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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Well I'm back online and catching up with the foofoorah about changes to the Canada Council's visual arts program. There are spirited threads on both Zeke's Gallery and Simpleposie with refreshingly crabby provocations by Timothy Comeau of Goodreads and refreshingly outraged response from various art-types. The discussion is polarising, which is entertaining, but of course, as Cedric Caspesyan points out, there's a loss whenever that happens. One very important thing to keep in mind is that most Canadian artists do not currently get funding from the Canada Council. There is a myth that we can float along on grants in this country, making esoteric and unpopular art that might never be shown. Some of the people who make art get government support some of the time, and a very very few of the people who make art get grants on a regular basis (but even for them there are no guarantees). In practice we are not that different from the USA, where artists whose work doesn't commodify well spend a lot of their time hustling money from private grants, bursaries, residencies, day jobs, gallery jobs, etc. The Canada Council isn't currently proposing to increase the amount of money or anything, so we are arguing about statements of principle. And in this respect the younger rabble-rouser types (and I include myself in this category, though I am not sooo young, because I will entertain doubts about the status quo) have been lucky to grow up under a government that, until now, openly states the importance of arm's length support for creation of art. Could we even pinpoint and begin to separate the explorative or experimental elements of our artistic personalities that were formed in the context of this ideal? That said, I'm glad Timothy Comeau is ranting and Zeke is stating his preference for the new, exhibition-oriented agenda, because ideals require scrutiny. If we care, we have to be able to question and change.
Comeau is dead right when he says: "It is not fair to think that the Canada Council's programs, nor our whole artworld infrastructure, as sustainable as anything else within the current system manifested by its bureaucracies." But he is wrong when he says: "In art, in luxury, in anything, it's only worth something if somebody wants it." Acquistion is only one method (and I would also pose it is restrictive) of interacting with art, but it is the only means available in the so-called "free" market place. Right now, with the Canada Council as it stands, we participate as a society in an open statement that culture has value beyond commodity. Tell me, is that not cool and worth defending?