When the Canada Council for the Arts was proposing changes to its visual arts funding program, the staid, predictable Canadian reaction — don’t change anything — ensued.
The current outcry from visual artists across the country is certainly warranted, but maybe a closer inspection of the issues is helpful.
The proposed new system, starting in February, does have its problems. The biggest of these is that in order to get funding in the future, artists must exhibit their work in a professional gallery setting. The problem is, by forcing artists into the gallery system, does the art become less about a creative process and more about a deliverable product?
Not only that, but by making it necessary to publicly show your work, it seems likely that more established artists, who have good relationships with recognized galleries, have a better chance of getting the grant.
Right now, any Canadian artist can receive the visual arts grant of $10,000 based on the Council’s review of their work. The grants add up to about $3.5 million and they reach 220 artists across the country.
Centretown artist John Barkley says the grants given by the Canada Council are crucial to many of his peers.
“They (the grants) are very important because, in a way, they legitimize artist’s careers,” Barkley says. “They allow artists to work on projects they wouldn’t be able to fund otherwise.”
Barkley also notes that artists working on what he calls “vogue subject matter” (technological and multimedia art) are more likely to get grants than people working in traditional mediums like painting and scupture.
Now for something completely different: the reasons why the changes might not be so bad.
First off, the current structure of the visual arts funding program is over 40 years old, so maybe it’s time to rethink a couple of things. For example, how many artists are living in Canada now as opposed to 1964? Secondly, how many are now living outside the major metropolitan centres where so-called professional art has traditionally resided? Thirdly, how far does $10,000 really go?
Francois Lachapelle, head of the visual arts section of the Canada Council for the Arts, says the Canada Council consulted with about 300 Canadian artists and concluded that artists want more of their funding to go toward career-building, and promotion than in the past. Lachapelle says the council has tried to accommodate this by making public exhibition mandatory.
This is probably not so bad. These are, after all, public funds the Canada Council is dealing with and maybe it’s a cold reality that Canadian artists are now accountable to the public. People used to become artists to get away from career development, but in the era of multinational capitalism and meritocracy, perhaps that model doesn’t work anymore.
After all, is using the language of commerce to discuss the direction really that unthinkable? Is it really backward to think of art in terms of production costs and favorable outcomes, or is it simply a sign of the times?
That said, certain mediums taking precedence over others is not worrisome. Barkley says the council assumes paintings are easier to sell than multimiedia art. That’s debatable. There’s more opportunity for traditional artists to show their work? Yeah, maybe if they live in downtown Montreal.
The changes to Canada Council funding raise issues that will likely pester the arts in the future. But realistic expectations are necessary if artists want to be taken seriously and the total commercialization of the arts is still a long way off.
When painters start wearing Armani suits and shifting their workspaces to the business district, then there might be more reason to worry.