From Art to Culture 1997

Peter Suchin, 'From Art to Culture'

Published in 'Round Midnight 1: Reach for your gun' directed by Anthony Everitt. 'The Carlise Papers: Cultural Policy Making' discussion papers which were published and distributed through the magazine Artists Newsletter in 1997.

One way of thinking about the institution of art is to see it as a device for editing out the potentially vast input into culture of the citizen, leaving space only for the contributions of those allegedly special persons we call artists. The distinction between artists and non-artists raises a number of questions, not the least of which involves the matter of creativity.

Creativity is a much-overused and misused term applied willy-nilly to all manner of activities and situations. Raymond Williams points out the difficulties over the world’s meaning are “inevitable when we realise the necessary magnitude and complexity of human activityâ€� covered by this term. Any intended cultural policy would have to include within it some definition of what creativity might be considered to be, and such a definition would certainly have to be broad enough to include the contributions of the general citizen, and not just the artist.

In The German Ideology Marx and Engels make a well-known defence of human creativity:

"The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in particular individuals, and its suppression in the broad mass which is bound up with this, is a consequence of labour. If, even in certain social conditions, everyone was an excellent painter, that would not at all exclude the possibility of each being an original painter … In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

Despite communism remaining unrealised save as a concept, Marx and Engels’ picture of the human subject as a fundamentally creative being is important, since it challenges the essentialist belief in the artist as a uniquely talented, creative person in a world of incompetent non-artists. The general creativity of the well-rounded human being is one consideration worth holding on to when contemplating the production of a cultural policy in which all members of society are implicitly addressed.

Another attack – this time very directly – on the institution of art is carried out by philosopher Roger Taylor in his provocatively-titled book Art, an Enemy of the People. Taylor argues that the term art is used as a means of conferring value upon a select number of objects and activities that are part of the lifeworld of a small group within the ruling class – which he terms the high bourgeoisie. The title of Taylor’s book calls up his thesis that things are labelled art only by route of a certain snobbery and feeling of superiority. It’s not Taylor’s intention to attack the making of paintings, dancing, music, the writing of fiction or any other of the activities we generally think of as creative practice. What he is trying to do is challenge the belief that only a very small section of such activities are worthy of being labelled with the status afforded by the word art.

The debates about what is and isn’t art, and whether or not the very idea of a special area of value known as art should be maintained are complex. Arts funding bodies have implicit value systems upon which they base their judgements as to who they are willing to fund, which activities are art and which not. One of the tasks needing attention when putting together an argument for a cultural policy is the relative weight and position of art within the broader framework of culture. How much attention should the established area of art get? Is there a need to shift the policy debate away from art, towards practices and interests conventionally ignored by government policy makers, and if so how might this be carried out? Conversely, how can one maintain a space for art and artists within a programme designed to deal with broad cultural concerns?

One of the areas that has to be addressed is that of imagination – like creativity a term difficult to define. The deployment of imagination – the act of invention – is not confined to the world of the artist. Non-artists are also instigators of imaginative activities and producers of unusual objects and situations. Perhaps the difference between artists and non-artists is one of attention, degree and access to cultural/artistic activity rather than any kind of special ability held by the artist. Creativity, in the broadest sense of the term, is a universal human trait but the artist holds the role of the didactic actor – one who shows to other people, through his or her own actual activities, possibilities for practice.

Artists are, almost by definition, people who give a considerable part of their energy, time and attention to creative concerns. Clearly this would suggest a greater level of learned expertise in the region of non-utilitarian, artistic behaviour. This expertise can be used to encourage and assist non-artists to instigate creative activities. It shouldn’t be forgotten that art is a relatively recent Western concept – perhaps, due for eventual extinction. In the twentieth century many artists have themselves worked towards the destruction of the institution of art, with a view to allowing the innate creative ability of all human beings to flourish. This seems something worth bearing in mind when attempting to construct a more egalitarian zone of culture, as opposed to a mere extension of the apparently élitist sphere of art. Artists themselves need to question what they see as their own role within culture. Perhaps it is necessary to play down the ‘special person’ status of the artist in order that a broader field of cultural interest can materialise.

Cultural policy: some minimum conditions

Any attempt at constructing a cultural policy must deal with a certain minimum range of interests. It must at least aspire to a consideration of shared values based on a commitment to a plural approach to culture. The question of what is meant by culture and cultural production must be seriously and adequately addressed. Finally, all these concerns need to be framed in such a way that the resulting development of any policy put into operation is sustainable. It is no use inventing a policy that is in practice too idealistic a structure to be realised.

One proposal emerging from ‘Round Midnight’ was the idea of setting up a Cultural Institute of Foundation within and around which a wide range of activities, interests and values might be developed. How such an institution might operate is open to debate, as are its potential policies and their practical, physical manifestation. But let’s look at some possibilities as to what such a Foundation should or might involve.

First of all, it should certainly be a plural space or framework, a set of relationships, interconnections, resources and ideas that are open to multiple combinations. The structure of the Foundation must be such that it can serve many different, perhaps sometimes conflicting, purposes without being determined in its activities by one overarching model of activity or belief. A commitment to diversity within unity might be its only structural paradox.

If one’s intention is to construct a structure capable of supporting diversity, the units making up that structure should themselves come from a range of places within already-established institutions, and from outside of such established areas of expertise too. The Foundation would thus pick up on aspects of many already-extant structures: the museum, library and gallery, visual arts facilities (including funding bodies), the university and art school, institutions engaged in scientific research and the business community. These and other components of the Foundation would come together in a variety of ways, and the point would be to enable the development of activities and interests not normally realised – or not easily realised – by the bodies currently in place.

It is not a question of doing what can already be done again more efficiently (though this might be one aspect of the Foundation); rather, the Foundation has to address a shift in attitude and activity – one which concerns culture as opposed to art. Furthermore, it would have to deal with a range of scales, taking into account events involving only very small numbers of people as well as vast, multi-component projects requiring the combination of many fields of research and activity. Nothing would be too small or too large for consideration but the emphasis would be on making manifest projects which might otherwise never come into existence, or which could not be realised through conventional channels.

In all this an acceptance and development of interdisciplinarity is fundamental. The point about combining resources is that such intermingling of techniques, ideas and facilities would lead to novel promulgations of both artistic and non-artistic activities and objects. A second factor regarding the melding or intermeshing of distinct components is that a new whole – a new kind of coherent result – would come into existence. If such a Foundation were successful it would not be as a mechanism for mere repetition. It would instead generate genuinely novel objects, interests and types of artistic and social practice hitherto not – or very little – in evidence.

But the Foundation would have to commit itself not only to the new, the previously unseen and undeveloped, but also to the role of the preservation of things already present in culture. It might, for example, take over the Arts Council’s job of distributing financial resources to the arts. But implicit in the Foundation would be the space for an ongoing debate about what was and was not worthy of funding. The Foundation’s policies regarding the distribution of cash (and indeed on all other matters) would have to be made explicit, in order that debates upon the particular implications of individual policies were open to potential realignment. Space for productive disagreement and a liberal attitude towards interests other than one’s own would be a necessary point of departure for this insistently broad church. The Foundation’s structure would have to be simultaneously ordered and open, capable of reforming itself when necessary, but in such a way that it did not bring on its own crude dissolution through acute internal disagreements.

If something coherent, self-structuring and progressive is to be made by the amalgamation of the discrete collection of interest groups and already-active institutions this requires a framework that holds the different aspects of the Foundation together. Various possibilities need to be carefully considered. What kind of base would the Foundation operate from? Would a skeleton staff of organisers inhabit a building which would be the focus of the Foundation’s activities, or would the threads connecting the multiple parties and elements involved only be drawn together when necessary for the generation of a particular event? If the ‘hardware’ were permanently sited in a specific location where would this be and of what would it be comprised? Would having one single location limit the Foundation’s potential even whilst providing a base in which numerous events could actually take place? Who would be involved and why? And how could one set up a structure which prevented any too self-interested participants from asserting within the general proceedings more than their fair share of influence? In short, what exactly would such an institution be?

To be discussing such a potentially influential institution at all raises a criticism of what is already in place. The implicit suggestion is that more can be achieved by bringing together elements from across culture’s broad spectrum than the current institutions, often working in isolation, can mange to provide. Interconnecting the various fields of practice, invention and scholarship, dissolving the old barriers between science, business and the arts, should lead to a more exciting (but quite frightening) cultural mix. It also invokes a necessary transformation of attitudes, a move away from the values of a society increasingly dominated by the commodity and its attendant mentality. Even if such a foundation must operate according to the rules of capitalist exchange it can be working towards the instigation of different rules of practice, helping to bring about a culture in which participation, and not merely consumption, is the order of the day.

Jean Gimpel, The Cult of Art, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969.

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, Lawrence & Wishart, 1977, p. 109.

Peter Suchin, ‘The Destruction of Art as an Institution: The Role of the Amateur’, Variant No. 5, Summer/Autumn 1988. Also included in The Art Strike Handbook, ed. Stewart Home, Sabotage Editions, 1989.

Roger Taylor, Art, an Enemy of the People, Harvester Press, 1978. Raymond Williams, entry on ‘Creative’ in Keywords (first edition), Fontana, 1976, p. 74.