I'm not familiar with the artists in question, so it is difficult to comment there. Is it necessarily true that their works would never have been produced without government support?
I live in a developing country, and frequent an active art circle; we often receive subsidized visits from subsidized artists from the US, Europe, Australia, under the guise of cultural exchange. The visiting artists, in my view, often compare rather poorly with the local ones, many of whom struggle under conditions that few Americans could imagine, let alone endure. There is a self-indulgence, an arrogance, a sense of ordained entitlement in many of the "developed world" artists I meet, and in their work, that rubs me the wrong way.
A lot of this is, of course, subjective prejudice.
Using public money to develop the art infrastructure, make it easier for artists to exhibit their work, and provide art education seems to me to be a better use of public money than funding individual artists. This is because funding artists necessarily requires a judgement of whose work deserves funding, and I'm not convinced that this is a judgement that government is well qualified to make.
I should add that while I am not in principle in favor of government support for artists, it's not something that I get all irate about, and greet with implacable opposition. The money is irrelevant from a budgetary perspective, a gnat bite on an elephant's ass, and could probably be spent on worse things. I suspect that the energy with which some conservatives oppose such a minor expenditure stems mainly from anger at having to give money to people who are almost invariably toward the liberal end of the political spectrum. |
