Some years ago I was invited to an elegant cocktail party at the home of a celebrated but recently retired American journalist. His lounge room featured a magnificent grand piano and some of the guests begged him to play.
“Uh-oh,” I thought, edging towards the bar as he nodded modestly and moved to the stool, then seconds later forgot my drink as he began an absurdly difficult Chopin Etude, Op.10 No.4. I remember the precise piece because he performed it immaculately, his hands suddenly young and flowing like water over the keyboard, and I asked him about it afterwards.
As we chatted I wondered if he’d ever contemplated becoming a concert pianist, for to my ear he was clearly of that calibre.
“I’d have loved that,” he said, “but I realised when I was about 20 that I was the third-best pianist in my state. I simply wasn’t good enough to make a career of it.”
He came to mind during the past couple of weeks as I’ve been following my colleague Yoni Bashan’s revelations in this newspaper about the “process” (for want
of a more insulting term) of distributing Creative Australia’s $250m largesse.
I’d long thought it impossible to find more incompetent squanderers of our taxes than government, but no: truly dedicated officials can sniff out and appoint even more blindingly useless subcontractors to outsource and amplify their profligacy.
Yoni’s entertaining reports crystallised my conviction that I have no desire to be an involuntary patron of the arts, especially if the grants are to be sprayed around by an incestuous bunch of groupthink jokers, gaily peer-reviewing each other with all the rigour of the climate change and Covid elites. And if the other parasites vote you into the club, climb aboard the gravy train, toot-toot, destination Easy Street.
It would never have occurred to my pianist friend to think the taxpayer should fund a career for him as a second-division performer; he believed that in every area of endeavour you stand or fall on your abilities and expertise.
Unless, that is, you’re a modern artist in Australia or other benighted parts of the Western world. Just as there are few solo musicians who deserve to be on the concert stage, there aren’t many creative types of genuine ability out there, and most of what our self-styled artists produce is at best mediocre. It’s a harsh judgment but it’s hard to resist: you need grants because no one wants to buy your work.
Don’t let that worry you, though, for once the tap is turned on to shower you with unearned dollars, you need never again consider your audience. Congratulations, you’re now free to produce execrable daubings and banal, jejune manifestos that “challenge” the establishment, the patriarchy, the status quo – in short, the people who are forced to subsidise your witless efforts.
It wasn’t always like this. For most of history, the artist, however skilled, was a blue-collar worker, a craftsman for hire whose output was tailored to the wishes of whoever commissioned him (or perhaps her; the records are largely silent). We know little about the monks who executed the wonderful illuminations on medieval manuscripts, and even fewer biographical details about the stonemasons and woodworkers whose intricate carvings adorn the world’s temples and cathedrals.
More horrifying to modern sensibilities than the artist’s anonymity is that the patron – not the artist – received the praise and glory for the work, and exercised what now seems inordinate power over the commission.
Detailed contracts survive from Renaissance times that illustrate the commercial arrangements between client and artist (the value of the materials to be employed – gold, the blue of lapis lazuli – might be specified, as well as the subject matter and perhaps a small devotional portrait of the donor incorporated into the scene), even as individual artists’ fame and reputation were beginning to be celebrated, eventually elevating them from labourer to genius.
We don’t have to imagine how frustrating it must have been for the likes of Michelangelo to be directed by Lorenzo de Medici; the stories of the rebellious artist abound, as they do about Leonardo and the ruthless Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. But the trade-off was a degree of financial security unusual in such turbulent times.
Even the greatest artists had to earn their living, and a wealthy patron was a blessing, however irritating or demeaning the arrangement. English portraitist Thomas Gainsborough, frustrated by the demands of his clients, once said of them, “They have but one part worth looking at, and that is their purse!”
Gainsborough’s contemporary, and the 18th century’s grumpiest old man, Samuel Johnson, summed up the need for the artist to be grounded in reality when he observed, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” But we won’t be running out of blockheads any time soon.
There’s a room in a corner of The Australian’s editorial floor where unwanted review copies of new books are stored. It’s like the worst bookshop you could imagine: hundreds of unreadable volumes that should never have been written. It’s heartbreaking – or hilarious, depending on your appetite for schadenfreude – to consider the months, even years, of labour their authors have devoted to producing semiliterate rubbish, their lack of ability surpassed only by the appalling judgment of their publishers. It’s a testament to the dogged persistence of stupidity, vanity and unwarranted ambition. Should those “writers” all be funded? Maybe; but not by me, or the general public.
There’s an argument to be made for government support of major artistic projects – theatre, opera, orchestras – that require funding and co-ordination beyond the ability of most individuals to organise (although there’s a counterargument that it amounts to the working classes paying for the entertainment of the elites), but that’s a topic for another day.
Nobody cares but I almost went to art school instead of university, to develop my pitiful talent. But like my pianist friend, while I’d have loved to work as an artist, I knew from seeing the genuinely gifted people around me that I’d never make a living from it, so I do this job instead and keep art as a private hobby.
Life, as we all know, is unfair and full of suffering, and I don’t see why artists should be uniquely excused from its tribulations; nor do I understand why people whose talent (if it exists at all) is insufficient to support them should expect to have their fantasies indulged by the taxpayer.
Those whose grant applications have been rejected or who are unable to secure a rich modern patron may console themselves with the thought that while the impoverished artist’s struggle remains a romantic cliche, it weeds out the dilettantes from the dedicated, even if perseverance is no guarantee of quality.
So if you’re driven, like some Marrickville reincarnation of Vincent van Gogh, to pursue your aesthetic vision despite the world’s torturous indifference, go right ahead. Future enlightened generations may lament the tragedy of your unappreciated brilliance, which is surely vindication enough.
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