Schoonheid, welzijn, kwaliteit

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Beauty, Welfare, Quality
Art policy and its legitimization after 1945

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Summary

In the implementation of its arts policy the Dutch government is faced with two types of problems: legitimization and allocation. This book is an enquiry into the government's methods of approaching these problems.

The process towards autonomy in the arts forms the background to both these problems. This process, which has evolved during the last few centuries in Europe, is characterized by the decline in the importance of ethical standards in the production and evaluation of art, and this has gone hand in hand with the increased significance of aesthetic criteria. This development was strongly influenced by the demise of the European royal houses. Nineteenth and twentieth-century art increasingly became a means of self-expression with different styles and movements following each other thick and fast; these characteristics have been defined as ‘diversity of style’. Artists, the public and those who commissioned art were no longer bound by a set of self-evident rules, and they all became subject to ‘uncertainty of taste’ with the direct result that appreciation of art became the task of experts: ‘specialists in taste’. A rift appeared between specialist art and the taste of members of the rising middle-class capitalist society. This approach, largely founded on the work of Norbert Elias, forms the theoretical perspective of this book.

Diversity of style and uncertainty of taste are used as sensitizing concepts in the description and analysis of the major problems involved in the appreciation of contemporary visual arts. These problems can be summarized as follows: the question what is art, and what is good art is a continual subject of debate and doubt (uncertainty of taste) since a dominant and clear formal tradition no longer exists (diversity of style). Diversity of style and uncertainty of taste in arts policy lead to problems of legitimization and allocation.

Legitimization problems constitute the most general group. Auton-

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omy in the arts, the increasing emphasis on individual creativity, the rapid succession of movements and trends, and the widening of the gulf between specialist art and the preferences of the masses are all important reasons for both government support and for the problems caused by the legitimization of that support. The government's task is to make a reasonable case for the tenet that supporting the arts serves a common good, but the scant interest expressed in contemporary arts seems continually to vitiate that argument.

Allocation problems are related to an issue constantly facing the government: insufficient means for too many applicants. When this problem arises in the social field the decision whether to award support or not is taken on the basis of minimum requirements and standards. Such methods in the field of the arts are hardly conceivable. Chapters ii and iii deal with the problems of legitimization, and allocation problems are discussed in chapters iv, v and vi.

The problems of legitimization are most succinctly brought out when dealing with the legitimization paradox (chapter ii) which reveals that governmental support for the arts exists because of and in spite of the lack of communal support for art. This paradox takes on an important role in many discussions on arts policy. The contradictions contained in the paradox cannot be bridged by economic theories. Neither the theory of the collective good nor the approach based on positive external effects provides a justification for government arts subsidies. The manner in which the arts policy was set up is largely responsible for the legitimization paradox. Dutch arts policy is rooted in the middle-class ideology of the ‘cultural offensive’, in the support of deserving artists and in state adoption of private initiative. These factors are still reflected in the present arts policy: distribution policy, types of policy which may be termed ‘artists policy’, subsidies for orchestras, and opera, ballet and theatre companies. These elements are not easy to integrate.

Increasing pressure of responsibility in policy-making resulted in the contradictions becoming palpable and problematic. The growing demands of systematics, calculation and rationale in policy-making raised more problems in the arts than in any other area. The various ways in which the government nevertheless endeavours to satisfy the demands of responsibility and clarification form a partial explanation of the dynamic of the arts policy since 1945.

After the Second World War the successive governments explained and justified their arts policies in different ways (chapter iii). From 1945 until around 1960 the stress lay on the view that art and beauty were synonymous and that association with art had an edifying and formative value. Arts policy since 1960 came increasingly under the influ-

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ence of welfare policy. Since 1980, quality has been the focus of arts policy. Today, it is art itself and not its social repercussions which occupies centre stage.

A direct result of the shift in arts-policy aims was a weakening of the philosophy of distribution. Until then, the distribution of the arts had been a way of making the higher aims of arts policy more accessible. After 1980, lack of success in this area resulted in the government laying less emphasis on the desirability of distribution, and even formulating the view that a certain measure of public demand should be a condition of subsidy awards.

Departmental restructuring and the changes which occurred in the arts themselves are some of the factors which explain the modifications in the higher aims of arts policy - from ‘aesthetic experience’ through ‘welfare’, to ‘quality’. These changes can be seen as a continuing depoliticization of arts policy.

Chapters iv, v and vi deal with allocation problems. The government's special position with regard to the evaluation of art is the subject of chapter iv. In 1862, Thorbecke formulated the principle that the government should not evaluate art; this principle has been adhered to ever since. Analysis of a number of parliamentary debates which took place in 1919, 1950, 1977 and 1985 has shown that a distinction must be made, when applying that principle, between ethical and aesthetic norms. In 1919 the dissension over ethical matters was considered to be a major obstacle in subsidizing the arts. In 1950 ethical criteria were just as important as ‘artistic norms’ in evaluating art, while today the aesthetic norm is predominant. On the one hand, this development can be interpreted as a facet of the increased tolerance for diverse philosophies of life and, on the other, as a recognition of the progressive autonomy of the arts. This development coincided with increased state support of the arts which contributed to arts evaluation being safely placed in the hands of expert advisors. The government's greater financial commitment to the arts went hand in hand with an increased detachment from its content.

The Raad voor de Kunst (arts council), the subject of chapter v, is the most important advisory body on the arts in the Netherlands. The formation of advisory boards, independent of state control, was one way of dealing with the problem that choices have to be made in arts policy. Since 1874, specially-appointed committees have been formed to deal with evaluation in the arts. After the Second World War, the need arose for an organization which would focus on the evaluation process, and a provisional Raad voor de Kunst was set up, to be followed a few years later by a permanent Raad voor de Kunst. Government and artists had diverging expectations of the Raad (council) and this discrepancy was mirrored in the continuous discussions about its

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powers and constitution. In the period just after the Second World War and again during the artists' protest at the end of the sixties, Dutch artists definitely cherished the hope that they would be granted a measure of control over arts policy, and that the Raad voor de Kunst would develop into an ‘artists' parliament’. The government, however, saw the Raad pre-eminently as a body which would act in an advisory capacity in the various sectors of arts policy in which it felt itself to be unqualified or insufficiently informed. Analyses of the Raad's members in 1947, 1957, 1967, 1977 and in 1987 show that the artists' role has considerably diminished in the last years - particularly as a direct result of a law amendment in 1977. This does not alter the fact that artists have retained a prominent position in committees and boards dealing solely with subsidy applications.

This development illustrates the lack of professionalization among artists: their only success is their virtual monopoly of evaluation, and even then it is not a real success - arts subsidies are decided by artists only because of the dearth of other interested parties.

The working procedures and ideology of the ‘specialists in taste’ form the main points in chapter vi. The concept that artistic quality is a property of a work of art which ‘specialists in taste’ with training and experience are able to recognize, is contrasted with a sceptical sociologically-inspired view of evaluation. This contention is that the opinion of authorized specialists - successful at giving their particular preferences a generally accepted meaning - determines the quality of a work of art. An alternative ‘figurative-sociological’ approach lays emphasis on the interdependence of the evaluators. Neither the intrinsic properties of a work of art nor the exceptional position of the evaluators is decisive. The evaluators are in no position to call anything they choose ‘art’: they are restricted by their colleagues' opinions, both at home and abroad. What binds them is artistic tradition.

Chapter vii is devoted to a description of the Netherlands' five national monuments. Problems closely connected with the central themes of this book have arisen in four of these five monuments: the absence of a dominant formal tradition, the increasing uncertainty in assessing the various styles, the developing split between the way ‘specialists in taste’ and public groups approach art and the government's precarious position in such conflicts.