Mary H continues to be a remarkable writer. I have almost zero interest in the history of funding for the arts in the UK, yet I read this article from start to finish, occasionally pausing to fully understand the argument or to follow a link. Next she’ll probably write a concise history of the sausage roll and I’ll happily read that too.
Her final couple of paragraphs left me wondering, though:
“…or else we simply abandon public culture, and the technologies which now stream personalised content to all our individual screens become the only things we share.”
Aren’t we already past the cultural point of no return? I’m not sure we actively abandoned “public culture” in the west, it seems to have been taken from us by “slow degree”, bit by bit as we moved from any sense of civic duty or, dare I say it, religion toward our current status as isolated consumers. The woke invasion seems to be the last stage in that process whereby we’re told there is no culture, values or even facts. We all get to make it up to suit ourselves.
So no matter what model a country adopts to fund the arts, what “public culture” do the arts serve any more?
As society gets more sick, there are calls for more arts funding to elevate it, but instead even sicker, yet more, art is produced, speeding up the decline into the abyss….
This is the trajectory Liberal/Leftism always takes.
I would say that everything the left touches turns to… I don’t think the hall monitors would let me finish that sentence. And maybe even this one goes too far for them.
As so often, these off the cuff ‘clever’ remarks are wildly simplistic. Eisenstein. A remarkable film director by any standards. Of course, the Bolsheviks were appalling fanatics who set up a state of terror, but these two facts are not necessarily contradictory.
The necessary vitality of the arts to society has been sharply highlighted by the pandemic and the resultant lockdowns. Even among the crowds of Left-leaning, woke-sympathising arts aficionados and practitioners, the “soul” of the people that “the arts” enhances was drummed up in advertising and in countless radio interviews – to the effect and the extent that “getting bums back on seats” and “giving the people a good night out again”, to me, was a sign that no matter one’s political outlook or reputation, the movers and shakers just wanted to get back to the spirit of things, as it has often been for decades, when people cheered on a work or piece that aimed to cheer or challenge in an entertaining way.
The grim slate of this year’s Oscar nominees shows what happened to the cinematic arts under the iron control of the left. These art house box office flops will be feted at an awards show watched by a viewing audience just a fraction of what it once was. The various quotas imposed by the much harder left now riding high will insure movies will get even worse.
I agree with you about the quality of Mary Harrington’s writing. But I don’t think the failure of the arts is primarily a funding problem. Where are the people with anything relevant to say or show? Perhaps our problem is that we no longer have anytime worthwhile to say about ourselves.
Jon Redman
2 years ago
For me the main issue of subsidised arts is the same as state-subsidised anything – it enables worthless product to be continue to be churned out, and turns people like Nicholas Serota into arbiters of what is and is not good. In that sense, the Arts Council, the Tate Modern etc are all just bizarrely-surviving latter-day instances of the British Leyland model, where taxpayers funded the production of bad cars. What is especially pernicious is the revolving door between gallery officialdom, being an artist’s agent, and owning a private art gallery.
It’s not solely the fault of the public sector: Charles Saatchi’s extremely poor taste has been highly influential in persuading people that garbage is actually art. If rich patrons want to subsidise the creation of junk to flog to other rich people, that’s fine, but the public sector shouldn’t be getting involved with other people’s money.
The ‘Art World’ is one of the most corrupt on the planet. Just look at the careers of the late Joseph Duveen ( of that ilk ) and Bernard Berenson. Two of the vilest art swindlers on record.
Malcolm Knott
2 years ago
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport should be cut down to size, viz. a single civil servant working from home on a three-day week. Her sole remit would be to tell supplicants, ‘No, you can’t have any money, go away.’
When I am prime minister, Allison, the job’s yours.
R Wright
2 years ago
The decline of the Roman Empire was associated with the end of the elite funding public projects in their own cities out of their own pockets. The construction of theatres, bathhouses and fountains ended. Elites retreated from their responsibilities as town leaders (decurions) to their stately homes in the countryside. The end of urban Romanitas in the west followed swiftly after.
We are experiencing our own equivalent to this process. Elites turn inwards, away from their neighbours. They bury their heads in the sand even as the threads that hold civilisation together unravel. Euergetism is replaced by mere charity, then nothing. Feudalism rises from the ashes.
They simplified their society – basically went Feudal voluntarily and thus preserved their culture (Jospeh Tainter Collapse of Complex societies)
Peter Hall
2 years ago
Britain’s greatest contribution to 20th century culture was pop and rock music which received zero public subsidy and only mild encouragement (niggardly MBEs for the Beatles). That is the best path – no public money for the arts, a culling of the parasites and let’s see what our people come up with to satisfy the market.
Richard Slack
2 years ago
The Millenium Dome hasn’t existed for 20 years, it is now the O2 Arena. Furthermore it is not a tattered corpse, it has suffered some damage to its external decorative skin which will be easily repared.But it has always been the subject of myths. It was given an absurd funding and investment structure with loans being required to be paid back in the first year of operation. This was set up to fail and fail duly did. However at 16 million visitors it was by far the biggest visitor attraction in the Country and most people who visited it enjoyed it and, like the Festival of Britain, would have liked it to carry on.
But the Festival of Britain site was allowed to remain underused for decades and the Arena did until O2 bought it for a song (I imaging in a few years West Ham FC will acquire the Olympic Stadium in the same way). Anyone who knew the Greenwich Penisular before the Dome and now would be dense to imaging that the public outlay has not brought public benifits.
There is, of course, a well-known English philistinism about the arts; Orwell noted it and it is reflected by the scorn placed on courses like Media Studies. However the British have changed rather. There has never been a time when visiting museums and galleries has been more popular, the quality of classical chamber and orchestral music is incomparably better than I can recall in the 60s and 70s and we probably write the best operas in Europe.
But do carp away
This obsession with the mega-rich, very rich or just rich is amusing. Our system created them so get over it.
Taxes were created by nations. The mega-rich avoid these taxes. The very rich are all around us – people like Cristiano Ronaldo – and we have created them by falling for their marketing techniques. Until recently, the members of AC/DC and Kylie Minogue were the highest paid people in Australia – from old royalties. Recently, Bruce Springsteen sold all of his royalties for $500 million.
At a modest level, I own my own house. People in council flats would tell me that I was rich – rich here is defined as ‘more money than they have’. I read letters in newspapers every day about overpaid footballers but, strangely, never about overpaid pop stars.
Get over it!!! A bit of jealousy is good for the soul. This is our system and if it is wrong that we have created this difference in levels then …. the dreaded Left must be the way to go.
As an aside, a couple of years ago I was standing in a line in Smiths, waiting to pay. A young woman was in front of me and she had three very busy kids. They were dressed OK but not very well. She spent the time in the line digging in here bag and purse, finding odd coins, and when she came to pay she handed over all of the coins and notes in a heap and asked for £29 worth of scratch cards.
This knocked me over for quite a while. Whatever learned people say about world politics, our system has created this scene. Writers of ‘the Left’ want to talk about taxing the fat cats, which translates as taxing the middle classes. You can’t fail to see why this imagery works. But the Capitalist world seems stagnant and lacking in ideas. The fascist Left or Right could be the only way forward.
Indeed. If there were some great levelling event where wealth was evenly spread, stately homes converted into social housing flats and only state pensions allowed, then I predict that within a few years the wide boys and strivers would end up with more of the goods and services available than everybody else – using the opportunities of the black economy.
As always, Mary Harrington writes a brilliant article. Always grounded in knowledge, free of political bias and unafraid to look at reality, whilst pointing at a hopeful solution. Thank you
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
But they don’t ‘tell the story’ anymore than Cliveden, of which it is a tasteless copy, did of Profumo. Culture vultures and ‘commentator laptoperati’ types live by rooting around for cultural acorns. 98% of the population don’t give a damn, like the ‘shocking’ number reported in the press who’d never heard of the term ‘woke’. Shriek! How dare they. Ok I’m on here but then I’m a retired old git. In my working 12 hr days and bringing up kids this wouldn’t have pinged anywhere on my radar. Inside for the day in Singapore in a tropical thunderstorm it passes the time. Otherwise electronic chip paper really.
the wonderful number of people who have never heard of the word “woke” is the best news I have heard. The correct definition of woke after all is “this person is making moral comments which are making me feel uncomfortable and to question things so I will give them a silly name to make me feel better” I am glad to hear that the “embitterati” is no-where near as big as “Unherd” might make one think.
William Shaw
2 years ago
The funding of “magnificence” by the uber-rich is still happening, it has simply moved from the funding of the arts and stately buildings to funding science and technology… space flight, hyper loop, electric vehicles, etc.
Last edited 2 years ago by William Shaw
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago
It was not just peverse, in extremis, that Bliar went fot The House of Lords, Foxhunting, and The Jockey Club ( the latter who had their power to run racing literally confiscated, when every other country has its racing still run by Jockey Clubs modelled on ours) it was pitiful that he was so meekly allowed to get away with it: the Fleet Street ” never published” story at the time was that Blair’s father confessed on his death bed that he was not actually his father, and that his real father was a Northern aristocrat, with whom Bliars mother had had an affair…. hence his hatred of the old upper class…
there could of course be a good reason why this story is “never published”
T Doyle
2 years ago
Stop public funding of the arts.
Chauncey Gardiner
2 years ago
Now, if storm could take down that London Eye … It makes the Houses of Parliament look small and ridiculous. But, that’s just me. I am sure some folks love it.
Francisco Menezes
2 years ago
There is a very simple solution to this all. Art must become even more elitist and the elites should entirely fund it. When the sell their capital gains are taxed and when they die death duties will be levied. The common man can get his decoration from IKEA and live in a pleasant home, whereas the elite can decorate their walls with Jackon Pollocks. Biscussion closed.
Last edited 2 years ago by Francisco Menezes
Campbell P
1 year ago
Wherever I travelled abroad during the Blair era the people of those countries bemoaned the advent of ‘Cool Britannia’ and the loss of the culture, traditions, etc for which they respected Great Britain. It was often of course very evident – or, rather, in your face – in the embassies. Golly, it was embarrassing to be British when he was PM, and that’s not even mentioning his self-seeking (for his future after his premiership) tame lapdog snuggling up to Bush at the cost of so many lives. Small wonder there was such a huge petition against his knighthood!
Mary H continues to be a remarkable writer. I have almost zero interest in the history of funding for the arts in the UK, yet I read this article from start to finish, occasionally pausing to fully understand the argument or to follow a link. Next she’ll probably write a concise history of the sausage roll and I’ll happily read that too.
Her final couple of paragraphs left me wondering, though:
“…or else we simply abandon public culture, and the technologies which now stream personalised content to all our individual screens become the only things we share.”
Aren’t we already past the cultural point of no return? I’m not sure we actively abandoned “public culture” in the west, it seems to have been taken from us by “slow degree”, bit by bit as we moved from any sense of civic duty or, dare I say it, religion toward our current status as isolated consumers. The woke invasion seems to be the last stage in that process whereby we’re told there is no culture, values or even facts. We all get to make it up to suit ourselves.
So no matter what model a country adopts to fund the arts, what “public culture” do the arts serve any more?
As society gets more sick, there are calls for more arts funding to elevate it, but instead even sicker, yet more, art is produced, speeding up the decline into the abyss….
This is the trajectory Liberal/Leftism always takes.
I would say that everything the left touches turns to… I don’t think the hall monitors would let me finish that sentence. And maybe even this one goes too far for them.
As so often, these off the cuff ‘clever’ remarks are wildly simplistic. Eisenstein. A remarkable film director by any standards. Of course, the Bolsheviks were appalling fanatics who set up a state of terror, but these two facts are not necessarily contradictory.
‘Always takes’ – previous examples from history?
The necessary vitality of the arts to society has been sharply highlighted by the pandemic and the resultant lockdowns. Even among the crowds of Left-leaning, woke-sympathising arts aficionados and practitioners, the “soul” of the people that “the arts” enhances was drummed up in advertising and in countless radio interviews – to the effect and the extent that “getting bums back on seats” and “giving the people a good night out again”, to me, was a sign that no matter one’s political outlook or reputation, the movers and shakers just wanted to get back to the spirit of things, as it has often been for decades, when people cheered on a work or piece that aimed to cheer or challenge in an entertaining way.
The grim slate of this year’s Oscar nominees shows what happened to the cinematic arts under the iron control of the left. These art house box office flops will be feted at an awards show watched by a viewing audience just a fraction of what it once was. The various quotas imposed by the much harder left now riding high will insure movies will get even worse.
You might be, though, overburdened by links when it comes to sausages.
Lol!
Never. No such thing as “too many sausages”!
Morrisons now make a foot-long sausage roll – and perhaps that’s the most concise history needed on the subject?
I agree with you about the quality of Mary Harrington’s writing. But I don’t think the failure of the arts is primarily a funding problem. Where are the people with anything relevant to say or show? Perhaps our problem is that we no longer have anytime worthwhile to say about ourselves.
For me the main issue of subsidised arts is the same as state-subsidised anything – it enables worthless product to be continue to be churned out, and turns people like Nicholas Serota into arbiters of what is and is not good. In that sense, the Arts Council, the Tate Modern etc are all just bizarrely-surviving latter-day instances of the British Leyland model, where taxpayers funded the production of bad cars. What is especially pernicious is the revolving door between gallery officialdom, being an artist’s agent, and owning a private art gallery.
It’s not solely the fault of the public sector: Charles Saatchi’s extremely poor taste has been highly influential in persuading people that garbage is actually art. If rich patrons want to subsidise the creation of junk to flog to other rich people, that’s fine, but the public sector shouldn’t be getting involved with other people’s money.
The ‘Art World’ is one of the most corrupt on the planet. Just look at the careers of the late Joseph Duveen ( of that ilk ) and Bernard Berenson. Two of the vilest art swindlers on record.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport should be cut down to size, viz. a single civil servant working from home on a three-day week. Her sole remit would be to tell supplicants, ‘No, you can’t have any money, go away.’
I’d take that job in a heartbeat, and I happen to be one of those “creative practitioners”.
When I am prime minister, Allison, the job’s yours.
The decline of the Roman Empire was associated with the end of the elite funding public projects in their own cities out of their own pockets. The construction of theatres, bathhouses and fountains ended. Elites retreated from their responsibilities as town leaders (decurions) to their stately homes in the countryside. The end of urban Romanitas in the west followed swiftly after.
We are experiencing our own equivalent to this process. Elites turn inwards, away from their neighbours. They bury their heads in the sand even as the threads that hold civilisation together unravel. Euergetism is replaced by mere charity, then nothing. Feudalism rises from the ashes.
Yet the Eastern Empire survived. Why?
There are entire works on that subject. It mostly comes from the strategic position of Constantinople and the east being wealthier and more urban.
They simplified their society – basically went Feudal voluntarily and thus preserved their culture (Jospeh Tainter Collapse of Complex societies)
Britain’s greatest contribution to 20th century culture was pop and rock music which received zero public subsidy and only mild encouragement (niggardly MBEs for the Beatles). That is the best path – no public money for the arts, a culling of the parasites and let’s see what our people come up with to satisfy the market.
The Millenium Dome hasn’t existed for 20 years, it is now the O2 Arena. Furthermore it is not a tattered corpse, it has suffered some damage to its external decorative skin which will be easily repared.But it has always been the subject of myths. It was given an absurd funding and investment structure with loans being required to be paid back in the first year of operation. This was set up to fail and fail duly did. However at 16 million visitors it was by far the biggest visitor attraction in the Country and most people who visited it enjoyed it and, like the Festival of Britain, would have liked it to carry on.
But the Festival of Britain site was allowed to remain underused for decades and the Arena did until O2 bought it for a song (I imaging in a few years West Ham FC will acquire the Olympic Stadium in the same way). Anyone who knew the Greenwich Penisular before the Dome and now would be dense to imaging that the public outlay has not brought public benifits.
There is, of course, a well-known English philistinism about the arts; Orwell noted it and it is reflected by the scorn placed on courses like Media Studies. However the British have changed rather. There has never been a time when visiting museums and galleries has been more popular, the quality of classical chamber and orchestral music is incomparably better than I can recall in the 60s and 70s and we probably write the best operas in Europe.
But do carp away
And now we have the ‘Arts Society’ , formerly NAFFAS. What a pearl of civilisation.
So what is the truth? anybody!
This obsession with the mega-rich, very rich or just rich is amusing. Our system created them so get over it.
Taxes were created by nations. The mega-rich avoid these taxes. The very rich are all around us – people like Cristiano Ronaldo – and we have created them by falling for their marketing techniques. Until recently, the members of AC/DC and Kylie Minogue were the highest paid people in Australia – from old royalties. Recently, Bruce Springsteen sold all of his royalties for $500 million.
At a modest level, I own my own house. People in council flats would tell me that I was rich – rich here is defined as ‘more money than they have’. I read letters in newspapers every day about overpaid footballers but, strangely, never about overpaid pop stars.
Get over it!!! A bit of jealousy is good for the soul. This is our system and if it is wrong that we have created this difference in levels then …. the dreaded Left must be the way to go.
As an aside, a couple of years ago I was standing in a line in Smiths, waiting to pay. A young woman was in front of me and she had three very busy kids. They were dressed OK but not very well. She spent the time in the line digging in here bag and purse, finding odd coins, and when she came to pay she handed over all of the coins and notes in a heap and asked for £29 worth of scratch cards.
This knocked me over for quite a while. Whatever learned people say about world politics, our system has created this scene. Writers of ‘the Left’ want to talk about taxing the fat cats, which translates as taxing the middle classes. You can’t fail to see why this imagery works. But the Capitalist world seems stagnant and lacking in ideas. The fascist Left or Right could be the only way forward.
Indeed. If there were some great levelling event where wealth was evenly spread, stately homes converted into social housing flats and only state pensions allowed, then I predict that within a few years the wide boys and strivers would end up with more of the goods and services available than everybody else – using the opportunities of the black economy.
Golly Gosh, is life that desperate in idyllic Ceredigion?
Bad geography but reasonable comment. Yes.
Don’t worry we’ll win, we always do!
As always, Mary Harrington writes a brilliant article. Always grounded in knowledge, free of political bias and unafraid to look at reality, whilst pointing at a hopeful solution. Thank you
But they don’t ‘tell the story’ anymore than Cliveden, of which it is a tasteless copy, did of Profumo. Culture vultures and ‘commentator laptoperati’ types live by rooting around for cultural acorns. 98% of the population don’t give a damn, like the ‘shocking’ number reported in the press who’d never heard of the term ‘woke’. Shriek! How dare they. Ok I’m on here but then I’m a retired old git. In my working 12 hr days and bringing up kids this wouldn’t have pinged anywhere on my radar. Inside for the day in Singapore in a tropical thunderstorm it passes the time. Otherwise electronic chip paper really.
the wonderful number of people who have never heard of the word “woke” is the best news I have heard. The correct definition of woke after all is “this person is making moral comments which are making me feel uncomfortable and to question things so I will give them a silly name to make me feel better” I am glad to hear that the “embitterati” is no-where near as big as “Unherd” might make one think.
The funding of “magnificence” by the uber-rich is still happening, it has simply moved from the funding of the arts and stately buildings to funding science and technology… space flight, hyper loop, electric vehicles, etc.
It was not just peverse, in extremis, that Bliar went fot The House of Lords, Foxhunting, and The Jockey Club ( the latter who had their power to run racing literally confiscated, when every other country has its racing still run by Jockey Clubs modelled on ours) it was pitiful that he was so meekly allowed to get away with it: the Fleet Street ” never published” story at the time was that Blair’s father confessed on his death bed that he was not actually his father, and that his real father was a Northern aristocrat, with whom Bliars mother had had an affair…. hence his hatred of the old upper class…
there could of course be a good reason why this story is “never published”
Stop public funding of the arts.
Now, if storm could take down that London Eye … It makes the Houses of Parliament look small and ridiculous. But, that’s just me. I am sure some folks love it.
There is a very simple solution to this all. Art must become even more elitist and the elites should entirely fund it. When the sell their capital gains are taxed and when they die death duties will be levied. The common man can get his decoration from IKEA and live in a pleasant home, whereas the elite can decorate their walls with Jackon Pollocks. Biscussion closed.
Wherever I travelled abroad during the Blair era the people of those countries bemoaned the advent of ‘Cool Britannia’ and the loss of the culture, traditions, etc for which they respected Great Britain. It was often of course very evident – or, rather, in your face – in the embassies. Golly, it was embarrassing to be British when he was PM, and that’s not even mentioning his self-seeking (for his future after his premiership) tame lapdog snuggling up to Bush at the cost of so many lives. Small wonder there was such a huge petition against his knighthood!