by Ricardo Acevedo

Suckling or Sucking Up

The Founding Fathers never envisioned government sponsorship of the arts; notes of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 do not even mention the possibility of such aid. The first direct government subsidization of artists occurred in 1935 through the Federal Art, Music, Theater and Writers projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The emphasis was on relief rather than art. "The people who ran the project," recalled artist Meyer Wolfe, "took just about everything- some really bad work." At its peak in 1936, the WPA had 45,000 artists, writers, actors and musicians on its payroll.

But even then many artists were leery of government involvement, seeing the potential for control as threatening. Sculptor Wheeler Williams told a Congressional committee, "The true artist is perforce a rugged individualist and does not want to be kept poodle by the government with dilettante experts as nursemaids."

Underground artists, particularly the Beats, also opposed the merger of art and government. Painter Larry Rivers warned, "The government taking a role in art is like a gorilla threading a needle. It is at first cute, then clumsy, and most of all impossible." And Lawrence Ferlinghetti- Beat poet, publisher, bookstore owner- ridiculed "cooperating poets and publishers" who tied themselves to a government tether. "They just won't let you be," lamented Ferlinghetti's Bay Area compadres, the Grateful Dead; many avant-garde artists have learned that lesson the hard way, in the courts, with the First Amendment as their palladium.

Plus, as taxpayers, why should we support activities that only a small minority of taxpayers enjoy?

Take art museums, a favorite government beneficiary. According to 1990 statistics, 84% of art museum visitors had attended college; less than a third of the entire population had. Blue-collar workers constituted 47% of the work force but just 7% of the art museum audience. African-Americans, 12% of the population, made up one-half of 1% of the clientele. And high-school dropouts were three times more likely to "never" visit an art museum than are college graduates. The art public is overwhelmingly upper-middle class, prosperous people who would probably enjoy art just as much in the absence of government influence.

Government influence has historically failed to increase the representation of low-income people in audiences. Taste, not money, is the obstacle to a cultural integration.

Admission to most art museums costs about half of what a movie ticket does. Yet a visit to a Ricky Scaggs concert or a rap show suggests that rural, working and African-American people are willing to pay handsomely for entertainment. But of course that's the wrong kind of entertainment, at least from the perspective of the arts establishment. So the taxpayer is forced to subsidize those cultural expressions deemed worthy by so-called experts.

For example, the Rockefeller brothers were among the nation's most munificent arts patrons and wished humble taxpayers across this land to join them. To this, artist-critic Richard Kostelanetz noted that "public/government funding of large arts institutions has taken private philanthropy off its increasingly expensive hook."

Yet arts organizations in this country were founded and thrive on the patronage of well-heeled philanthropists. The rich, to use a biblical terminology, will always be with us; so will philanthropy. A populist museum, by definition, will attract an audience large enough to make subsidy unnecessary. And museums celebrating regional or particularistic culture are, properly, the concern of local communities and governments.

Besides, why should the struggling young artist be entitled to government subsidy when the struggling young mechanic or accountant is not? Let's take a specific case. In 1972, poet Erica Jong received a $5,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing Fellowship to revise her novel. Ms. Jong was a teacher and published poet from an upper-middle-class background. She was "struggling" only in the way that all artists struggle: trying to make sense, to give form to her creation. So why did the NEA give her $5,000? What philosophy of government makes an advantaged woman like Erica Jong eligible for government subsidy?

According to popular novelist E. L. Doctorow, "An enlightened endowment puts its money on largely unknown obsessive individuals who have sacrificed all the ordinary comforts and consolations of life in order to do their work." Thus, artists should be driven, dedicated people who make a conscious choice: art over security.

Yet, the government has always had curious attitudes towards artists. They are administrators and bureaucrats, not belletrists, and Artists intimidate them. They defer to panels of "experts" and never, but never, challenge an artist to defend his work. Nancy Hanks, NEA chair under Presidents Nixon and Ford, is a good example. She asked an aide to review a grant application from an artist who proposed to "make a loop tour of the Western US, dripping ink as I go, from Hayley, Idaho, to Cody, Wyoming." Mystified, the aide requested elaboration. The applicant explained that this proposal was in the tradition of "the great painter Marcel Duchamp, who, when he moved to New York City, brought with him a bottle labeled 'Paris Air.'" The aide was unimpressed. But Hanks approved the grant. The shrouded Cult of The Artist -- sage, mantic, inscrutable -- had triumphed over common sense.

To their credit, successful artists do have to display the skills of grantsmanship. They must fill out mind-numbing forms; they must kowtow to those who sit in judgment of their application. They will, if they are adept at this art, glad hand (in a dignified way, of course). And this supplication is exactly what the government has come to expect.

In one NEA publication, I found, "Direct support for the individual artist is almost non-existent. Financial aid is necessary to buy time for them to create." That's ridiculous, a bureaucrat's fancy. You mean to tell me that without government, no one will paint or write or sing again? Yeah, right!

Edward Villella danced with the New York City Ballet for a paltry $100 a performance before the onset of government programs because he loved to dance. Poet Robert Lowell turned down an invitation to read at the Johnson White House in 1965. "Every serious artist knows that he cannot enjoy public celebration without making public commitments," Lowell explained. And in 1963, when the IRS raided the Living Theatre for refusing to pay its income taxes, the legendary Paul Goodman set them straight. "Artistically," he lectured, "official support of new theatre would be positively damaging."

And unnecessary, as any rock & roller or blues man could attest to. Rock & roll, the blues and jazz receive not a penny of government money; yet they thrive on the radio and in clubs. The punks of the late 1970s had a slogan -- DIY, or "Do It Yourself." They did not ask the cultural establishment for a handout, or even a place to play. They founded their own clubs, bought secondhand guitars, paid the bands out of the gate proceeds, recorded in cheap studios and disseminated their message through tapes and hand-stapled little magazines.

One of the angriest, most intense broadsides against government moneys comes from writer Richard Moore. His stinging critique, published in 1980, still pierces:

It isn't just that the money we give to artists is being wasted. It's doing positive harm. An arts bureaucracy has grown up in the last few years to formulate the applications, select the judges, and give the right sort of ballyhoo to the recipients. There is no other way for such a system to work. And there is no way to make such a system honest. But supposing that it is honest, it cripples nevertheless. Only mediocrity can destroy art. And in every bureaucracy, mediocrity luxuriates. Where do the judges come from? The writers' union, of course. The solid citizens of art who have enough of reputation to be chosen and nothing better to do than such hackwork. And they will reward those who are like themselves. They will constitute a self-perpetuating and endlessly stultifying organization that will ensure the banishment of all true talent to madness and outer darkness. Precisely that, I suspect in the depths of my heart, is the true purpose of such a system: to stamp all creativity out of a society which has grown too brittle to endure it.

American artists do not need a ministry of culture. Our writers and painters and dramatists and musicians have flourished when government has ignored them. We don't want subsidy. We don't want censorship. We just want to be left alone.

JFK is quoted as saying, "I do not believe federal funds should support symphony orchestras or opera companies, except when they are sent abroad in cultural exchange programs. Otherwise our funding should help our communities as a whole, laying the ground work for freedom of expression as the test of our nations cultural goals."