Art, said Tolstoy, is not pleasure, consolation, or amusement. Art is an organ of mankind’s life, which transmutes people’s reasonable consciousness into feeling. And as such the freedom of this translation, this expression, is intrinsic in its creation and appreciation, it is paramount to its validation. The term Art and Culture is very ambiguous and has been used by politicians, the media and some of our largest art institutions to describe very loose ideals of art engaging within a contemporary process of culture. Of course the two will engage, they are both one and the same thing and two opposites at the same time. So for the sake of this brief introduction and artartart’s attempt to tackle this illusionary subject as a whole I will try to create a context;- ‘Art and Culture’ is the result of artistic endeavor combined with a value of social interaction through an acceptance of the forces created by the systems of that society. These systems can be summed up into three areas for the benefit of this short discussion. One; the creation and continuation of the free market, including the forces of globalisation and wealth, two; the social order and the retention of a hierarchical society through political and sociological structures and three; the idea of beauty, a romantic ideology that exists within our society to define the acceptance and rejection of cultural beliefs, interactions and relationships. And so we come to the paradoxical question; can art retain its freedom, its independence, if the cultural forces of the society support an existence of personal empowerment through wealth, namely can this independence survive the strength of this commerce?

This new look artartart sits well within this paradox of Art and culture. The cultural definition of a magazine is changing. Before the Internet, before the word ‘Blog’ was invented, magazines sat aloft alongside newspapers as a produced polished product and boasted a largely fixed formulated audience. But now we have entered into the truly global communication era where space is no longer defined by the physical, borders and boundaries are transcended and as such they have become obsolete. And so the print media industry has to change and adapt. With more and more of us getting our daily news, information and recreation from the Internet newspapers and magazines are having to produce more and more content online and find new avenues for generating revenue. And so to artartart’s first dilemma in this context of Art and Culture, or artistic freedom in culture; Should artartart attempt to generate revenue through advertising? To retain complete artistic freedom and to allow our writers and audience the freedom of their own views free of external interactions the magazine should not have any external influences, not on the website, not on the PDF download, not even in the archive should we link to commercial sites. And yet without an income, irregular or otherwise, the opportunity of growth remains at best whimsical and at worst stagnant.

To defy the forces of economics in a society driven by the capital gain of the individual is a historical position of difficulty for the artist. And currently we seem to be at a crossroads between newly found artistic freedoms and cultural forces overwhelming artistic creation. Now more than ever, with emerging technologies and changing societies, artists should take back the initiative and gain ground on the forces of commerce. But these forces of capital and government curtail true artistic freedom by wedging the arts between either a position of state dependency or being driven by the commercial market.

The commercial artistic market is in, what others have called, a ‘prolonged period of growth’. The money currently being handed over for art is at an all time high and yet this increase can not go on expediently. The forces of the economical and global economy has a huge effect on this market, if the world market is doing well, if the rich keep getting richer, than this art market will do well. But the artistic freedom in this market is curtailed by the ideal of the brand, an artist will sell based upon the market forces pushing the brand of that artist. Tolstoy’s ‘reasonable consciousness’ is an irrelevancy, the artistic endeavour is lost, replaced by the endeavor of capital gain.

State dependency is a virtual inevitability for those who wish to produce and support the artistic endeavour without morphing into the capital model. So why would the support of the state be bad for artistic freedom? It shouldn’t, the current British government recognises the importance of the arts as a cultural drive, which supports and stabilises society, and in turn stabilising the government of that society. This state funding given to the arts supports the production of artistic creation without a return of capital, allowing freedom of thought to produce socially progressive cultures. This is the plan anyway.
Unfortunately the New Labour model of funding comes at a price, not a direct capital gain but still one that is detrimental to artistic freedom. The vast sum of money injected into the arts since the creation of the National Lottery in 1995 has been much needed but this government’s model of social regeneration through the arts restricts the nature of artistic freedom. The presumption that art itself acts as an integral social enthuse is not one adopted by the state, instead the arts is perceived as a tool rather than an end product to aid the economy, create social inclusion and produce urban regeneration. Of course it would be strange to state that these are not important factors for art to consider but art should not be acting in the vain of the government over these issues, the government should be finding more direct approaches to these issues whilst supporting the arts but also recognising its freedom to act as a truly socially progressive tool. The government’s true position on the arts as an important independent tool for social progression is clear by the sudden curtailing of arts funding to make way for another social regeneration tool, the 2012 Olympics.

Urban regeneration is used as a strong advocate of state and private funding of the arts. The Tate Modern acts as a blueprint for urban regeneration through the arts. Since its opening in 2001 many public art institutions have been created throughout the country due to state funding, including sites such as the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, which held an ideal of urban regeneration at the heart of its construction. But this policy for regeneration seems limited, with a great shortage of new housing and all time high housing prices it is hard to see how the policy of regeneration through art is at best a limited approach. This is not to say that the building of regional arts centres should not be encouraged, but the freedom allowed under the current system seems to be one of a hollow point.

This institutionalisation of art under Labour has brought about a flourish of artistic recognition and sustained growth in the U.K. But the struggle of many small independent artists, groups and organisations to gain the funding needed to exist for short periods of time, let alone to generate longevity and competition against established institutions, highlights the hoop jumping needed to succeed.

But some groups do work and generate interesting modes of operation, Campbell works is such an art group that has managed to maintain and support is aims whilst obtaining, by no small feat, the money necessary to support its project, but as they state in their interview in this issue, some objectives such as education are easier to obtain funding for and yet art shows, their primary concern, is much harder to secure.

So where does this leave the artists themselves? What are their options in a system that encourages artistic expression but curtails its freedom? I would be perhaps too quick to state that it produces too many ill equipped artists, as the possibilities of creativity are as refreshing as they ever have been but perhaps the current systems do not assist a progressive and idealised artist but in fact encourage a standardisation of the artistic output that is produced. Once an understanding of the standard is produced none are left to challenge its position, it simply is. This standard is encouraged through the processes of education, work placement, and public art commissioning. As discussed in this issue the culture of the Internship is creating a sub workforce that operates for free to support the increasing art industry. That is not to say that an internship is not an important tool in the development of the individual but at what cost are they paying for this experience? As art becomes more commercialised and standardised the care for the person as artist is replaced by the person as commodity to either meet economical restraints or to fulfill requirements of government standards on education and training.

This text clearly leans against the current political and economical forces in play and yet without the funding from these areas then the artistic landscape of the U.K would be completely different, this much is clear. But going back to the point I made at the beginning of this article; the term ‘Art and Culture’ is an obtuse one, and yet in our current climate this term becomes more potent when considering the culture of commerce and the worrying growing culture of art as social reformist, art as educator and art as regenerator. In this culture Art is no longer the organ of Mankind’s life but merely the organ of Mankind’s greed and misgivings.

/ artartart@mattroberts.org.uk