American Art, Hostage to the Political Opportunists

 Some Context - Hostage to Whom Exactly?

Professional artists live in a state of near constant precarity. The immediate and long term viability of making a living or even continuing to make a living is always in question.  And so, applying for available grants and other funding opportunities is always an option assuming the artist or artist's assistants can navigate these murky and duplicitous social currents.  In this particular article, I'm constraining the discussion to government funded opportunities.  The broader range of potential funding will be addressed in a future entry.

Government involvement in the Fine Arts aesthetic realm by definition is a surrender of artistic autonomy to a bureaucratically directed, ingrown, unaccountable, and cluelessly tasteless crony appointees. The proof is in the funding pudding that includes, administration of the program, dispensation of funds, and the wholesale incompetence of the program's design.

While the artist suspends their misgivings and doubts their surrender to the system of application and subsequent processing is largely an exercise in self-denial.  The sordid history of the program, if one bothers to look, can be summarized as "Don't go away mad, just go away!" The program is a slush fund for large arts organizations, unscrupulous academic fiscal dippers, incestuous connections, and the shadow suggestions of prima donna influencers.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

There is occasional evidence of trickle down funding that slips through the cracks but it is loose change compared to the institutional takeaway bag.

Rather than rehash the arguments that are eternally recycled about the waste of actual money, the more important contagion that the National Endowment for the Arts succeeds in infecting into the very framework and self-acknowledgement of Fine Art is the political not-so-subliminal suggestion of what the art must represent either in presentation or in descriptive, documentary genuflection and specificity.

Artist and organizations are put on notice whether they score funding or not that they must and will modify their behavior, their aesthetic advocacy, and their administrative demeanor to conform to the presumptive Big Brother authority of government funding for any consideration. In other words, even the tease of available arts funds is plenty enough to bend the aesthetic arc of creativity in the arts to politically imprint the needy artists attracted to the fiscal honeypot.

The 'F' in NEFA Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

The Visual Arts Screwing in New England

Forgive the obvious.  The world is changing.

New England, once famous for Yankee Ingenuity has been abused and maliciously plundered by NEFA.  

The Visual Arts, Design and Design Thinking, and the inheritance of Folk Traditions, craftsmanship, and our past artifacts and architecture are the essence and and visionary influence that stimulate growth. (More on all of this in a future article.)

Today the vaudevillian painted faces of Woke, forever navel-gazing, self-traumatized performers are prioritized over vision and ideas that sustain the creative engine of ingenuity. New England is being dumbed-down and entertained into a creative coma. This has got to stop.

Actual Samples of Previously Funded New Work New England Projects

"Young students wear N95 masks and sit at their desks."

and 

"Two folks sit on the floor and caress between two speakers."

and 

"A screen shot of a bunch of images on an iphone. Pictures of a woman dancing in a field in a red wrap."

Huh?

Okay.  If the only qualification for the concept of new is, "I recently pulled this out of my keister" then, sure... "new work". I don't mean to pick on these alone, there's tsunami of this stuff you can look up.

OTOH, aren't there bigger fish to fry when it comes to art, curation, museums, galleries, and so on?  I think so.

Most obviously is that whoever is judging the quality of this stuff is working in a sensory deprivation chamber because we should be hearing a scream by now.  The goal of NEA funding no matter who administers it should be to ratchet up the quality of work being funded and not encourage recursive mediocrity.

That can be fixed by employing individuals who actually know and study art instead of mind numbing, sociological pathologies. Couple that with a feedback loop and some transparency as to the criteria that these works qualified for acceptance and we are that much closer to honest brokerage of the actual art submitted. I'll circle back to transparency before too long.

The Humiliation of Practicing Art

The NEA is in LOVE with the word "equity".  Hugs and kisses to all the artists that embrace equity and repeat the slogan over and over and over in their submissions. MmmmWah! Equity!

This and two handfuls of politically correct platitudes are required of everybody and as James Joyce noted years ago, "H.C.E., here comes everybody!"

Part of the hostage scenario is that artists are being held responsible for social ills and being made human sacrifices for society's real and imagined debt to the masses who think reparation checks are in the mail.

The practice of art has nothing to do with politics.  Let me repeat. The practice of art has nothing to do with politics.  You don't believe it because the NEA and the special interest propaganda advocates have convinced you otherwise.

A cook at a famous restaurant is not intimidated into insuring the equity of the meal purchases and preparation. The cooking staff need not compete with the United Nations. No.

Yet artists are expected and, let's face it, required to salute this Woke whoreshit and somehow incorporate it into their proposals. Makes us all feel so, um, free.

Instead

Instead, after NEFA is metaphorically administratively flushed, something along the lines of a re-imaging of the organization must take place.

First, foremost, and somewhat shockingly the organization must commit itself to art and - gasp - artists. And not just any artists - New England artists, architects, designers, imagineers, art writers, historians, public speakers, museum consultants, gallery rescues, and so on. Yes. All of that and more (More to come).

And Universities with huge endowments, say Wesleyan -

"In fiscal year 2022, Wesleyan's endowment dropped by 4.6%, ending the fiscal period at $1.56 billion. 

This was the first year of losses since fiscal 2016." - need to tap that slush fund (FIRST) long before applying for arts funding.  That drop though, so sad.

And the artists who must be given priority must be New England artists for exposure within the region and in other regions.  Likewise, other regions should be promoting their local artists nationwide.

Another high priority order of business must be transparency, ease of application with a bare minimum of intimidating rhetoric about somebody's latest political itch.

Whatever takes the place of NEFA needs to define equity as the recognition that art is a profession and NOT a social services agency. And it is not a slush fund for insiders.  Administrators need term limits not lifetime life rafts to float downstream for the rest of their lives."  

Add your own ideas to the comments.