Death of Art: A Modern Tragedy
The business of art is in crisis. Audiences aren't returning, wealthy patrons are pulling back, and the traditional models of support for artists are crumbling. What does this mean for the future of art and the artists who create it?
Death of Art: A Modern Tragedy
First the writers, and then the actors followed suit. It came down like a ton of bricks when on July 14th it was announced that Sag Aftra would also strike. Fran Drescher's rousing speech went viral as she rallied her members for the battle ahead. Officially, the world of film, or at least the business of film was officially at a halt, and the grand pause offered us a time to reflect. In a not-exact parallel but similarly impact on artists is the current trend of theaters and presenting houses across the country laying off workers, and cutting seasons short or almost completely due to a lack of funds. The very machinery that fuels and presents artists and their work to the world is currently stuck and grinding to a halt. What does this mean in the short and in the long term?
Let's be clear, you do not need a third party to make a song, write a screenplay or devise theater or choreography. The ability to craft and create work that expresses how you view, see and understand the world is free and infinite. However, the process of creating art, and maybe more importantly, the way art is delivered and monetized is what is at stake. The changing landscape of technology has had a devastating impact already on this, to the positive and negative (some would err on the side of more negative). I've already written about how we ingest art, and delivering it to one another has created a bottleneck for artists to profit from their work.
While there is a democratization of sorts through things like streaming services, apps etc. the counterbalance to that is the services are provided to the artist by a third party, and not owned by them. What we are seeing now, however, is industries built around artists, and as a sort of deal with the devil, a means to deliver art to a market is being rocked. In the presenting world, post-Covid lockdown, audiences have not returned to theaters and stages at the same rate prior. Covid, though isn't the only factor. A general recession in the economy has also left people with fewer dollars to spend, and finding entertainment elsewhere. What also is happening, wealthy patrons and investors on a large scale are pulling back.
There are a lot of reasons to speculate as to why people aren't interested in the current menu being offered of work, from identity politics shifting to a shift in what people need and want in how they relax, and relate to themselves and one another, but the results is the vehicles that have helped produce art, helped pay artists and deliver it to people is currently stumbling, and ground to a halt. This is all in the short term, but what does it mean in the long term? That is the multi-billion-dollar question that no one has the answer to. It's one thing to write a script, but quite another to get it scored, actors to play roles, editors etc. to take that idea to fruition. Many people have written specifically about this, and the future of film, but it remains to be seen what the outcome will be. Similarly in music, composing and writing lyrics are just the beginning of the process, if you have a goal to profit from it, as opposed to it being a hobby. As it stands now, the way for a fair rate of exchange for bringing work to market is perilous at best. And that's just it, talking about art—in these ways, the melding of business and creativity has never been an easy, comfortable or ideal marriage. However, in a capitalist society, how do you survive in the alternatives, without being on the fringes of quality of life? For a long time, we've seen artists being forced to become entrepreneurs, marketers, content creators and everything else except what they actually are: communicators and translators of the human experience and existence through a creative medium.
This hasn't always been the case. Anthropologists, historians, researchers and critics have all presented evidence and proof that an artist's value to the social good wasn't always intrinsically tied to a market. There was a world in which the role of the artist transcended supply and demand, and didn't fit neatly into a box of exchanges of product or service for money. Their relationship to markets and communities were more layered, and nuanced than simply being the source of our distraction, escape and entertainment. In the present, society has reduced art writ large to exactly this. It's for this reason, we are teetering on the edge of the unknown. If art's worth and its necessity to be made is dependent on its market value, how can it be maintained and sustained when the market deems its value different from those who create it, and experience it? While I'd personally argue that art, along with food, shelter and healthcare are quality of life needs that should be supported outside of and regardless of their capital value (does everything have to be a business to be funded?) this isn't how our world works currently, and I won't hold my breath that it will in my lifetime.
As humans, we will always desire to create, to make sense of who and what we are, and why we are the way we are. Art is our inherent way of doing this. Expressing our doubts, fears, hopes, dreams, angst and joy through creative experience and process started almost at the very beginning of humanity. That drive and need, I doubt will ever change. However, what it looks like, and what it means and who controls how we all engage with it, is very much up for debate. The truth that we are all facing is, the modes and models that were supposedly created to sustain art and support the people who work in the arts, have, to put it kindly, been unbalanced and misguided. That reckoning we are possibly seeing in real time, and what the aftermath of it will be is very much yet to be determined. How do we resolve the belief that art's value and thus artists' value is priceless with the cold reality that everything in society has and comes with a price, one that we typically can't afford? Stay tuned.
