Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

For one thing, business itself is not treated in such a sink-or-swim way:
government subsidies are an integral part of many industries, from farming to
sports franchises. One of the better reasons for such subsidies is that they shield
enterprises from momentary reverses. If farmers couldn’t survive a single bad
season, it would ultimately make for a weak social fabric. With the arts, the
time frame is often more stretched out. It can easily take decades for general
taste to approve of developments in art. The last hundred years are full of
examples. In France painters such as Monet and Matisse were ridiculed by the
majority of their contemporaries; there was a riot at the premier of Stravinski’s
"Rites of Spring." Of course, paintings by Monet and Matisse are now among
the most valuable objects on the planet; and thirty years after it had driven
listeners into a frenzy of disgust, Stravinski’s music was used by Disney as the
soundtrack to the dinosaur section of "Fantasia."
These are examples of successes. But it’s not always the case that today’s
innovative art becomes tomorrow’s classic. A 1920’s symphony by George
Antheil that used airplane engines has not yet become a cultural treasure (nor is
it likely to). That’s important. It misses the point to say "Fine, innovate, be
creative. But only if you turn out to be Monet. No duds or wild excesses,
please."
But why should the government have to underwrite art? Didn’t Monet work on
his own? There are a couple of answers to this. For one thing, a significant part
of NEA money goes to community groups, often helping get art to groups and
places it doesn’t normally reach: smaller towns, rural areas, schools that don’t
have the resources for art programs. And for the government to cut all arts
funding would mean that it recognizes no values other than the marketplace.
Under the reign of purely economic motives, there is no way anyone would
want to produce something unless it could be sold immediately. Imagine a
society in which every cultural product had to turn a profit instantly. If you
want to get a sense of how claustrophobic this can be, consider how dominated
commercial television is by spinoffs and imitations.
Given how informative, exciting, and revealing the arts can be, what an
important antidote they are to instant opinion polls, and how important they
already are to various different parts of the community, I think they’re worth 65
cents a year. The money is not wasted: people in the arts are appreciative of the
little support they get and work hard whether or not they get it. By their very
nature, the arts speak to the individual’s judgment at the same time as they
offer possibilities for building communities: they’re perfect training for the