What, and Who, Is Art For?

Banksy, Snow, 2018 (source)

Someone recently hit me with a shopworn Banksy quote: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” The anonymous British graffiti artist, whose success is as much a triumph of public relations as artistry, rewrites an axiom beloved by creative professionals, satirists, clergy, and politicians worldwide, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. This chiasmus has precedents in the Bible, where Mary says:

He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.

Sounds great, certainly. But one wonders what exactly this means, coming from Banksy. Earlier this year, one of Banksy’s canvases sold for $20 million, a new personal best, and a price range beyond anything us pedestrians could afford. Though Banksy became famous for semi-illicit guerilla work in outdoor spaces, the artist’s ability to continue making public art is subsidized by producing portable canvases which only the insanely wealthy can afford.

I began actor training in the early 2000s, when one couldn’t go thirty feet in any American theatre department without hearing somebody loudly singing excerpts from Jonathan Larson’s Rent. That play’s exhortations against post-Reagan malaise and the racism and casual homophobia of the late Twentieth Century took on an explicitly rebellious edge. The play implied all of Manhattan’s bohemian Alphabet City would rise against stultifying conformity and change the world.

Twenty years later, my acting career sputtered following some poor choices; Alphabet City has gentrified; and though casual homophobia isn’t instantiated in law anymore, the revolution never actually came. As YouTube critic Lindsay Ellis has explained, theatre often embraces the rhetoric of insurrection. But it absolutely requires the financial backing of corporate donors and rich patrons, because the soaring overhead means theatre bleeds money most of the time.

Artists, including me, consider ourselves incipient revolutionaries. We have messianic delusions that, like Mary’s Magnificat, we’ll overthrow rulers and raise the proletariat. (Mary sounds almost Marxist.) Yet art regularly loses money, and requires someone else’s generosity to cover the bills. Maybe it’s slightly better in Britain, where public subsidies mean the working class can afford theatre, orchestra, and opera tickets, but even that makes art beholden to the state.

Since my acting career has translated strictly into community theatre, I’ve discovered how risk-averse management frequently is. Not only will boards avoid anything with raunchy themes or controversy, which is perhaps understandable, but they’ll also avoid anything too new. I’ve witnessed decision-makers moot the idea of producing material written locally, but it always dies quietly, as only something road-tested on Broadway will likely pull audience numbers sufficient to entice sponsors.

Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles, 1952 (source)

This means our company will never do anything likely to challenge our community’s religious, political, and economic suppositions. I don’t even mean Augusto Boal’s sometimes self-righteous precepts that theatre shows society to itself, exposing our worst sins and social rot. Sam Wasson writes that Paul Sills and Mike Nichols invented Chicago improv to wrest theatre from elites, yet the companies soon became dependent on high-demand ticket prices.

It’s tempting to say these points describe in-person art, which always suffers from high overhead. What, one wonders, about recorded music and movies, which can amortize costs across much larger audiences? Even that doesn’t bear scrutiny, as most recording artists lose money and depend on concerts and personal appearances to get paid. And with Disney’s acquisition of Fox, Lucasfilm, ABC, and Marvel, one company has a stranglehold on Hollywood.

Fundamentally, art needs the system it rebels against to remain solvent. Not even profitable, but just above water. Artists individually may believe we’re doing God’s work, but in the aggregate, like politicians, we kowtow to whoever carries the checkbook. Great art, like a pearl, originates in friction and suffering, yet we wind up defending the system we abhor, because sooner or later, we get hungry. We can’t help becoming complicit.

These complaints aren’t unique to art. I’ve heard parish pastors voice the same struggle: they ultimately can’t drive the moneychangers from their temple, because somebody has to keep the lights on. Politicians campaign against the very fundraising practices that subsidize their eternal reelection bids. I only focus on art here because, as I struggle to find buyers for the manuscripts I’ve written, I still need rent and groceries.

But I’ve surrounded myself with art, and its baggage, too long to read quotes like Banksy’s without flinching. That statement seems directed at me. But, like Banksy, I still need someone to buy my art.