One of the big differences between the renaissance and now is that we, as a society, place very little value on the arts. We value entertainment hugely, but I think there is a general feeling that entertainers ought to be able to earn a living from their performances. The value of entertainment lies in time pleasantly spent, no more than…
One of the big differences between the renaissance and now is that we, as a society, place very little value on the arts. We value entertainment hugely, but I think there is a general feeling that entertainers ought to be able to earn a living from their performances. The value of entertainment lies in time pleasantly spent, no more than that, and no less.
Art, on the other hand, at least as it was classically understood, was a means by which we sought to understand ourselves. When A. E. Housman said "Malt does more than Milton can / To justify God's ways to man," he was referring to the notion that it was the business of art to explain God's ways to man.
Now we look more to psychology, and, increasingly, to neurology, for that same kind of understanding. Art once stood on the same pedestal as philosophy, theology, and science. It was a fundamental way of examining and understanding our lives. Art no longer enjoys that status (and philosophy and theology have been severely demoted too).
There is, to be sure, still some government funding for the arts, though I suspect that this is more a form of vote buying than born of any expectation that it will have any social or civilizational benefit. But such funding is almost everywhere in decline, and it does not reflect any wider social or intellectual appetite for the arts (as distinct from entertainment).
Joseph Bottom has an interesting book called The Decline of the Novel in which he traces the decline in the social and intellectual significance of the novel over the centuries. It is well worth reading.
Which leaves me questioning if there is much social appetite for patronage of the arts in society today, particularly among the rich, who generally see the hope for understanding in STEM rather than the Arts.
Alternate funding models for entertainment is a different subject. People are exploring alternate funding model and pricing strategies for all kinds of things. (Software going from a permanent sale model to a subscriptions model is one such example.) The approach of selling early access to content that will one day be free, as practiced by most writers on Patreon, strikes me more as an alternate payment model than actual patronage. People are paying for a personal good, not a social benefit. (And pay now, free later model is not exactly new in publishing: novels have been free in libraries for many decades, for those willing to wait a few weeks or months.)
Not to say that this is not all worth looking at, but I suspect it may be important to make a distinction between alternate funding and payment options for entertainment (in which customers expect personal value for money) and actual patronage of the arts.
Yes, but I would argue that the reason people were interested in being a patron of the arts, was not because they were into the arts, but because they were into the status symbol that being a patron of the arts gave them.
As art moved from being funded by wealthy individuals and entities to being funded by nonprofits, the arts lost prestige because they were no longer the enviable realm of the elite, but the charity case that needs money.
In other words, I don't think the arts lost prestige because people stopped being into the arts, but because the wealthy were no longer involved. And the wealthy were what gave the arts prestige in the first place. What we are interested in often comes from the top-down.
The rich jockeying for position on something is what makes it popular. Take charitable giving for instance. No one was doing it, and then Ted Turner admitted that he wasn't making donations because "the gifts would take such a chunk out of his total net worth that he would plummet down the Forbes 400 roster of the nation’s wealthiest men and women."
So Fortune (and then many others) started a list of the most charitable, and suddenly all the billionnaires were jockeying position, trying to outgive one another so they could make it to the top of the list and be seen as the most giving. The rich competing with one another drive huge trends!
I don't see it that way. If it is the wealthy that give the arts prestige, then appreciation for art is nothing more than aping the rich, and, to borrow a phrase from Flannery O'Connor, if that is all it is, to hell with it. I'm with Joseph Bottom (and C.S. Lewis) on this. Art is one of the places we look to to explain our lives. But it was the fashion of the last century to look to psychology for that, and of this century to look to neurology for it. That has diminished the intellectual and moral status of the arts -- to the point, I suppose, where it is possible to view them simply as a form of bling.
Were the oligarchs of the Renaissance funding art for the sake of art or bling for the sake of bling? It would, at least, require some substantial research to demonstrate the former. But still, I choose to believe that it was not mere bling in their eyes, for what seems to me the significant reason, that the art they funded was among the greatest the world has ever known. It is hard to see how that happens without some application of taste and discernment on the part of those holding the purse strings, or at least of the part of those they chose to advise them.
I don't disagree that, for the end-user, art is "the place we look to explain our lives." But I don't think the end-user and the investor are necessarily the same person.
That's fair. A patron could fund the arts for the sake of their own prestige rather than for the sake of art itself. But this implies that patronage of the arts actually conveys prestige on the patron, which only happens if the arts are valued. (Admittedly, that does not resolve the chicken and egg problem of whether the arts were prestigious because they were supported by the rich or if the rich supported them because they were prestigious.)
I'm sure that did happen in the Renaissance period. On the other hand, I don't believe it is always the case. In particular, I think the wealth in the Renaissance period was usually based on land ownership (though commerce was obviously producing a lot of wealth as well). I think it is not unreasonable to think that a landowning aristocracy, whose preoccupations were less entrepreneurial and managerial, might have given more thought to the arts. Particularly, perhaps, among wealthy women, who might often themselves be educated in the arts as part of their obligations as hosts and entertainers of their guests. But the above is all pretty hand-wavy, not researched in any way.
We might perhaps posit that some among the rich valued the arts and supported them, which made such support prestigious, which led to more philistine patrons following suit for the sake of prestige alone. There is also the factor that new money tends to ape old money. Thus the successful factory owners and entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution would sometimes by a great house and retire to the country to live like autocrats and gentry. Thus also T. S. Eliot's snarky reference to "a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire".
One of the big differences between the renaissance and now is that we, as a society, place very little value on the arts. We value entertainment hugely, but I think there is a general feeling that entertainers ought to be able to earn a living from their performances. The value of entertainment lies in time pleasantly spent, no more than that, and no less.
Art, on the other hand, at least as it was classically understood, was a means by which we sought to understand ourselves. When A. E. Housman said "Malt does more than Milton can / To justify God's ways to man," he was referring to the notion that it was the business of art to explain God's ways to man.
Now we look more to psychology, and, increasingly, to neurology, for that same kind of understanding. Art once stood on the same pedestal as philosophy, theology, and science. It was a fundamental way of examining and understanding our lives. Art no longer enjoys that status (and philosophy and theology have been severely demoted too).
There is, to be sure, still some government funding for the arts, though I suspect that this is more a form of vote buying than born of any expectation that it will have any social or civilizational benefit. But such funding is almost everywhere in decline, and it does not reflect any wider social or intellectual appetite for the arts (as distinct from entertainment).
Joseph Bottom has an interesting book called The Decline of the Novel in which he traces the decline in the social and intellectual significance of the novel over the centuries. It is well worth reading.
Which leaves me questioning if there is much social appetite for patronage of the arts in society today, particularly among the rich, who generally see the hope for understanding in STEM rather than the Arts.
Alternate funding models for entertainment is a different subject. People are exploring alternate funding model and pricing strategies for all kinds of things. (Software going from a permanent sale model to a subscriptions model is one such example.) The approach of selling early access to content that will one day be free, as practiced by most writers on Patreon, strikes me more as an alternate payment model than actual patronage. People are paying for a personal good, not a social benefit. (And pay now, free later model is not exactly new in publishing: novels have been free in libraries for many decades, for those willing to wait a few weeks or months.)
Not to say that this is not all worth looking at, but I suspect it may be important to make a distinction between alternate funding and payment options for entertainment (in which customers expect personal value for money) and actual patronage of the arts.
Yes, but I would argue that the reason people were interested in being a patron of the arts, was not because they were into the arts, but because they were into the status symbol that being a patron of the arts gave them.
As art moved from being funded by wealthy individuals and entities to being funded by nonprofits, the arts lost prestige because they were no longer the enviable realm of the elite, but the charity case that needs money.
In other words, I don't think the arts lost prestige because people stopped being into the arts, but because the wealthy were no longer involved. And the wealthy were what gave the arts prestige in the first place. What we are interested in often comes from the top-down.
The rich jockeying for position on something is what makes it popular. Take charitable giving for instance. No one was doing it, and then Ted Turner admitted that he wasn't making donations because "the gifts would take such a chunk out of his total net worth that he would plummet down the Forbes 400 roster of the nation’s wealthiest men and women."
So Fortune (and then many others) started a list of the most charitable, and suddenly all the billionnaires were jockeying position, trying to outgive one another so they could make it to the top of the list and be seen as the most giving. The rich competing with one another drive huge trends!
(Great article about this here: https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a37939625/competitive-philanthropy-history-jeff-mackenzie-bezos-gates-buffett/)
I don't see it that way. If it is the wealthy that give the arts prestige, then appreciation for art is nothing more than aping the rich, and, to borrow a phrase from Flannery O'Connor, if that is all it is, to hell with it. I'm with Joseph Bottom (and C.S. Lewis) on this. Art is one of the places we look to to explain our lives. But it was the fashion of the last century to look to psychology for that, and of this century to look to neurology for it. That has diminished the intellectual and moral status of the arts -- to the point, I suppose, where it is possible to view them simply as a form of bling.
Were the oligarchs of the Renaissance funding art for the sake of art or bling for the sake of bling? It would, at least, require some substantial research to demonstrate the former. But still, I choose to believe that it was not mere bling in their eyes, for what seems to me the significant reason, that the art they funded was among the greatest the world has ever known. It is hard to see how that happens without some application of taste and discernment on the part of those holding the purse strings, or at least of the part of those they chose to advise them.
I don't disagree that, for the end-user, art is "the place we look to explain our lives." But I don't think the end-user and the investor are necessarily the same person.
That's fair. A patron could fund the arts for the sake of their own prestige rather than for the sake of art itself. But this implies that patronage of the arts actually conveys prestige on the patron, which only happens if the arts are valued. (Admittedly, that does not resolve the chicken and egg problem of whether the arts were prestigious because they were supported by the rich or if the rich supported them because they were prestigious.)
I'm sure that did happen in the Renaissance period. On the other hand, I don't believe it is always the case. In particular, I think the wealth in the Renaissance period was usually based on land ownership (though commerce was obviously producing a lot of wealth as well). I think it is not unreasonable to think that a landowning aristocracy, whose preoccupations were less entrepreneurial and managerial, might have given more thought to the arts. Particularly, perhaps, among wealthy women, who might often themselves be educated in the arts as part of their obligations as hosts and entertainers of their guests. But the above is all pretty hand-wavy, not researched in any way.
We might perhaps posit that some among the rich valued the arts and supported them, which made such support prestigious, which led to more philistine patrons following suit for the sake of prestige alone. There is also the factor that new money tends to ape old money. Thus the successful factory owners and entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution would sometimes by a great house and retire to the country to live like autocrats and gentry. Thus also T. S. Eliot's snarky reference to "a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire".