The poison of contemporary art: from a response to a friend
...Speaking as a comic book artist, I am proud to be one of the people who never in history got so much as one penny of public endowment, and always had to find a public for our work. I think there is a case - and more than a case - for public money to preserve and exhibit art that is already acknowledged as classic, important beyond argument or fading, to build museums and concert halls; but contemporary art, art that is still being produced, must not be treated as though it were a public treasure. It is not, or, if it is, it must be given time to prove itself. The result of public endowment of the arts is art that is not "challenging" in any serious way, but rather facile, childish and self-satisfied; art, indeed, that betrays the very principles of the modern movement. And the reason is obvious. The great modern masters did not go to the state to seek subventions; they exhibited and sold their work. Someone complained that Picasso would only talk about the amount he would charge per square centimetre (Picasso probably had not liked him). Even when their work was unpopular, they relied on private support. Schoenberg and his followers, having to propose an altogether new idea of music itself, set up a "Society for Private Musical Performances": it was a small and separatist group (reflecting, in my view, the nature of their music, which is and will remain a minority and acquired taste), but it worked, and allowed Schoenberg, Berg and Webern to have the music they composed to be performed in front of an audience that appreciated it. It is not just that the artist must please someone; it is that the artist, and art itself, needs to communicate. Whether it is Wodehouse or Stan Laurel out to make people laugh with no further requirements, or Shakespeare or Tolstoy out to face us with the deepest and most tragic facts of our lives, the public is the other half of the work of art. Even if the work of art, like Webern's tiny atonal pieces, is aimed at a very small and select group of like-minded people who can understand it, nevertheless it has to please those people; and to please them enough that they will be willing to pay money out of their own pocket - to show that they, personally, feel that they have gained something by it. That is why compensation is important, and that is why transferring the financing of new art from the private to the public purse is deadly to the very sense and purpose of the arts.