“America needs its artists and intellectuals, and they need to re-establish their rightful place in the general culture.  If we could reopen the conversation between our best minds and the broader public, the results would not only transform society but also artistic and intellectual life.  There is no better place to start this rapprochement than in arts education.  How do we explain to the larger society the benefits of this civic investment when they have been convinced that the purpose of arts education is to produce more artists, which is hardly a compelling argument to the average taxpayer.  We need to create a new national consensus.  The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a by-product.  The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.”

-Dana Gioia, “The Impoverishment of American Culture,” 2007.

My column in the Waco Tribune-Herald this week is inspired by a recent visit to see an exhibit called “Norman Rockwell and the Art of Scouting” at the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas.  Here’s an excerpt:

We Americans have always had something of a love/hate relationship with the idea of tradition.  On the one hand, it gives us a sense of community, place, and knowing who we are.  We’re fond of things like holiday traditions that not only bring order out of potential chaos but that provide ways of connecting to good memories—those warm fuzzies that have the power to carry even the most senior of citizens back to the days of innocence and wonder. 

On the other hand, going back to the earliest American settlers we’ve seen tradition as a stifling element of social, political, or ecclesiastical construction, stubbornly incapable of accommodating the ever-changing variety of human tastes, beliefs, and circumstances.  It binds us to practices and assumptions that may no longer be valid.  “Go west, young man,” became a tradition largely to escape other traditions.

Read the whole thing HERE.

Norman Rockwell, Men of Tomorrow, oil on canvas, 1948

(From 2012)

Last Sunday morning I heard a sermon about being thankful.  In illustrating a point about our formalized tradition of Thanksgiving, the pastor invoked Norman Rockwell’s well-known picture of a robust turkey on a platter being brought in to an elaborately-set dining table, while happy harmonious family members crowd around in eager anticipation.

That painting, which at one time was familiar to almost everyone in America just by hearing that description alone, is actually entitled “Freedom From Want,” and is one of a four-part series Rockwell painted called “The Four Freedoms.” In January 1941, almost a year before Pearl Harbor was attacked, President Franklin Roosevelt had stated that “in the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.” Those freedoms—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—quickly became something like shorthand for the underlying reason for fighting the war.

Rockwell wanted to translate those abstract ideas into something the American people could see and to which they could relate, and in the spring of 1943 painted his vision of each freedom. They were a big hit and the government soon sent the paintings on a tour around the country as part of one of its war bond drives.

It was a bold undertaking for Rockwell, much bolder than it seems today, and strikingly modern. After all, how best could an artist communicate the abstract notion of “freedom from want?” Harder still, how could one embody “freedom from fear” in a single image?  (Less difficult in this regard were the other two in the series, and I think that’s why I find them less compelling.)  Much later, in the post war years, American artists set about communicating things like anxiety, energy, and materialism, and decided that abstract forms did it best.  But for a nation teetering on the edge of war, Rockwell believed that crucial ideas like Roosevelt’s needed to take on tangible and relatable forms.

Many of Rockwell’s best-known images beyond these four have a wry smile flitting about the edge. “The Four Freedoms” do not. They are earnest in a way approached only by Rockwell’s later 1960s commentary on racism (“The Problem We All Live With”), and on other social strains the nation was undergoing.

In 1978, critic Robert Hughes said that Rockwell was one of two artists (the other being Walt Disney) who was familiar to nearly everyone in America, “rich or poor, black or white, museumgoer or not, illiterate or Ph.D. To most he was a master: sane, comprehensible, and perfectly attuned to what they wanted in a picture.” Rockwell “lived at a time when museum art tended to intimidate or bore the American audience,” Hughes wrote. But his work was refreshingly different. “It was seen, not as a painting, but as windows opening onto slices of life.” The turkey in “Freedom from Want,” for example, “is an image of virtuous abundance rather than extravagance, a Puritan tone confirmed by the glasses of plain water on the table.”

A few years ago a huge Rockwell retrospective toured the country drawing enthusiastic crowds wherever it went. In reviewing it, a critic for The New Yorker characterized the artist as a “Mark Twain-like observer of human folly who is continually saved from cynicism by a tender heart.” Indeed, I think that’s the most American quality Rockwell seeks to show us about ourselves. Even today as we the people still stumble between cynicism and tenderness, Rockwell encourages our allegiance to the latter. I’m thankful that quality remains visible after all these years.

Norman Rockwell, Freedom from Want, oil on canvas, 1943

My column this week takes note of accomplished painters who turn to sculpture as secondary creative outlet.  (It coincides with a show at the Museum of Modern Art of Picasso’s sculpture.)  Despite the change in form, we really shouldn’t be surprised when what comes out is as stirring as the artist’s more “established” work.  Read the whole thing HERE.

Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman (Fernande), 1909

In 1940, with France having fallen to the Nazis, England found herself standing alone against Hitler. That was also the year that the British government formed the “Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts,” the forerunner of today’s Arts Council of England. Some were baffled by the timing, but in the face of the war, the Council said, it was essential to show that the government cared about the cultural life of the nation. “This country is supposed to be fighting for civilization,” it added.

High stakes indeed. And for that matter, language quite alien to our contemporary ears. These days, arts organizations shy away from such sweeping pronouncements and seek more practical justifications for their spending.

Using the arts to promote “livability” in our communities is a hot topic; everyone from the NEA chairman on down to local mayors, arts councils, and newspaper columnists are talking about it. Another common argument in support of public funding is that the arts are a good investment—that money a city spends on the arts will eventually come back in greater tax returns. These days one also hears claims that the arts combat poverty, promote child welfare, and confer numerous other social benefits.

At one point or another the Arts Council of England adopted each of these as its legitimization. But there is risk in making such tangential justifications: In the words of Robert Hewison, professor of cultural policy at City University London, the Council eventually found itself “having to meet targets for health, education, employment, and the reduction of crime—not truth, beauty or a sense of the sublime.” That’s a pretty good example of what we condemn as “mission creep” when the Pentagon does it.

Still, the impulse to provide quantifiable results as a means of legitimizing the outlay of public money is understandable for the most part. Citizens want to know that the government isn’t wasting the money we give them.

The problem is that measurable, results-based efficiency is a tricky concept when you’re talking about the arts. There’s a very good reason we go see a play as opposed to watching it on TV, or go hear a symphony instead of listening to it at home, and it has nothing at all to do with practicality. As Hewison puts it, “a symphony played on a synthesizer is not an efficiency gain.”

The importance of the arts does not lie in child welfare, community-building, or economic growth, although they can contribute to all these things. The real value and contribution of the arts “is that they help a society make sense of itself. They generate the symbols and rituals that create a common identity.” That’s pretty well unmeasurable, but crucial nonetheless.

As it turns out, fighting a war–whether against Nazi Germany in the 1940s that sought to destroy “degenerate” like that of Kandinsky, or against ISIS in the second decade of the 21st Century that uses explosives to destroy treasures that are thousands of years old–is a perfect time to reflect on government programs that spend money on the arts.  One hopes that the points are obvious.  In peacetime, however, such programs may necessitate a more complex argument. In the long run, the way to make them understandable is through better arts education. When the arts disappear from the list of elements we consider fundamental to a good education, the next generation grows up not understanding their importance, let alone why a practical and results-oriented people should want their tax dollars spent in their support.