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September 10, 2024 - 10:00am
Should the Government tax the sale of digital devices to support visual artists? Thousands of British artists, organisations, and visual arts industry workers have signed an open letter calling on Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy to do just this, among a raft of other new measures aimed at supporting the sector amid challenges from the digital revolution and an uncertain financial environment.
It is unsurprising that visual artists are nervous in the digital age. When someone can reproduce your work without attribution simply by clicking Ctrl+P, how is any creator supposed to make a living? Add in generative AI and the situation is dire. Not long ago, for example, the image editing software firm Adobe launched an ad campaign — presumably targeted at businesses — promising that they can now “skip the photoshoot” by using Adobe’s new AI-based generative background tools. In other words, Adobe is now boasting to one of its customer groups — businesses — about its power to replace another customer group, the presumably less profitable one of photographers themselves.
But is yet another tax really the answer? The letter is backed by the Contemporary Visual Arts Network (CVAN) lobby group, originally founded by the Arts Council, plus the royalty-collection nonprofit Design and Artists’ Copyright Network (DACS). DACS manages royalty payments for artists; according to the Guardian this body would then distribute the funds raised by this proposed new levy. A cynic might wonder if there’s something a touch self-serving about a nonprofit proposing to add millions to its own coffers by asking the Government to shake down consumers for money it can then distribute at its own discretion.
But even leaving this self-licking ice cream cone aside, who would actually receive these payments? How would worthiness be determined? It’s true that many visual artists earn a pittance, and that generative AI poses a threat to the already slender earnings available to many jobbing visual creatives. What’s less certain is that a “royalty” fund collected by Government and administered by quango would make much difference to this kind of marginal creator, especially given how endemic and difficult to trace unattributed use of visual artwork is even before you get to AI. What seems more likely is that the money would end up going to higher-profile artists who already have name recognition, empowering those already established and leaving the long tail of creators as skint as ever.
And, importantly, how partisan would this process be? The proposal is vulnerable to becoming just another patronage network, distributed by insiders based on their preferred political criteria — which, going by the Arts Council’s notoriously ideologically partisan existing form, and similar statements on the CVAN website, would likely be as Schmittian as you’d imagine.
The proposal in the open letter with the greatest potential to liberate artists from poverty, and the world of art from the quangos’ progressive chokehold, is reforming the tax environment to incentivise philanthropy. I dream of a radically decentralised ecosystem for fine art, in which private citizens could treat such purchases as tax-deductible, just as corporations can, short-circuiting the quango ecosystem and opening new, intimate vistas of pluralistic creative patronage. But this is likely to remain just a dream. For the Government, this would imply not just lowering taxes but also loosening the state’s existing power to shape the creative industry’s political parameters and messaging output, a proposal that has, for our now firmly post-liberal regime, no obvious upside.
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SubscribeAI is a disappointment in the sense that it isn’t relieving us of drudgery so that we can get on with painting, poetry, and music. It’s starting off by taking over those activities at the very top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
The arts have never, historically, sustained large numbers of people in gainful employment. AI is just a reversion to the norm. Most ‘creative activity’ will be as a hobby or recreation.
At the same time generative AI is democratising the arts. For example the rapid advances in video generation means that people will very soon be able to produce movies at home on their PCs to a standard that currently needs a multi-million dollar budget. The barriers to entry will be that low. There will be lots of dross, but some great art will emerge from it, as it does from any new medium. The artists will be able to create what they like without financial, or any other, constraints.
“The arts have never, historically, sustained large numbers of people in gainful employment…” is simply not true. Before everything went digital there were large industries centered around the thousands of magazines produced every month; not just photographers but color labs, color separators, printers, etc. A much larger set of industries was centered on movies and television.
It’s worth remembering that until fairly recently a better system for spreading the wealth around prevailed. Sometimes a dose of inefficiency is a good thing.
I should have been clearer, but by historically I meant before the twentieth century. Many of the work you describe is technical, rather than ‘creative’. I think there will always be a need for technicians in some form or other.
You’re talking about art in a commercial vein, what was generally thought of as graphic artists, where commercial interests use the visual arts for commercial purposes. That’s not the same as artists who work alone producing work specific to their personal vision. There are many people in the arts who make money but the artists themselves would be at the bottom of the food-chain, excepting those that achieve huge success.
But I don’t support a tax that is passed on to any artists. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t see much of it anyway. By the time it reaches them most of it will have been skimmed off. I don’t think there was ever a better system for spreading the wealth around in the arts, It’s as dog-eat-dog as any business.
Correct in every detail. I paint and exhibit, but am fortunate enough in later life to be financially independent enough not to need to sell work (i have sold work). That state came about by working elsewhere and thus earning the right to be financially independent.
Any artist – and i refer to your example of the lone artist – who really wants to put their work out there should go through the “life” mill and learn a few important things along the way. Simply having a “facility” to draw, paint or otherwise create – or ‘self-identifying as an artist’ – is a very long way from being enough to get your work noticed. I suspect it’s on behalf of the latter that the CVAN group are lobbying.
“…Producing work specific to their personal vision” seems a particularly bad excuse for touching consumers for a subsidy.
I’m curious – what was this “better system for spreading the wealth around” ? And when – and why – did it perish ?
Great masses of people made good livings in or adjacent to the “commercial” arts, including a lot of “Artists”. They “did well”; better than their parents. They had children of their own. And on and on…
Most of that money now goes into the pockets of the distant stockholders and investors of a relatively small number of tech firms, and no longer re-cycles through the local economy.
“Should the Government tax the sale of digital devices to support visual artists?” Who exactly are the “visual artists”? Where do we (so to speak) draw the line? I have a great niece (“great” in the sense of being my niece’s daughter) who is a graffiti artist. God help us if she qualifies.
If proper visual artists are short of money, I would be in favour of paying them to use some of their precious time cleaning graffiti of our walls. And instead of “mugging smartphone shoppers”, I would put a VERY heavy tax on cans of spray paint in order to raise the dosh.
Just self identify as a visual artist and sidle up to the trough.
Exactly what private citizens can afford to purchase fine art, just as corporations can, regardless of an associated tax deduction?
These same private citizens, who can already afford to purchase art, without a tax deduction, would now receive even more advantages courtesy of state largesse — that is, courtesy of public money. This would increase the unjust giveaways that our captured economic system bestows on these private citizens, funnelling wealth upwards.
This idea would not separate the art world from “its own political devices.” The money from these private citizens would still “end up going to higher-profile artists who already have name recognition, empowering those already established and leaving the long tail of creators as skint as ever.” It’s not a solution.
A job guarantee program is a better idea. Rather than the current method of achieving price stability by using the buffer stock of unemployment, a very costly and unreliable approach, using employment buffer stock. A macro stability framework to deliver both full employment and price stability. Artists would be part of this; it would ensure that they can pay their bills and pursue their art.
In other words, everyone works for the government, who determines what everyone gets paid. Full employment, price stability, all courtesy of the bureaucracy. Wow.
Well, no, not in those other words. Not everyone works for the government. Very far from it. That’s not what it’s about, at all.
Why not ask for more information before making presumptions and judgements about a subject you don’t know anything about? What does that serve?
Briefly, a job guarantee wouldn’t be the primary job creation focus of governments. In transitioning from fossil fuels, a just framework will require them to create significant numbers of skilled and permanent jobs, which are not suited to buffer stock status. A job guarantee would supplement other policies to ensure jobs are always available to the most disadvantaged workers.
There are resources for learning about a job guarantee program, easily accessed for those genuinely curious. One of the best overviews is macroeconomist Pavlina Tcherneva’s book The Case For A Job Guarantee.
It’s no one’s responsibility to ensure that artists can pay their bills and pursue art. Why do you think it should be this way? What other group of people get subsidised so they can pursue their interests?
Mathematicians.
What mathematicians do you mean?
The fossil fuel industry.
Very good.
Just to add that Brett’s comment is based on ignorance of what a Job Guarantee program is about. So often in these forums, people opine on things that they haven’t bothered to learn about, even a little, even when others have spent the time and effort to provide links and quotes, making sources easily available for reflection and potential criticism. Satisfaction with ignorance and even gratification in expressing ignorant judgments is an alien mentality to me.
JG work is not “subsidizing” anyone. For those genuinely curious and willing to read a little, here is a link to some Q&A summary points. Point #8 addresses the above complaint:
https://pavlina-tcherneva.net/job-guarantee-faq/
No. And you can disestablish the Arts Councils too. And defund the BBC. I have little wish to fund the Arts without being able to control where the money goes – because it will always end up going to worthy luvvies and their friends.
So another class of people that wishes to live at the expense of others. Govt started going off the rails when it began to implement this ideology, even if it was for the sake of “the greater good,” which is quite possibly the most amoral thought process ever. And how convenient that this attempt at rent-seeking has found a ready-made scapegoat – technology.
Anyone who can use the phrase ‘visual arts industry workers’ with a straight face has seriously lost the plot.
Anthony, have you seen the Charlie Kaufman / Spike Jonze film “Adaptation”? Nicolas Cage’s screenwriter character defies use of the word “industry” to his doppleganger brother several times, to comic effect.
Apart from being plain stupid, this proposed tax is totally impractical. Someone, somewhere is going to have to decide what qualifies as “art” and what does not.
And is AI really a threat to all visual artists ? Painters still seem to be creating and selling work. And it’s not clear to me just how AI replaces or reduces the value of a unique physical painting, a vase or a sculpture.
Could it possibly be that somewhere behind this, there’s another group of people who’ve grown comfortable living in a state-protected enclave, cushioned from the market forces and technological change that the rest of us just have to get on and deal with ? Perhaps I don’t mean the artists themselves (I’m not totally without sympathy) – perhaps it’s the Arts Council/quango types who want to latch onto this to increase their relevance.
Mary’s suggestion of tax breaks for buying art is even more bonkers. The tax system is way too complex already. And why is buying art more socially desirable than buying food ?
Your point about the Arts Council/quango types is spot on – i’ve had dealings with them on several occasions and they’re pretty soul-destroying.
Your other points are also valid, especially the one concerning the value of a unique physical painting, which AI cannot hope to ever reproduce. Think of the work that goes into the validation of existing historical artists – a process known as “provenance” and which has spawned programmes such as Fake or Fortune?
How would any AI piece be of any real human value beyond a very limited range of people posing as lovers of art?
If you think AI will never be able to generate high quality, emotionally substantive art you are simply whistling past the grave yard… It will (and in some cases, already has)…
Wasn’t there something once about ‘man not living by bread alone’?
If artists of any type cannot make a living without government subsidies they should get a proper job and add value to society.
There will always be individuals that to do or produce something that is insufficiently appealing for enough people to want to pay them to enable them to continue. Why should the rest of us be required to subsidise their endeavours? This is applicable whether it involves a cabal of luvvies dishing out our money to their friends or individuals getting a tax rebate. Vast amounts of visual art is already produced without subsidy. No one is dying from lack of art to look at.
Money that is not taxed away by government doesn’t disappear. The people that earn it decide what to do with it. And sometimes that is buying art.
I think we should tax digital devices and use the proceeds to buy fighter jets. Yes, I *am* an aeronautical engineer, why do you ask?