbed displays than they will support young people with a more genuine creative promise.
I have noticed that both my wealthy colleagues as well as those learned in academic theory seem able to walk into any strange enterprise and receive some opportunities—however lean. Somehow, they are able to show papers that display their success, and they can get a lucrative or almost lucrative position for continued success. I imagine this as the established taking care of each other, perhaps quite unconsciously. But what gave my established friends the original leg up? Was it patronage for their innate vocation, for their calling, their voice? It does not appear to work this way. The struggling artist can spend a lifetime trying to get started, all the time paying dues and rent to an art world that pays them little or nothing in advance or return.
No, I fear that the opposite is true. Instead of the powerful recognizing the little voice in the budding apprentice and empowering it, the apprentice recognizes the powerful language of the established, and adopts that.
Lorenzo must have loved art. I know nothing about him beyond the little anecdote I read. But it appears that he knew where art comes from.
