Jorge Miguel Benitez
Art is not only inseparable from culture, it is also an investment in civilization. This unromantic global fact disrupts Western notions of non-Western innocence as if to say, “Western art comes from money, everywhere else it comes from the heart.” The notion is as naïve as the belief that the samurai rejected guns as something beneath their warrior ethos. Like their Western analogs called knights, the samurai not only embraced firearms, they also had a fondness for money and the arts.
Money, regardless of its form, is essential to art. Ancient cave dwellers may not have had money in the modern sense, but they nonetheless had surplus capital in the form of food, clothing, tools, and shelter. Spears and arrows facilitated the hunt that filled the bellies of the would-be artists. Decoration and self-expression emerged from material surplus and leisure. From storytelling to cave paintings and body decorations, an acceptable level of economic security preceded art making. That economic security, or excess wealth, financed another form of excess from which we derive the word luxury.
Unfortunately, consumerism has reduced our understanding of luxury to something exclusive to the high bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Such a misunderstanding misses the communal aspect of luxury as something that enriches an entire community with its excesses. It may be a cliché to state that the modern Western middle-classes enjoy a level of material comfort unimaginable for the European aristocracy at the time of Louis XIV, but it is nonetheless true. Yet such an observation does not address questions of taste, connoisseurship, or shared cultural values that inform today’s debates on arts funding. Those debates are especially acute when the expressive needs of the artist do not match the cultural expectations and values of the patrons.
In postwar liberal democracies, arts funding is often either a public-private partnership or some form of state funding that operates independently of market forces associated with galleries and independent dealers. Despite their inevitable flaws and challenges, governmental institutions have allowed artists to survive and even flourish outside of the commercial system that emerged with the decline of Church and aristocratic patronage in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the expansion of the bourgeoisie during the Industrial Revolution. The advent of the modernist avant-garde added to the disruption by creating the myth of an exaggerated break between the artist and the public; a myth that is best understood through the ironical French expression succès de scandale. In other words, the shock of seemingly outrageous art dooms the artist to a level of success and acceptance that destroys all bohemian pretensions along with their romantic projections of victimhood. Things that appeared radical become traditional through the transformative power of social and cultural incorporation. It is easy to forget how American plutocrats purchased Impressionist paintings and European aristocrats collected Fauve works prior to 1914. Still, most Western governments remained committed to the traditional beaux-arts approaches of their countries’ respective fine arts and architectural academies. The upheavals of World War I disrupted that relationship until some measure of stability returned after World War II. Only then would the modernist notion of the self-expressive independent artist receive recognition and money from the state.
Today, self-expression is synonymous with art, but it did not become a self-conscious priority until romanticism joined forces with the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As the nineteenth century progressed, modernism would codify self-expression into a set of informal quasi-metaphysical rules that separated the avant-garde from the philistines. The rise of the Bolsheviks, from 1917 through the end of the Russian Civil War in 1922, appeared to have resolved the conflict between self-expression and the state by uniting the party, the state, and the artistic avant-garde into a single, ideologically coherent movement. It was a delusion for which the artists eventually paid the price. As soon as Stalin came to power, the Soviet Union subjugated the artistic avant-garde and forced it to conform to policies that emphasized propaganda over self-expression, with the latter being condemned as bourgeois decadence. Something similar happened in Italy, although not with the same ferocity as in the Soviet Union and, after 1932, in Germany. The Fascists, Communists, and Nazis reduced art to propaganda at the service of the party, the people, and the state. Totalitarianism allowed no other option. As Clement Greenberg wrote in 1939, “Where today a political regime establishes an official cultural policy, it is for the sake of demagogy. If kitsch is the official tendency of culture in Germany, Italy and Russia, it is not because their respective governments are controlled by philistines, but because kitsch is the culture of the masses in these countries, as it is everywhere else. The encouragement of kitsch is merely another of the inexpensive ways in which totalitarian regimes seek to ingratiate themselves with their subjects.”
Greenberg observed a challenge that would haunt arts funding in the Western World from 1945 to the present and would expand with both the right-wing and progressive embrace of moral absolutism. If public entities are to fund the arts in a remotely equitable manner, do they have a responsibility to tolerate conflicting viewpoints that reflect the totality of a pluralistic society, or should they only fund art that promotes an official social, political, moral, and aesthetic stance? Zero-sum ideology is inseparable from zero-sum funding. Furthermore, how do arts organizations determine who deserves funding in an age of populist rage against expertise in all fields? Should governments promote kitsch, as Greenberg noted in 1939, because it is the “culture of the masses” and thus best serves its interests? Should state institutions for the arts and humanities establish an “official cultural policy,” as some Western leaders are now attempting, or should they be disbanded altogether? These questions have assumed a new urgency in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom as they witness rising threats to the postwar world order from within the ranks of their allies. They understand that art is a crucial component of the culture wars that could overturn democracy.
The Canada Arts Council addresses the questions gingerly with the following statement:
Canada needs the arts for the vital contributions they make, perhaps now, more than ever. The arts strengthen the economy, promote social cohesion and improve health and well-being. At the same time, several significant factors are affecting the arts right now. These factors include challenging economic realities, changes in audience behaviours and a shifting global landscape.
The Canadian approach reveals an awareness of an art-skeptical populist resistance that must be mollified with a utilitarian palliative. To that end, the statement further adds:
With this priority, we will ensure that the arts sector can fulfil its role as an economic driver. The arts make a strong contribution to Canada’s GDP by creating jobs, enriching local economies and attracting tourists and investment across the country. Our work seeks to strengthen these economic contributions for the benefit of all Canadians.
The Canada Arts Council is, of course, correct. The arts do provide practical benefits, but would it be necessary to address the issue in such an overtly utilitarian manner were it not for growing skepticism against all forms of government funding for the arts and humanities among Western populist demagogues? In light of its history, Germany is especially sensitive to the question. Its approach is equally cautious while reflecting the need to balance the preservation of its cultural patrimony with the encouragement of new forms of expression. As The Federal Cultural Commissioner for Culture and the Media states:
According to the Basic Law, the promotion of art and culture in Germany is primarily the responsibility of the states and municipalities. The federal government supports institutions and projects of national importance. In doing so, it contributes to preserving the cultural heritage and ensures that art and culture can flourish. The budget of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media allocates approximately 2.3 billion euros for this purpose.
In a classically French universalistic manner, the French Ministry of Culture declares: “According to the decree concerning its responsibilities, the Ministry of Culture’s main mission is ‘to make the great works of humanity — and first of all those of France — accessible to the greatest number of people.’”
Canada, Germany, and France, among other developed countries, address the issue of arts funding as an investment in civilization without being explicit. Whether the introductory position is overtly utilitarian or couched in the lingering aspirations of a mission civilisatrice, the goal remains an investment in the wellbeing of the citizenry at the heart of a civilization. Art is understood as a luxury, in a strictly etymological sense, that is essential to a healthy pluralistic and democratic society. This does not suggest that authoritarian or totalitarian systems lack art, but their investment lies in the expression of state power as artistic spectacle. From imposing monuments to grandiose military parades, such regimes invest in art as they do in weaponry by transforming creativity into bludgeons for use against their peoples. What should be a communal luxury becomes an expression of the dictatorial ego and its perversion of civilization into collective debasement and death. Under the circumstances, continued funding for the arts in the free world may still stand as one of the protective shields against encroaching authoritarianism disguised as popular will.
Bibliography
Canada Council for the Arts. “Priorities.” Canada Council for the Arts. https://canadacouncil.ca/priorities. Accessed June 2, 2025.
Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM). “Kunst und Kulturförderung.” Kulturstaatsministerin. https://kulturstaatsminister.de/kunst-und-kulturfoerderung. Accessed June 2, 2025.
Greenberg, Clement, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Art and Culture: Perceptions, ed. Clement Greenberg: Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.
Ministère de la Culture, “Missions,” Ministère de la Culture. https://www.culture.gouv.fr/nous-connaitre/decouvrir-le-ministere/missions. Accessed June 8, 2025.