04.07.1996

Artistic poverty for capitalism’s sake

There is a lot of money, fame and prestige to be made out of the art world - but scratch the surface and you find an older, more threatening image. This refined savagery was shown again last week with a survey carried out by the National Artists Association. It revealed that 85% of artists earn less than £15,000 per year, 38% earn less than £5,000 and only 11% of UK galleries pay a fee to artists to exhibit their work. The script is just as bad in other areas of the arts - Equity, the actors’ association, reports 40% unemployment figures, with actors’ rights to benefit under threat. The Musicians Union is struggling to combat the increase of pay-to-play policies, where musicians are expected to pay for venue hire, equipment and technical assistance.

Post-modernism is one of the ideological potions that legitimates this spectacular system of a few art stars on top of a poor base, hungry for success - a brew that needs ample quantities of post-1968 left intellectual despair to give it a head. But the market might be concocting a sourer solution. Endism is a cultural brand name that mixes fin de siècle pessimism with a desire to ‘end’ the existence of class - or, more precisely, the working class. It seems ‘post’ is not enough, it is too contingent on the past. To progress, the past needs to be ‘ended’ once and for all. Art that connects with the “sensuous within thought itself’ (Marx) is too rude for capitalism’s cultural sponsors to endorse because alienation is the line of business they are in. The force of this imperative is creating the impoverished conditions artists work under today.

The commodification of art continues apace, subordinating creative social relations. It is communism’s task to overcome this alienation and not to mirror the larger malaise and gaze at art with a bored awe. Our sensuous activity now contains the hope for humanity. What is needed is a communist pole that exposes the prevailing ideology of despair and privatisation of experience and seeks to enrich, not pauperise artists and artistic expression. We can neither turn the clock back to the good old days, or Beckett-like, wait for history to deliver our subject - we must act now, in these “bad new days” (Brecht).

Phil Rudge