During the month of August, Engaging Matters is republishing some of the most widely read articles from the five years this blog has been in existence.
Several times I have suggested it’s necessary to understand that some of our internal, somewhat coded language is off-putting to the world beyond our inner circles. “Arts for arts sake” is one example. Art for Art’s Sake? There’s No Such Thing (from early in 2012 and copied below) attempts to make the case that art is always about people. Follow up posts plowing similar ground are:
Art Is Not Fundamental
Art for Arts Sake Revisited
AfAS Follow Up
——————–
Art for Art’s Sake: There’s No Such Thing
(from January 2012)
So here is a bit of heresy for the New Year. A recent post by Clayton Lord on his blog New Beans, This Is Your Brain on Art (sizzle, sizzle), reminded me of my first exposure to the Rand Corporation’s 2005 Gifts of the Muse study. A distinction was made there between instrumental and intrinsic benefits of the arts. I remember feeling a bit uncertain about its reasoning at the time. I’ve remained so. Its central premise is that there are two kinds of benefits provided by the arts, intrinsic and instrumental. The latter have (and had) been highly touted as rationale for support for the arts, both public and private. The study claimed, rightly, that the instrumental benefits had been over-hyped at the expense of valuing the arts’ intrinsic benefits. So far, so good, especially when one evaluates the two categories. (The following is excerpted from the Research Brief linked above.)
Instrumental benefits were identified as:
- economic (employment, tax revenues, spending; attraction of high-quality workforce)
- cognitive (academic performance; basic skills, such as reading and math skills; learning process)
- behavioral and attitudinal (attitudes toward school; self-discipline, self-efficacy; pro-social behavior among at-risk youth)
- health (mental and physical health among elderly–especially Alzheimer’s patients; reduced anxiety in face of surgery, childbirth)
- social (social interaction, community identity; social capital; community capacity for collective action)
Intrinsic benefits were in three categories:
- immediate benefits, such as pleasure and captivation
- growth in individual capacities–enhanced empathy for other people and cultures, powers of observation, and understanding of the world;
- benefits that accrue largely to the public–the social bonds created among individuals and the expression of common values and community identity.
Where I had and have a question is what the fundamental difference is between the two categories? In each, the arts do things. They enhance or improve lives. They also overlap. For instance, how are “behavioral and attitudinal changes” different from those listed as examples of “growth in individual capacities” or “social” from “benefits that accrue largely to the public”? Certainly, the economic and cognitive categories of instrumental benefits are outliers. They are the (relatively) new kids on the block for arts advocates and, particularly with economic benefits, were arguably the least unique to the arts. (How does the economic impact of the arts differ from–how is it better than–the economic impact of professional sports?)
But my point here is not a critique of the Rand report. It is simply a way in to the title of this post. What do we mean when we talk about “art for art’s sake”? I harbor a suspicion that some of the enthusiasm for the Rand report was rooted in the arts community’s preference for viewing the arts as transcendent experience. I do not differ. What concerns me is the fact that we can forget that the arts provide transcendent human experience. In other words, the value of the arts is in the impact it has upon people. As I sometimes say, if art took place unobserved in the woods, would it still be art? (We will now let the aestheticians hold forth.)
I worry that “art for art’s sake” sometimes leads us to believe that it is the art that is important, less than the impact the art has on people. It is the capacity for impact that led me to a career in the arts and it is a big piece of my commitment to engagement. As a result, I am uncomfortable with the “art for art’s sake” argument. Give me “art for people’s sake” any day. That is, in essence, what I see both instrumental and intrinsic benefits as supporting.
Engage!
Doug
Photo:
Some rights reserved by torbakhopper
My sense is that the “art for art’s sake” mantra was pedaled mostly as a response to the call for arts practice to rest on some required justification in benefiting wider society. And some artists and thinkers, in entirely human petulance, made it seem that art could and in some cases should actually defy benefits to and even established values of society. “Art for art’s sake” would be code for disowning any connection to larger scale values.
Of course some art can behave that way, if it wants to, but deciding that has no claim on other arts practices. One version is not necessarily lesser than the other, though advocates for both are generally loud in proclaiming it.
But this strife over art either doing work for society or doing nothing misses the point. And the Rand study’s use of ‘intrinsic benefits’ only clouds the issue. The confusion we are mired in seems mostly a result of having misunderstood the nature of value. Things can be measured as working for a value, and those might be termed instrumental goods, they derive their value from something outside themselves, while other things can themselves be the measure of value, and those are the things that are, in fact, intrinsic. That last version is what we have not adequately wrapped our heads around when we discuss value in the arts. Some things are measured, and other things are themselves the measure. And nothing could be more ordinary.
The mantra of “art for art’s sake” makes it seem like we can locate a new source of value to stand beside art for the people. And of course we can. But the thing we are often objecting to in any declaration of “art for art’s sake” is that not all art needs to be valued instrumentally, that objecting to its instrumentality was important, and this defiant proposal for art is, sadly, only a poor attempt at answering that call.
My suggestion is that understanding art’s intrinsic value means we understand it as it functions in the role of measure of value. Rather than needing art to serve some greater cause, like the economy or cognitive development, we need to start seeing art as something we do for its own sake, because it itself is a measure of what things are worth doing.
And artist themselves have no trouble seeing this. We don’t make our art because its something good for the economy. No child sits down with crayons and a piece of paper because they are aiming at cognitive development. With those of us who practice art, value starts with art. It starts with actually placing art and arts practices within our lives. And to be honest, many folks outside the arts profession see this is well. We all were artists ourselves until we forgot how or were bullied out of our creative passions.
We all know the arts are important, but we have difficulty communicating it. A big part of that difficulty comes from us deciding to speak about the arts in this instrumental language, promoting the arts for its benefits. Of course few people want to listen to that! Of course few people are actually moved by those words! Its not why any of us actually DO art, so why would we make claims based on it?
The thing we need to better understand is that looking at the arts in terms of their benefits is all very well and good, but we need to start honoring the arts as well for their place in our lives as the measure of value. The arts don’t just point to other values, they tell us what things are important.
Its perplexing in the arts that we feel the arts need to be justified in some sense by outside values, that the arts are best understood as the means to some further ends. But what are those end themselves? Have we explained why the economy is necessarily worth supporting? Have we explained why other social virtues are worth supporting with the arts? If the arts need to be justified, and we justify them with these things, have we done a proper job of justifying those things too?
I’m not saying we do this, just pointing out that the role of measure is different from the role of things that get measured. The measure is that point of reference that stands still while the rest seems to rotate about its axis. Some things are axiomatic. We treat the economy as one of those things. Artists and others do, in fact, treat the arts as another axiom. Its not a metaphysical claim, but a stance on human culture.
Perhaps one day we will be as comfortable talking about the arts as we are talking about the economy.
When is the last time you heard someone question the value of the economy? When is the last time you heard someone question the value of the arts? Our problem is that we do not fully respect the intrinsic value of the arts the way we take for granted the value of things like the economy. And we ask for it every time we put ourselves forward as only offering up the goods of society, the means to their ends. Sadly, our inferiority complex is our own undoing…..