The rhetorical power of similes lives in their connection of dissimilar things (through ‘like’ or ‘as’…remember your grade school grammar?). They infuse meaning and nuance into a conversation or communication by changing our frame of reference in intriguing and surprising ways. For example, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes ”Holmes looked at him thoughtfully like a master chess-player who meditates his crowning move,” he captures the flavor of the moment with an elegant paucity of words.
But it’s that thoughtful and powerful use of simile that makes one particularly persistent argument in the arts seem as dull and pointless as the Home Shopping Network (see how I used a simile there…). Should an arts organization behave like a business or like an artist?
I know I’ve raised the issue before in many forms, but in my recent week at the Arts Presenters conference in New York it rose again, and again, and again. As an example, the similes play a central role in Kenneth Foster’s otherwise fantastic piece on the past, present, and future of the performing arts which was discussed at the conference (available in PDF here), where he frames his conclusions like this:
Behave like an artist, not like a business.
We have a moment right now in which we can remake our organizations into arts organizations that navigate the business world rather than organizations that are ”in the art business.” All of the suggestions that follow emanate from the idea that the creative process followed by artists is the appropriate ”management tool” for arts organizations. From planning to implementation to evaluation we need to let go of the rigid businesslike approach that so many of us have adopted (strategic planning, systems of efficiency, linear thinking, quantitative evaluation) in favor of creativity, experimentation, flexible organizational structures and systems that respond more easily and more quickly to a changing environment, intuitive thinking and qualitative evaluation.
While there’s lots to commend in the recommendations — we should certainly strive to be more elegant, expressive, innovative, creative, and curious in our management practices — the false comparison between ”business” and ”artist” inevitably leaves us swinging and flailing like a novice golfer in a sand trap (another simile…just try to stop me). We all get the subtext: ”Business” is a proxy for an anal-retentive CPA obsessed with the bottom line; ”artist” is a placeholder for an idealized expressive individual who has healthy relationships, productive artistic practices, and cares little about food or shelter. But subtext, especially such vague and clumsy subtext, is insufficient for such an important conversation.
Arts organizations ARE businesses, so whatever they do is LIKE a business. Arts organizations are also ARTISTIC endeavors, so whatever they do is LIKE an artist. Whether they fulfill either of those explicit roles well is another question. Are they effective businesses? Do they offer a compelling artistic voice? These are the more focused questions that might actually get us somewhere.
If we hope to be extraordinary in either role (stipulating for the moment that they’re separate things), we might begin by striving for qualities common to the best examples of them both: focus, clarity, curiosity, passion, purpose, context, competence. All of those qualities would lead us to banish bad similes from our public conversations, when there are so many fabulous similes to be constructed that actually bring insight and nuance to what we say.
And don’t get me started about metaphor.
It’s been my experience that you have to follow certain business practices if you want to stay in business, even if your business is art. I cringe when I read popular “art consultants” writing about how artists can’t make a living with their art. (Why consult them, then?) It’s that rigid thinking that artists shouldn’t mix business with art that keeps artists “starving”.
It very possible to maintain creativity and experimentation while at the same time running your art business like a business.
I agree! Arts businesses are still businesses. However, the way I work with my clients is by keeping in mind their own individual style – who they are and who their audience is. What may work for one artist/organization does not necessarily work for all of them. You can still accomplish business with your own artistic flair and stay true to who you are as an artist.
I am reminded of my own challenges with being small in stature and playing a wind instrument. I had one teacher that was rigid in how and where I needed to breathe in order to complete a phrase. I was physically unable to play the phrases his way despite the many breath builder exercises I used. It was frustrating to say the least. I also had lessons with teachers that catered to who I was. As long as the phrase was musically sound, breathing in a different place or taking an extra breath was just fine. The phrase was beautifully accomplished in my own way.
As long as we keep reminding ourselves that every business is different and rid ourselves of the one-size-fits-all approach, we can remain individually creative without giving up the fact that we still need to take care of business.
Comparing Artist and Business is like the Process versus Product argument. There’s an interdependency. The Artist is going through the Process, and Business is what happens to the Product. You have no product without the artistic part, and the artistic part creates a product that you present to the world through some sort of business.
There must be something innate in humans that causes us to constantly create these dichotomies rather than seeing things as an inter-related continuum. I think the unique thing that an organization brings to this is the opportunity to bring together people who are better at one part or another. Some will be on the artistic side and involved in the process, some will be on the business side and involved in presentation/sales. The manager’s job is keeping the communication going so everyone can work smoothly through the continuum together.
I commend all efforts to avoid (and indeed challenge and dismiss) metaphors and similes in general, but especially those offered to presumably aid understanding but which, instead, obfuscate…
I agree with your summary questions about “effective” business performance, and “compelling” artistic voice…
David Curry
I love metaphors — I sense you may feel otherwise. Don’t be harsh on the function and importance of metaphors in daily life. We run business that prompt metaphors. The way people use images, story, song, movement that make meaning — that enliven, shape and imagine our plurality is important part of the work of arts administration.
I am keen about the power of the social imaginary in society the ways we imagine and make our lives together, (beware for those that are allergic to metaphor I am going to use one) — the ways of ”WE” as a metaphor, not the we of me and my friends, but the we that includes people you don’t know — the audience, the neighborhood, the city, the state.
Cultural policy research and arts administration practices is dominated by empiricist research and technocratic analysis but its domination in our business has produce a deepening gap of understanding associated with aesthetic experiences that is also part of what we do. Our practice needs to understand both the empirical and phenomenological faces of our work. I am not bothered by the quote of Foster because I believe that he is simply asking for better thinking about our field — if there is a sub-text in his words it is an argument against the construction of complicity that many policymaker have been working on associated with the cultural sector as ”business” as primary and the resulting deficiencies associated with that cage framing of our work. A deficiency that ignores or belittles how aesthetic experiences and business practices condition each other and how management is tied to paying attention to this relationship
And…don’t get me started about similes.
Roberto Bedoya
“rigid businesslike approach…in favor of creativity, experimentation, flexible organizational structures and systems that respond more easily and more quickly to a changing environment, intuitive thinking and qualitative evaluation.”
That sounds to me like the difference between a good company and a bad one. No more.
Is it possible that you think that artists *only work* when they are in an office environment, marketing themselves and doing “arts management business”??? Don’t you know that the work of the artist is the disciplined and organized labor of daily practice-rationing their time carefully, keeping up their art form while worrying -yes- about paying the rent and food and caring for the children while developing the strength of character to NEVER let those issues interfere with their performance unless, it’s the art form demands it of course. Is it possible you think that General Managers and Office Administrators are only creative when they go home and paint, and that all day, they are the only ones who are businesslike and disciplined, cold and structured, keeping their emotions at bay, never gossiping while working, never cracking a joke? Pardon me if I say that in my personal experience, the hardest workers with the greatest personal discipline and character are artists, the good ones of course. As in every work field there are those who can marry creativity and discipline, skill and inspiration -and those who can’t.
As far as being socially irrelevant goes, most organizationally driven arts forms today like orchestral music, opera, theatre — with the possible exception of ballet — are nearly completely out of touch with our present global situation and our social concerns. The day I see questions in this forum about the arts and global warming, capitalism, depression, fascism, fundamentalism, violence in the arts, public education etc, is the day I will know that arts managers really have come to grips — creatively — with the power of the arts to talk to and about our world.
Whenever I hear people admonishing arts orgs to perform more “like a business” – I always think, “Enron was a business.”
Yes, let’s banish bad similes! Let’s replace them with good ones!
On the top of my list:
Is what we do more like improvisation or more like choreography?