Why Are Artists Poor? Part 11

When I think in terms of a merciless economy, however, I .rst think of objective characteristics. The clearest sign of a merciless economy in an objective sense is low average income and the fact that poverty is struc-tural. Some people earn extremely high incomes and yet average income is much lower than in comparable professions. Income is often so low that it doesn't even cover the costs of the profession, like instruments, materials and studio rent. Average incomes are not only low; they are vir-tually .xed. Higher demand or greater donations and subsidies do not raise income levels, instead they encourage more people to enter the arts. With more money funneled into the arts comes ever-increasing numbers of poor artists per capita and thus rates of poverty increase as well. Built-in poverty is a clear manifestation of a merciless economy.

Because of the mythology that surrounds the arts, youngsters run to the Promised Land, thinking they're going to .nd a pot of gold once they get there. Many of them leave the profession many years later, disillu-sioned and too old to start a new career.2 Because of art's sacredness, beliefs are persistent and are not subject to correction. Losers blame themselves for not having been dedicated enough. They never blame the structure of the arts. Unlike after the gold rush when people start to go home artists do not realize that there are far too many of them seeking their fortunes. Moreover, n.o.body ever asked to see their diplomas or members.h.i.+p cards. In other sectors, members.h.i.+p is regulated both to the profession and to the inner circles within the profession. This kind of reg-ulation also serves as a deterrent. The numerous informal barriers in the arts, however, remain ambiguous and invisible from a distance. They do not, needless to say, deter newcomers.

Given the fact of low average incomes, artists only manage to survive thanks to internal subsidization. Because the sacredness of the arts is taken for granted, giving to the arts has a ritual aspect and some gifts are more or less obligatory. Huge amounts of money from second jobs, part-ners, family, and friends, continue to .ow into the arts. With its army of super.uous artists, the arts are insatiable; they scrounge off anyone in their path. This ability to extract gifts could be a characteristic of a privi-leged situation. But because few people appear to pro.t from the gifts and most of the money disappears into a bottomless pit of ever more poorly paid artists, the continuous support of the arts exempli.es a grim rather than a privileged state of affairs.

Thus far, the a.n.a.lysis con.rms the cruel nature of the economy of the arts. And yet, artists are not necessarily as bad off as other low-paid pro-fessionals. As indicated in Section 6.11, they probably receive more than the average amount of private satisfaction and other forms of non-mone-tary income such as status. These forms of remuneration are probably more available in the arts than elsewhere and artists are more oriented towards these rewards than others. Artists are inclined to exchange money for other types of income. When artists appear to sacri.ce them-selves and are poor in monetary terms, their poverty is partly compen-sated. It is however dif.cult to tell to what degree.

This book has also emphasized that the aura and the mystique of the arts misinform artists. Because of the mystique, many well-trained youngsters enter the arts with high expectations. As noted, some stay, while others leave the arts at a later stage, when it is generally impossible to start a new attractive career. In either case, the subsequent disappoint-ment is an existential disappointment because it concerns all aspects of life. The poverty due to misinformation is not compensated. I therefore personally think that the word suffering can be applied to poor artists, even though they receive some compensation.

In certain respects, the economy of the arts resembles a pre-capitalist economy. The many gift transactions remind us of this. The same applies to the idiosyncrasies inherent in both market and gift exchanges in the arts. As was the case in feudal times, the personalities of the two partici-pants entering into the transaction are essential, as is the notion of dependence. Personal contact and dependence play a decisive role in the many transactions that take place in the art world; between artists and dealers, artists and curators, artists and impresarios, between dealers and customers, between customers and artists, between artists and patrons, and between artists and government of.cials.

Other aspects of the economy of the arts, however, remind one of the heyday of capitalism. Many toil while few pro.t. The extreme uncer-tainty that beginning artists face does not jive with the reality of a modern economy with its general regulation of numbers and regulated markets with built-in securities.

These similarities only exist in a relative sense. Unlike 19th-century workers, modern artists don't starve. There are at least four reasons for this. 1 Artists don't starve because of the support offered by families and partners.

2Artists manage by bene.t of modern social security. While families and partners have played a signi.cant role in the arts for several cen-turies, the a.s.sistance offered by social security is relatively new. Although artists still take relatively high risks, these risks are lower than they would have been in earlier times.

3However ill informed potential artists may be, they have a choice; they could choose another profession. The old proletariat of the past had no choice. The main reason however, why artists don't starve, is that: 4Many artists have second jobs. Nonetheless, because these second jobs are usually unskilled, most of them remain underpaid considering their levels of education. (If in the distant future the majority of artists were to have attractive, well-paid second jobs, the economy could no longer be termed merciless.3) These four points demonstrate that poverty in the arts and the merciless-ness of the economy of the arts are relative concepts that exist in compari-son to other modern sectors.

Winners Reproduce the Mystique of the Arts After the gold rush, the vast majority of miners end up leaving to try their luck elsewhere; the gold rush is over. Why has the 'art rush' lasted so long? Why do poor artists stay or leave at a much later point in their careers than one would expect, and why do so many newcomers arrive to take their places? Why is poverty structural? First of all, it should be noted that nothing is permanent. Overcrowding and large-scale poverty in the arts are relatively recent phenomena, becoming widespread only after the Second World War and these conditions could very well disap-pear over the next .fty years. Nevertheless, this book has tried to show that, for the time being, current conditions help maintain an exceptional economy of the arts and poverty that remains structural.

In this respect, it should be noted that the fact that the economy of the arts produces a host of losers and a few winners, is not exceptional. The same occurs in every other economy as well. For example, the introduc-tion of the mobile phone sp.a.w.ned many telecom outlets. Three years later most of these shops had gone out of business. Those who survived were the apparent winners in the market reward system. Thus, the notion that contestants compete for a market share and that some will lose is not exclusively an arts related phenomenon. What is exceptional however, is that, unlike the cases of the telecom shops or the gold diggers, art economy losers don't necessarily leave and others continue to choose to enter the art world. The sector continues to be just 'too' attractive. This book has tried to describe the mechanisms that keep the sector attractive and the economy exceptional.

The economy of the arts as depicted in this book represents a relatively closed system. The key is the high status or aura of the arts. Because of the mystique of the arts, most players in the game believe they have an interest in its high status and act in ways that will a.s.sure that its high status is maintained. This applies to governments and other donors, suc-cessful artists, critics and people working in art inst.i.tutions, but it also applies to the majority of unsuccessful artists who earn little or nothing from their art. Within the con.nes of the system, everybody is right because if the arts were to suddenly lose their high status everybody would be worse off at least in the short run.

Nevertheless, observing this all from the tenth .oor, one notices that in the long run not everybody is well off in the present setting. In the previ-ous section, I opined that many artists appear to suffer the consequences of the reality of the economy of the arts. I believe that artists are primarily sacri.ced, even though they also sacri.ce themselves. Or in other words, artists are exploited. Exploitation implies that there are people who receive unearned income from unequal forms of exchange.4 Who are the exploiters? It is natural to seek out the 'exploiters' among the winners. Nevertheless, given the importance of myths in the arts, it is dif.cult to discern who is precisely exploiting whom in the arts. Therefore, I do not concentrate on tracking down those who pro.t the most from exploita-tion. Instead, I look for 'social needs' or 'powerful social relations' that induce behavior that reproduces the status quo in the arts. The following needs are particularly important in the process of reproducing the status quo. 1 Because the art world believes it has an interest in sacred art, it needs government a.s.sistance to help maintain or raise the status of the arts.5 2 Donors, governments, and consumers need art to be sacred for their own status and legitimization.6 3 Art consumers believe they need a large stock of potential losers to increase the chances of a few extraordinary talented artists emerging to sustain the myth that artistic talent is indeed scarce.7 4 The art world, donors, and governments need countless losers to enhance the high status of the winners. 5 Society needs a sacred domain. The .rst three items were treated in earlier chapters; the last two I will brie.y discuss now.

A notion that has gone unspoken in this book is that the high status of the arts, of its successful artists, of its art inst.i.tutions, and of its important donors, is even higher because of the presence of so many failed artists. 'If so many take the plunge and fail, those who succeed must be special indeed.' The more losers, the higher the status of the successful artists will be. But the real winners at the expense of the failed artists are the art inst.i.tutions and the donors. Art inst.i.tutions and donors need many people to become artists and many who fail, are disillusioned, but con-tinue to work as artists or abandon the art world. They thrive on the romantic notion of the starving artist. (They legitimize their preference for the large pond by explaining how among all of these struggling artists there will emerge a few unexpected geniuses.) The winners both successful artists and donors pro.t, but it is unlikely that they can be portrayed as active pro.teers. Because the bene-.ts are based on existing beliefs, there is no insidious plan to lure people into the arts. In fact, the contrary seems more likely. Many modern gov-ernments go to great pains to improve the deplorable economic condi-tions of artists. And although government programs sometimes exacer-bate the very conditions they are trying to alleviate, there is no indication that governments deliberately do so or have a secret agenda. Moreover, successful artists are more often embarra.s.sed about the general deplorable state of their profession than proud. And so, if the arts go on producing hordes of losers, it is not because there has been some deliber-ate strategy inst.i.tuted to abet their failure. Nevertheless, when one observes all this from the tenth .oor, it certainly looks like the artist losers enhance the status of the winners. Whether it's deliberate or not, winners reproduce the mystique of art by allowing many losers.

Society Needs a Sacred Domain Marco in our ill.u.s.tration is jealous of artists who dared to pursue their muse. His decision not to go into the arts goes hand in hand with his feel-ings of guilt. He says it's like he has thrown away his only chance of becoming an authentic human being, a true individual. This means that artists must have 'something special' that other people lack.

Artwork and artists have been accorded a special status for a long time. Even prior to the Renaissance, artists were already becoming less and less the anonymous craftsmen; their names and signatures became more and more signi.cant. Since then art has become 'animated': the artist is 'in' the work of art. In other words, people believe that the spirit or soul of the artist has 'entered' the art work. The personal creativity that goes into the work makes it and the artist authentic. Although being an authentic individual is a general ideal in our civilization, only artists offer de.nitive proof of their authenticity. Therefore artists are envied and admired. They offer a romantic alternative to a society of more or less anonymous and replaceable employees from managers to street sweepers.

This alternative is romantic, 1) because it is unrealistic: not everybody can become an artist, 2) because a false notion of creativity is involved, as we demonstrated in Chapter 2, and 3) because it offers an escape.

The bohemian artist presented a model for those who had a desire to escape the bourgeois lifestyle. Currently, it is seen as an escape from the world of commerce, technology, and science, in which calculation, ef.-ciency, and rationality rule. By belonging to the gift sphere, art stands in opposition to these worlds.

On the one hand, art offers an alternative. In a technology and con-sumption-dominated society, it is not so amazing that many people put the arts on a pedestal as a reminder of another, better world. And it is nat-ural that countless youngsters would want to become artists to escape the dominance of the other professions and to creatively display their individuality. They do so because they hope to share in the mystique of the high status of art, but also because they expect that making art will offer them a personal satisfaction that cannot be found in ordinary occu-pations.

On the other hand, art also serves as a counterforce in a society that is considered by many as too rational, too commercial and too technologi-cal. Therefore, art is not some noncommittal alternative to the rational activities in modern society, but a necessary compensation for these activities. It has the potential to counterbalance the unhealthy develop-ments of calculation, rationality, and ef.ciency in society. Although these opposing spheres of art and rationality are threatening to one another, they also need each other to survive.

Both art and science ultimately contribute to cognition, but it's 'magi-cal' art that relies primarily on dense symbol systems as opposed to 'rational' science, which employs discrete symbol systems.8 (As noted in the .rst chapter, in dense systems all variables count: like the color, the width, the impression and the shade of line in the drawing of an artist. In a scienti.c graph only a limited number of variables matter in a discreet way.) To gain true knowledge, both approaches are necessary. Art and sci-ence are two sides of the same coin. It seems that our society can go a long way in using one side of the coin, while essentially ignoring the other, but there are limits. In everyday practice, the discreet approach typical of sci-ence is omnipresent, while the density typical of art is often suppressed. Therefore, artistic expressions are extraordinary. This implies that, as long as society primarily operates on the rational knowledge of science, the arts will remain special. This societal imbalance contributes to art's sacredness.

The two interests, art as alternative and art as counterforce, merge at a higher level in a more general interest the need for a sacred domain. Durkheim has suggested that all societies need a sacred domain.9 Today, religion no longer supplies a satisfactory sacred domain for society. Art has, in this respect, partially replaced religion. If society needs a sacred domain and art offers this domain, society has an interest in maintaining the arts in their present state. For the time being art must remain sacred.

All societies have probably had a sacred domain, which usually involves vital interests. Yet these interests, as they presently exist, do not need to be universal. Every period probably endows the sacred with slightly different values. Durkheim a.s.sociated the sacred domain with collective and rational values that belong to the soul and that oppose the individual and egoistic desires of the body. Art as bearer of civilization's values in other words.10 Although the con.ict between spirit and body has not disappeared, it is less signi.cant than in Durkheim's time. Con-temporary values that are linked with the seemingly irrational or inexpli-cable are certainly at the core of what we consider the sacred domain; they oppose the rationality of our 'scienti.c' society.11 Whether this is true or not, our society maintains a sacred domain, which it endows with signi.cant values. For the time being the arts represent this domain. For this reason, society seems to reproduce the mystique of the arts even though the precise mechanisms employed are not altogether clear.

Future Scenarios with More or Less Subsidization The market is essential to the arts. Approximately half of the arts' income derives from the market. But compared to other sectors, the market remains secondary while the gift sphere continues to be enor-mous. This gift sphere is both a cause and a result of the exceptional economy of the arts. The smaller the gift sphere in the arts the less excep-tional and cruel the economy of the arts is (thesis 107). Lower levels of subsidies and donations will turn the arts in a sector that is more like other sectors, which produce fewer victims.

But this doesn't necessarily mean that the amount of donations and subsidies can be changed at will. On the contrary, the .ndings in this book suggest that the sizes of the gift sphere and market sphere are pretty much .xed. Partic.i.p.ants are locked into the exceptional economy of the arts. The epilogue below discusses possible developments that, in due time, could make the economy less exceptional, but these are not so easily manipulated either.

Nevertheless right or wrong, people tend to see the government as the one player in this complicated game whose behavior can most easily be altered. Therefore, I will brie.y try to imagine what the consequences of more and of less subsidization might be.

Let us .rst envision a situation in which subsidies have been increased. In this situation, the economy of the arts is likely to become even more exceptional and cruel. The emphasis is on a selection of established tradi-tional and modern art that is impressive and has already had its high status for a long time. This selection is continuously celebrated in all sorts of of.cial settings. A portion of this art has clear roots in the past and so it tends to unify the population and to strengthen its cultural iden-t.i.ty. Moreover, due to subsidization, part of the .ne arts remains afford-able for people with lower incomes and is available in towns far from the cultural center of a country. The .ne arts retain much prestige, both at home and abroad.

At the same time, there will be more artists and more poor artists and as a consequence a huge oversupply of artists. New art forms will inau-gurate relatively little innovation. These art forms and their patrons will receive little respect, while innovators will largely go unheralded. Any signi.cant innovations in these new art forms will most likely come from other countries.12 Because the barrier between subsidized and unsubsi-dized art will remain high, younger generations will probably increas-ingly lose interest in subsidized art.

On the other hand, in a scenario where subsidies have been lowered, art will lose some of its magic and retain less prestige. Because estab-lished art will now be considered less sacred, it will be criticized and chal-lenged more strenuously. This causes a lively and innovative cultural cli-mate. Moreover, art, which develops outside of the established art forms, gains more status. There is more praise for innovators. New art forms are less defensive and insular. In the new art forms, many innovations are produced that keep art interesting for new and younger audiences. There is less dependence on foreign countries; the export of new art forms keeps pace with imports or may even exceed import. But art might become less helpful in building a nationwide cultural ident.i.ty. Moreover, a larger proportion of artistic production will only be affordable for rich people while fewer art products will reach the far-.ung peripheries in a country. The oversupply of artists is less dramatic and therefore fewer artists will be impoverished.

Although in the latter scenario there might be fewer artists, average income does not necessarily need to be higher than in the former situation. But if in the long run art becomes less sacred, fewer people will enlist. In this respect even a moderate formal control on numbers might be introduced. In this case, average incomes would probably rise.

Other characteristics could be included in either scenario. A charac-teristic judged as advantageous in one scenario may be considered a drawback in the other. Whether it is judged advantageous or not is nec-essarily subjective. It will probably not surprise the reader that I believe less subsidization has more advantages than more subsidization. Person-ally, I think that in our current situation, artists and society pay too high a price for art's sacredness. I want to stress that my opinion applies to the arts and not necessarily to other areas of government involvement, like education, heath-care and social security. (I do not belong to the group of economists who generally support the free market-ideology.) Just because someone prefers a situation of less subsidization in main-land Western Europe, this does not necessarily mean that one wants the European art world to mirror the American art world. In Europe with its own long history of support of the arts, the art world that evolved here has its strong and weak points, but none of it can be changed very easily. Nevertheless, I personally think that the mainland Western European art world while maintaining its strong points, stands to gain by govern-ments, who simultaneously and gradually begin to reduce their art subsi-dies and involvement in the arts a little, or at least do not further increase art subsidies.

Presently the opposite is happening in Europe however, where after a stagnation period in the 1980s and early 1990s, governments have again begun increasing their involvement. They have also sought to broaden the types of art they now subsidize, including, for instance, pop music and other new art forms. The budgets are currently still small and appear to serve a primarily symbolic function, but once they commence these kinds of subsidies have a tendency to swell fast. If this trend continues, the symbolic compet.i.tion between established art forms and new art forms will become less unfair. At the same time however, I expect that subsidization will be disastrous for pop music innovations and innova-tions in other new art forms that compete in an international arena. Moreover, I can envision a nightmare scenario if in the end, all artistic endeavors were dependent on government support and would therefore orient themselves toward bureaucratic committees that necessarily have to draw a line between those who receive subsidies and those who do not. It is doubtful, however, that this scenario will fully develop. After all, the raison d'etre of government involvement in the arts lies in the consecra-tion of a selection of art and not in making all artistic endeavors equally valuable by forcing them under one bureaucratic jurisdiction.

Irrespective of one's wishes, it is unlikely that governments will con-tribute to a less merciless economy of the arts by reducing its level of involvement. Therefore, although the exceptional economy of the arts is certainly not eternal, for the time being many will continue to pay a dear price for the high status of the arts. And artists will continue to bear the brunt of it as they continue to sacri.ce themselves and be sacri.ced on the altar of the arts.

Discussion 1 What is your opinion on the use of the word suffering in connection with artists? Are artists sacri.ced or do they sacri.ce themselves? 2 Do you agree that with less government involvement the economy of the arts will be less cruel?

3Can you offer arguments that can prove that the version of the excep-tional and merciless economy of the arts presented in this chapter is outdated?

Epilogue: the Future Economy of the Arts Is this Book's Representation of the Economy of the Arts Outdated?

In this epilogue, I address the question of whether my representation of the exceptional economy of the arts is an outdated one, or nearly so. Given the notions of postmodernism and commercialization, the answer to this question could well be 'yes'. Therefore, Section 2 and the sections thereafter will examine the forces that promote change in the arts and the economy of the arts. Because a thorough treatment of possible develop-ments is beyond the scope of this book, the remarks in this epilogue are sketchy and necessarily speculative.1 Signs of a Less Exceptional Economy of the Arts On the basis of the a.n.a.lysis in this book, one could expect a normaliza-tion of the economy of the arts to be accompanied by the following signs.

table 5 signs of a less exceptional economy of the arts Monetary signs 1There is a downward trend in the incomes of successful artists. (The contrary is currently the case.) 2There is a downward trend in the prices of old and contemporary art by famous artists. (The contrary is currently the case.) 3There is an upward trend in the average hourly income of artists. (The contrary is currently the case.) 4There is an upward trend in the percentage of artists with salaried employment. (The contrary is currently the case.) 5There is a downward trend in overall donations and subsidies to the arts. (This is currently not the case.2) Other 'hard' signs 6There is a downward trend in enrollment .gures of youngsters going to art colleges. (This is currently not the case.3) 7There is an increase in formal regulation of numbers of artists. (This is not currently the case.) 8Governments favor a different, more varied selection of art. (This is true in a formal sense, but not in a material sense. Although other art, like pop-music has come into focus, the money it receives is almost negligibly see below in this section.) 9Governments and other donors have become less interested in the distribution of the .ne arts. (This is true.) 'Soft' signs, changing att.i.tudes in society and in the art world 10Art has become less important in symbolizing people's position on the social ladder (This is not true.) 11High and low in the arts have lost some of their normative conno-tation of superior and inferior. Instead, they denote different genres and domains. (This could be true see Section 5 below.) 12The line between art and non-art is becoming less clear. (This could be true see Section 5 below.) 13Asymmetric valuation loses its signi.cance. The phenomenon that elites look down on the artistic preferences of the lower cla.s.ses, while these cla.s.ses in turn admire the choice of the elites, becomes less important. (This could be true see Section 5 below.) 14Market orientation increases in the arts. Blatantly commercial strategies become less exceptional and more acceptable. (This is partially true see further down in this section.) 15The public and the art world lose interest in original and authentic art. (This is not true.) 16The cult of the genius in the arts becomes less important. (This is not true.) 17The (relative) autonomy of art and artists is becoming less impor-tant for both the public and the art world. (In general, this is not true.) 18The esteem accorded 'artists' in the applied arts (design, advertise-ment and fas.h.i.+on) increases. (This is true.) 19The status of doing commissioned work is rising. (This is true for the upper echelon artists.) 20Artists have increasingly mixed feelings about art being sacred or 'special'. (This is probably true.) 21New artists emerge who favor a more down-to-earth approach to art. (This is partly true see Sections 2 and 3 below.) 22Non-arts jobs become more personal and authentic, making a romantic alternative less necessary. (This is true in some areas, but not in others.) If these signs are relevant and if my a.s.sessment of them is correct, the 'hard' signs indicate that the picture of the economy of the arts in this book is not outdated. It appears that postmodernist forces have not effected the distri-bution of funds. Nor have important inst.i.tutions, such as foundations and governments, lost interest in the arts. The hard signs do not suggest an imminent change in the exceptional economy of the arts. The 'softer' signs, however, are more ambiguous. They seem to suggest that 'change is in the air'. The 'soft' sign I believe is the most important however, that 'art has become less important as a signi.er of social position', is almost certainly not true. In order to determine whether change is still likely, I shall discuss some of these signs in more detail below.

The more openly commercial att.i.tudes, as mentioned in sign 14 above, are not limited just to the arts. There are few social circles left where discussing money and .nancial gain is still 'not done'. In this respect, society's values appear to have changed over the past thirty years. But are they only super.cial (temporary) values? Or did a more fundamental att.i.tude towards money and commerce change as well? The current increasing, sometimes even pathetic, interest in non-money values among some business people, not only in new-age circles, suggests that higher order values have not changed much.

It seems that arts att.i.tudes with respect to money and commerce have changed and it appears that the art world has become more commercial over the past two decades.4 Particularly performing art companies have been .irting with more commercial att.i.tudes. It is however dif.cult to tell whether the new att.i.tudes are being internalized or are a temporary answer to the present consumer and donor demands. In Germany, for instance, the .rst decades of the twentieth century saw an increased interest in theatre marketing, but it did not endure.5 Moreover, the more commercial att.i.tudes that emerged in the visual arts in the 1980s have by and large disappeared again.

Sign 8, which refers to the fact that European governments have begun subsidizing broader areas in the arts, could signal a more fundamental change, however. As I noted in Section 10.6, these governments have started subsidizing areas like pop music and related art forms. For instance, France subsidizes hip-hop and art by immigrants. In monetary terms, these subsidies are fairly negligible compared to those for the more traditional recipients of art subsidization, but they are signi.cant symbolically. The question is whether this could be interpreted as a sign of an inaugural s.h.i.+ft in government tastes, for instance away from cla.s.si-cal music and towards pop music, or whether governments are simply broadening their base of art forms.

Although a government's selections and tastes are always evolving, I would be inclined to interpret the present development as a broadening of taste rather than as a s.h.i.+ft in taste. Given its goals with respect to edu-cation and social coherence, this kind of broadening strategy was to be expected. Moreover, governments are increasingly aware that a taste that has become too partial and unilateral is bad for general artistic developments and narrows the public support for their policies. There-fore, this sign could indicate a signi.cant change. If the new subsidies continue and become substantial, the gap in status between art forms could be reduced and the economy of the arts could ultimately become less exceptional. As has been noted however, it is also a natural tendency of governments to offer distinction and this implies a selection between art forms, at least in the long run. Therefore, it remains to be seen how far this development will go.

Artists with New Att.i.tudes Enter the Scene (1) Sign 21 predicts a possible normalization of the economy of the arts via the emergence of new types of artists with new att.i.tudes. Currently, I notice that artists' att.i.tudes are moving in basically four directions. Each of the four directions has its own type of artist who might be said to exemplify that direction. I discuss the artist-researcher and the postmod-ern artist in this section and the artist-craftsman and the artist-enter-tainer in the next. Most modern creative artists embody traits of all four, but with a different emphasis.6 (I invite readers to view my 'ideal-types' critically and to construct their own.) Many modern artists have developed an att.i.tude that resembles the scientist's att.i.tude. Most of these artist-researchers are not particularly interested in audiences or buyers. Studios are laboratories, while concert halls, museums, books, and internet sites are lecture rooms for a select and well-informed audience. Their att.i.tude is in line with a contempo-rary art that has become increasingly self-referential. To follow the dis-course one almost needs to be an expert. Like the world of science the audience of these artists consists of insider colleagues, critics, and trained laymen. John Cage is an example in the world of music. Visual artists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and the Dutchman Peter Struycken also .t into this group.

The economy of the arts could eventually become less exceptional if artist-researchers gradually became more important. They are like scien-tists because they value originality, but not in a romantically hyperbolic sense. They don't mind a little demysti.cation if it contributes to the establishment of a strong professional status comparable to that of a sci-entist. In Europe, some of them may even be willing to become university employees with a small teaching obligation, an already common scenario in the us. On top of that, they might even go so far as to support some formal regulation of their numbers.

It is doubtful however, whether society is actually prepared to pay these artists in the long run. Because oftheir research, art is not that entertaining and contributes very little to the aura of art, their art usually doesn't sell well in the market. And without the indispensable aura, it loses part of its utility for donors as well, which includes the government. This means that if the artist-researcher were gradually to become the most common artists, the arts would probably shrink; art could even develop into some kind of marginal phenomenon. Therefore, it seems highly likely that it'll be another type of artist who will be most common in the future.

While the artist-researcher naturally probes and challenges existing rules, conventions and boundaries, postmodern artists do not so much trespa.s.s these boundaries of art as ignore them altogether.7 They do not try to s.h.i.+ft the boundaries but prefer to leap over them from one .eld to another instead. They move freely between art, design, and applied arts, including advertising. For instance, world music composers, samplers, and modern DJs are examples who .t this description, as do VJs and visual artists like Mathew Barney, Pipilotti Rist as well as the Dutch artists Inez van Lamsweerde and Joep van Lieshout.

Postmodern artists could eventually help make the economy of the arts less exceptional, if they were to become more signi.cant in the arts. They challenge the prevailing att.i.tudes in the arts, especially the inclination to deny the economy. Successful postmodern artists jump effortlessly from art to advertising graphic design, for instance, and from relatively autonomous to commissioned work. They often establish a business and might hire a number of employees to a.s.sist them. In this sense, they are more like businessmen and they are not ashamed of it. It is this kind of natural commercial att.i.tude that could easily herald a less exceptional economy of the arts for the future.

But exciting as the postmodern artist experiment may seem, in the long run, the arts cannot exist without borders, as I demonstrate in Sec-tion 5below. Therefore, if postmodern 'artists' were to become more sig-ni.cant, art would either cease to exist in the conventional sense or these artists would just leave the art world and concentrate on other profes-sions or, more likely, they would gradually consent to the re-establish-ment of borders. Anyway, postmodern artists would eventually lose their edge and thus cannot be seriously regarded as a signi.cant force in the normalization of the economy of the arts.

Artists with new Att.i.tudes Enter the Scene (2) The third direction art may take is the one of the artist-craftsman. Because of the increased importance of self-referential and conceptual art, craftsmans.h.i.+p has lost much of its high value among artists during the second half of the twentieth century. The last few decades however, artists with a keen interest in craftsmans.h.i.+p began to move in front. They began to reinst.i.tute old techniques and developed new, more positive att.i.tudes towards craftsmans.h.i.+p. Artists who actually do their own work with their own hands and who derive their ident.i.ty and success partly from their craftsmans.h.i.+p are typical of this new or rather rein-vented type of artist. It is because of them that paintings, ballets and musical compositions are again allowed to be admired for their technical virtuosity and can be considered 'beautiful' again according to some crit-ics. Examples of this type of artist in the visual arts are Alex Katz and Dutch painters like Constant, Van Koningsbrugge, and Hans van Hoek. (This type of artist can also be found in the performing arts, but to be honest, their sort of craftsmans.h.i.+p has hardly ever really fallen into total disfavor. Nevertheless, movements like punk music were a temporary deviation from craftsmans.h.i.+p as was most of 'educational theatre'.) The renewed pa.s.sion for craftsmans.h.i.+p could have a sobering in.u-ence on the arts and it could eventually make the economy of the arts less exceptional. Even though craftsmen need some modest kind of magic to showoff their tricks, their primary ambition is to be good at what they do. In general, they have no real desire to be stars. They know the value of their time and materials and so they ask fair prices for their work. They have no great need to put art on a pedestal, make it over into some-thing sacred, or deny the economy.

But the real craftsman is a character from a past when art and artists as we now know them, did not really exist. Art has changed so much since then and there is no turning back. Perhaps craftsmans.h.i.+p is more signi.cant again, but it is unlikely that the artist-craftsman will be repre-sentative for the future artist.

The artist-entertainer is our fourth type of artist. Creative artists, who set out to entertain the public, are universal and timeless, as the likes of Shakespeare, Mozart, and d.i.c.kens clearly demonstrate. In the course of the twentieth century, however, entertainers gradually began to be taken less and less seriously and often found themselves outside the realm of (high) art. The notion that artists shouldn't deliberately set out to please audiences is something that the artist-researcher adheres to.8 Neverthe-less, over three decades already in part of contemporary art, be it music, theatre, dance, literature, or visual art, (high) artists can be found who are not afraid of entertaining people. The Italians Clemente and Chia are examples of this trend in the visual arts. Another example is how contem-porary cla.s.sical music, after the hegemony of serial music, saw the return of the triad with composers like Philip Gla.s.s and more recently, a renewed interest in melody.

The growing (.nancial) importance of the ma.s.s media-oriented arts has contributed to this development toward more openly entertaining formats. In this respect, it's interesting that the disdain for entertain-ment has never been very strong in the world of literature, which is dependent on technical reproduction and large readers.h.i.+ps. It is also revealing that cla.s.sical musicians and dancers currently can often be seen performing on television in various concourses that are above all enter-taining. Most conductors of major symphony orchestras can serve exam-ples of the artist-entertainer. (The Dutchman, Andre Rieu, is probably the foremost example.) Artist-entertainers seem to undermine the exceptional nature of the economy of the arts because they consciously set out to please their audi-ences. They orient themselves toward their audiences and thus, towards the market. This applies as much to the circus clown performing for a small audience as to the pop musician, whose hit record can be heard on radio and television almost any time of the day.

Nevertheless, these artists do not really challenge the exceptional economy of the arts. Even though they are oriented toward consumers, at the same time they tend to deny the economy. They resist the seculariza-tion of art because they evidently pro.t from the notion of art being sacred. At the same time, they probably stand a better chance of being the model for the artist of the future than the other three types.

If this a.n.a.lysis is roughly correct the future artist will probably be some kind of artist-entertainer. These artists will probably not be out there promoting change because, in the end, they have an interest in maintaining the notion of sacred art. And so it won't be the artist-enter-tainer who will help dismantle the exceptional economy of the arts. But perhaps I've discarded the other three too readily or maybe I've over-looked other important developments in the artistic att.i.tudes. I therefore invite readers to revise these sections, based on their own experiences, knowledge, and evaluations.

'Art Becomes Demysti.ed as Society Becomes More Rational'

Changes in artists' att.i.tudes may or may not in.uence the course of the economy of the arts. But societal developments affecting the sacredness of art are bound to affect the economy. This is based on the book's funda-mental thesis that the exceptional nature of the economy of the arts depends on the high status of the arts. In this context, I see three interre-lated developments that may contribute to a demysti.cation of the arts and therefore to a less exceptional economy. (Readers are invited to con-tribute other developments.) a Rationalization: As society becomes more and more rational, the arts will gradually go through a process of demysti.cation. b Fading borders: Because the high status of art depends on borders and because borders in our postmodern society have lost much of their sig ni.cance, the status of art is bound to experience some shrinkage. c Technical developments: The growing importance of technically reproduced artwork, of ma.s.s-produced artwork, and of media culture will further contribute to the demysti.cation of art.

Rationalization, fading borders, and technological developments are not autonomous in.uences that can be examined divorced from their con-text. The three are interdependent. Moreover, demysti.cation through rationalization does not have to be a contradiction of chapter 12's notion that art is a counterforce to an overly rational society. After quite some delay and from quite a distance back, art could follow the general trend towards rationalization and still end up representing a counterforce.

In this context, Norbert Elias's description of the civilizing process applies here.9 According to Elias, people become more 'controlled' in the course of a long term civilizing process. Their behavior becomes less and less colored by impulses and affective fantasies.10 This process is ongoing because art is part of society, and thus cannot divorce itself from this development.11 And so in the long run art will probably also become more regulated and rational. The artist-researcher .ts well into such a development.

Both art and science have a cognitive and an emotional dimension.12 The same applies to the civilizing process.13 Emotions remain important in a regulated and sublimated way. Art contributes to sublimation and thus to rationalization as well. Art, regulated and secularized, plays a vital role in the civilizing process.

But how restrained can art get? On the one hand, it's dif.cult to imag-ine art serving sublimation without maintaining some seductive charm or magic spell. Magic, on the on the other hand, does not necessarily have to involve mysti.cation and consecration. In the long run, given the civi-lizing process, there might very well be a place for a magical art form that is not sacred.

In order to clarify the relation between the magical, the sacred, and the rational, I would like to add a few, rather speculative remarks about the magical aspect of art. (They are based on the a.n.a.lysis found in Section 1.7.) Magic in art is not really magic but a kind of pseudo-magic. Artists as pseudo-magicians pretend they can perform magic and appear to be using supernatural powers, but they aren't. They merely use their imagi-nations to create illusions.

Artists use illusions to uncover truths about themselves and the world around them. Through illusions, art exposes reality and discovers 'truth'. This is the kind of cognition Nelson Goodman talks about. Both art and science contribute to cognition; they, in fact, compliment one another. Science also employs illusions a graph is not what it represents but it uses illusions in a formal and hardly a 'magical' way.14 The sym-bolic systems that science utilizes tend to be discrete rather than dense, while with art it's the other way around. Because art tends to use dense symbol systems, its interpretations are richer and more undetermined. As a result, art is more likely to be experienced as magical than science.

This does not mean that all art looks magical. There are huge varia-tions depending on the art form. Some modern sculptures have totem-like qualities, while in others any such reference seems to be banned. Some modern music and poetry can actually resemble magical prayers in their use of repet.i.tion and rhythm, while others totally lack this kind of 'charm'. Nevertheless, in the end artists inevitably disturb and charm their audiences. (According to Deirdre McCloskey, scientists also charm their audiences.15 Given their largely discrete a.n.a.lyses, however, their offerings are seldom as magical.) The pseudo-magic that characterizes art exists regardless of whether art is considered sacred or not. An art form that has become fully secular-ized can still be magical. But at this time, art's magic still contributes to it being perceived as sacred.

The pseudo-magic and density of artistic expressions are not irra-tional. Therefore, any ongoing process of rationalization does not neces-sarily mean that art will lose its 'charm'. In an increasingly rational soci-ety, there is plenty of room for charming artist-entertainers. They are, however, likely to keep the arts at least somewhat sacred and hence main-tain some of the exceptionality of the economy of the arts.

'Borders in and Around the Arts Disappear'

If there were no such thing as high and low in the arts, art would certainly lose its sacredness and, as a consequence, its economy would become less exceptional. Ever since the emergence of the avant-garde, borders in and around the arts have been challenged. At this time, many borders seem to be vanis.h.i.+ng.16 For instance, many people are of the opinion that there are no recognizable styles in contemporary visual art anymore: anything is permitted and everything can be done. The cosmopolitan omnivorous nature of many modern art consumers, who consume both high and low art, suggests that borders have lost much of their signi.cance.17 Without borders, anything can be art and anybody can be an artist. If there are no more borders that surround art and make art distinguish-able, art as we know it will stop to exist. It could be the much-predicted 'end of art'. If not, art will certainly lose much of its aura. Therefore, the postmodern development represents a force that, in the long run, clearly ends up demystifying art.18 After reaching the right momentum, this development is bound to end up changing the economy of the arts dramatically. If, in daily practice, artworks and loafs of bread come to be perceived as equal, the economy of the arts will certainly cease to be exceptional.

These conclusions would apply if people were to eventually lose inter-est in creative and authentic works of art. But as we have noted earlier, this is not the case. And as long as people appreciate creativity and origi-nality in art, borders will remain.19 The appreciation of creativity neces-sarily rests on comparisons, differences, and consequently on borders. Without borders, one would no longer be able to distinguish between artworks or discuss issues of their qualities (or aesthetic values) with friends or experts.

Moreover, in Goodman's approach to art discussed in Section 1.6, artists need borders as well. Borders give artists the framework to trans-gress and trespa.s.s and ultimately change the rules. To be original, the existing borders must be breached, and others must be able to notice it. Because people expect art to be creative and original, and because artists want their products to noticed between other poducts, borders are bound to remain important in the arts. (This is why it's dif.cult to imag-ine that the postmodern artist can truly represent the artist of the future.) Because people always a.s.sume that their own times are dramatically different from earlier times, they believe that rules and borders have van-ished from the arts. In my own life as a visual artist however, I am aware of numerous rules all around me. It's true that certain rules have become more elusive and complex; one needs to be pretty much an insider to understand them. Other rules have s.h.i.+fted to another level and have become a kind of set of meta-rules. Sometimes these rules apply more to artists' att.i.tudes than to actual artworks.20 Other rules describe which rule violations are acceptable and which are not. (For example, at this point in time, certain violations can be allowed, but only if they are no heartfelt cries but deliberately planned trespa.s.ses. Serrano for instance carefully designs the extreme s.e.xual content in his art works. ) Rules remain important, in any case.

The belief that there are no rules in one's own time might be a univer-sal truism. For instance, I'm convinced that twenty-.ve years from now, the art rules and borders of the 1990s will be obvious to almost every-body. (It's only now that we can actually distinguish 1970s visual art because it's only now that we have learned to discern the rules and bor-ders those artists respected or played with.) It's true that better-educated consumers nowadays are more diversi-.ed and omnivorous in their consumption behavior. One day they might go to the opera while the next they might applaud a local star singing his or her schmaltzy pop songs. This behavior does not, however, contradict the existence of borders because this scenario is basically asymmetrical because it applies more to elite art consumers than to the average con-sumer of low art. Moreover, as was noted earlier, even when the same products are being consumed, the ways in which they are consumed and the symbolic values they represent, continue to vary. Omnivorous con-sumption patterns often tend toward camp, which involves an ambigu-ous standard, whereby elite consumers simultaneously enjoy and mock the lower cla.s.s' culture.

If borders eventually fail to actually wither, their appreciation may nevertheless change. More importantly however, the character of how we appreciate high and low art could change. Sign 11 in Table 5 pointed out the phenomenon that high and low in the arts increasingly refer to different domains in the arts rather than to an artwork's superiority or inferiority. And without some form of superiority, social groups would no longer have a reason to look up to the high and sacred art of other groups, whereas the elite would no longer have a reason to look down on the low art of the lower cla.s.ses. The .ne arts would no longer be distinc-tive. Because we have observed that cultural inferiority and asymmetric valuations are the cornerstones of the exceptional economy of the arts, this economy would be a lot less exceptional, if the importance of a sym-bolic high and low in the arts were gradually to diminish.

Terms like 'high' and 'low' would still be employed but without their former symbolic connotations. They would simply indicate areas or genres. With respect to distinction, symbolic practices or ways of con-suming art would emerge as being more important than speci.c art-works.21 These kinds of practices can still be considered superior or infe-rior, however, even if they are now called something else. But one would need to be an insider to be able to properly cla.s.sify these practices. Supe-rior art and art practices have become extremely .exible categories; their sphere of reference is constantly mutating. This process was described in Chapter 11. Insiders continuously rede.ne the aesthetic borders of high and low, good and bad, modern and obsolete. Outsiders can only a.s.sume some kind of approximate s.h.i.+fting average.

So far, there is no reason to think that people climbing the social ladder in the future will suddenly stop signifying their status with art. As was noted in Section 1.2 this means that valuations will remain basically asymmetrical. As long as there is social strati.cation and as long as art serves to symbolize people's positions in social s.p.a.ce, art will maintain its special status and its economy will remain exceptional.

I think art borders basically don't fade; some may vanish, but others will replace them. Moreover, borders will continue to serve distinc-tion.22 Therefore, it is unlikely that the postmodern project will make the economy of the arts less exceptional.

'New Techniques, Ma.s.s Consumption and Ma.s.s Media Help Demystify the Arts'

Firstly, new techniques, especially those produced by the digital revolu-tion, could very well portend a process of demysti.cation in the arts.23 Many exciting new art products come into being. Moreover, digitally produced and digitally distributed music, images and moving images will be cheaper to produce and to distribute than their predecessors were. At this time, some of this phenomenon's products are de facto free, but that situation may not last much longer. On the one hand ma.s.s-produced new products are reaching larger audiences all over the world. On the other hand the smallest scale at which products can be pro.tably produced is becoming ever smaller. This means that there is more room for larger varieties of specialized products. Moreover, fragments of older art-works, be it legally or illegally, are increasingly being incorporated in newer works, thus rendering authenticity an ever more relative concept.

The same problem we saw with the withering of borders comes up when we consider technological change since it's dif.cult to get a per-spective on one's own generation. Is the impact of technological change more profound today than it was in earlier times, for instance, during the introduction of the printing press or the introduction of electricity?24 Because new techniques are usually .rst applied in art forms with rela-tively little status, it seems that new techniques could very well under-mine the mystique of the arts. But after a while the status of these art forms often rises or the more established art forms learn to adopt the new techniques.

It is true that some current new techniques in new media might lead to unknown interdisciplinary approaches that undermine existing borders. Modern, sometimes anonymous, artists sometimes create hybrid art-works that may temporarily fall outside the experts' realm of awareness. But these attempts to circ.u.mvent the cult of personality are not the .rst. And it usually doesn't take very long before the new artistic endeavors get absorbed by the established art forms and become visible. Artists emerge and some become heroes. This has happened before and is cur-rently happening with DJs and VJs. It appears that the digital revolution has manufactured its own new heroes and thus its demystifying capaci-ties are temporary.

Secondly, the current technological evolution continues to aggrandize the growing body of ma.s.s-produced artwork. Apart from the phenome-non of printing, the large-scale reproduction of high quality art works only began to take off in the twentieth century. Although the two are related, the ma.s.s production of art is probably more likely to herald a less exceptional economy of the arts than the digital revolution. As early as 1935, Walter Benjamin predicted that the technical reproduction of art would lead to a breaking of art's spell ('Entzauberung').25 Art became less obscure, more accessible and thus less magical because of technical reproduction. Moreover, as was already evident in .lmmaking, art could stand to lose its autonomy, which might ultimately contribute to the demysti.cation of art.26 Benjamin's prediction is not dif.cult to grasp. Technical (re)produc-tion enables a ma.s.sive production of artworks at low prices. It would be very strange indeed if this didn't reduce the exclusive and glamorous allure of art products. People in the Netherlands today can buy a 10-cd set of Bach recordings performed by one of the world's top orchestras in a chain drugstore for little more than the cost of a bottle of ma.s.sage oil little more than a Euro per cd.) And so one would predict that Bach's music would become totally ordinary, vulgar even. But thus far, this hasn't happened; Bach and his oeuvre maintain their aura. In general, when one observes the high, if not augmented status and wors.h.i.+p of art since Benjamin's essay .rst appeared, his prediction was either wrong or it is going to take longer before his predictions are borne out.

In this context, a common misunderstanding tends to lead to faulty expectations. Many people still think that originality, uniqueness, and authenticity means a single unique artwork made by an artist's own hands, be it a ma.n.u.script, score, or art object. They forget that in the allographic arts arts based on a notational system, like writing and most theatre, music, and even dance there is seldom one original art work.27 A hand-written ma.n.u.script, score, or ch.o.r.eography is just a collection of directions based on a symbol system. The relevant details do not change, just because they are printed or performed. Therefore, the work of art resides in all written or printed specimens of a ma.n.u.script or score and in all performances of them irrespective of their total number. Each book and each performance is an instance of the particular art-work. The millionth live performance of the Saint Matthew's Pa.s.sion by Bach or the millionth copy of James Joyce's Ulysses is as much an authen-tic and original work of art as the .rst. (First editions and original manu-scripts are sometimes valuable, but primarily as collectors items and not as works of art.) The same applies to the numerous technical reproduc-tions of the Saint Matthew's Pa.s.sion on cd. As long as the notes have been played correctly, all of them can be considered authentic originals.28 To reiterate, most technical (re)productions are instances of an art-work and are therefore originals. People continue to experience them as animated and authentic, not unlike a painting. At home, listening to Verdi or Rod Stewart, listeners can be transported by the 'genius' of the composer or performer regardless of the number of copies in circulation. Thus far, these reproductions actually seem to enhance rather than diminish the high status of art.

For centuries, original works of art have been copied. It's only the astronomical numbers of reproductions and the speed at which they can be reproduced that has changed. In a literal sense, many artworks have become 'common'. Unprecedented numbers of people reading books, lis-tening to cds, watching television and sur.ng the Internet end up shar-ing original artworks. One could argue that when the numbers become this large, it becomes more and more dif.cult to a.s.sociate the consump-tion of art with exclusivity. Therefore, it just seems to lose its former status.

It is true that some of the modern ma.s.s-produced artworks are no longer obscure and mysterious. They are consumed as part of a daily rou-tine, not unlike food or transportation. Many artworks probably live shorter lives than they did in the past; they are trendy and ultimately dis-posable. Thus to some degree, ma.s.s production and consumption can actually exacerbate the secularization of the arts and hasten in a less exceptional economy.

It is not true however, that the general public and the experts treat all ma.s.s-produced art in the same manner. Some works are selected and placed on a pedestal while others are not, irrespective of their total num-bers. Some have longer, sometimes much longer lives. They too are sub-ject to trends, but these are recurrent trends. Whether today's distin-guished artworks will survive as long as the works of, say, Bach, is impossible to predict, but modern artworks and artists from Prince to Spielberg are just as subject to selection, canonization, consecration, and mysti.cation as earlier artworks and artists were.29 Third, the modern media augment the ma.s.s consumption of artworks, as is the case with .lms broadcast on television. Modern media also add their own dimension. The increased media attention accorded art and artists may at .rst sight seem to contribute to the consecration of art and artists, but in fact it makes success more ordinary and thus demysti.es art. The media can be said to have a leveling effect. Modern newspapers and television broadcasting are considered transparent media.30 They give most topics equal signi.cance. For instance, most daily newspapers have, for a considerable time now, been publis.h.i.+ng their articles on high and low art on the same page. Meanwhile, modern television tends to treat sports heroes, high and low artists, and entertainment stars with equality. (They often even appear on the same talk shows.) The media have this leveling effect more than earlier forms of techni-cal reproduction because they actually show the heroes and so make them more human. In the long run, this leveling effect could contribute to the eventual elimination of the distinct status of the arts. Why should artists be more sacred than sports stars or television's talking heads, for instance? In the end, all these 'entertainers' can be designated as heroes, they can have plenty of status and money, but they are not necessarily sacred. As in the case of ma.s.s-produced art products, certain careers in the modern visual arts and pop music scenes, for instance, can be very short-lived and temporary. The spectrum of these careers and the way they develop begins to resemble those of sports or entertainment stars. And the media contribute to this egalitarian treatment.

Nevertheless, not all artists are public .gures and even when they are, important differences remain between artists and other celebrities. Art-works generally maintain an existence independent of television appear-ances and other public performances. In consuming artworks at home, in a concert hall or a cinema, people construct their own artists. This way they maintain an