The pistol shot still echoes from the early 1900’s. The cultural industry started off as a private initiative. Writing for the mass media took more then aristocratic ‘genie’. It took a constant flow of letters from the veins of labourers. While the press has all but caved in to these pressures, writing for their daily gains, Xeroxing Reuters statements into user-customised formats to gnaw at the shares of others and giving in to popular demand, the literary world has, strangely enough, maintained a meagre independence. This most likely as the result of it being the target of ‘luxury’ consumption, where people buy goods primarily because of the fact that they are not for the masses. Nevertheless volume and profit also dictate these spheres more then ever.
When we look at theatre, painting and other art forms, however, we can see that industrial standards have settled in, beyond recognition of most and well beyond what we see in literature, where intellect is still a factor to be dealt with (though evil masterminds are probably plotting to get rid of it as we read). Off course, we also see this varnish of ‘genie’ still. But deeper, when exploring the actual layers, they resound industrial production for the market.
The market dictates price and sets the pace. This has mostly been the case, however. Mediaeval artists never existed. They were artisans in every possible way. The great Renaissance artists up until the end of the 19th century produced for a market and most bended and folded at the will of the commissioners of their pieces.
But then, in the great workshops of Rafael and Rubens, was the production not industrial, as well? It was not, for industry was non-existent. To the contrary, in the course of the 19th century, the genie of the artist up to a certain point decoupled from this market, especially in the world of painting. Possibly this stance arose through artists who gained so much renown and financial security that they achieved independence from the opinions of the moral and social mainstream and upper layers, whom they used to produce for. Down through the 20th century, we see the rising of an avant-garde, a core of artists unwilling to give up and step down from this independence, even if it meant hunger, despondency and dependence on other forms of production then artistic slavery. Yet they were free as artists. They did not produce so much for the taste the mainstream as for this true ‘genie’. They took and shook the art world in ways we will never see again.
What has happened to these free genies? They have been enslaved. They have been chained by different forms of authority and control. Over the years, creativity has been funnelled through channels which allowed the moral majority to catch up with these rogue avant-gardists again. One of the major problems has been the funding of these free spirits by governments and organisations. Artists need to live with the constant stress of not being able to make it. They need to chose between art and regular life. Where more so then in art, do extremes lead to greatness? What we have achieved by allowing training and production in the arts to be subsidized? We have gained an enormous mass of technical artists. Who are well-versed in execution. And so they have executed the avant-garde and ventured into the universe of the skilled factory worker, the only reason why they are not clustered into actual factories being that art is a luxury product, destined for consumption upward into the elite.
Too many people posing and wanting to have mental intercourse with their self-image of being ‘different’ have been allowed to venture into the ‘arts’. The enormous means that have been spilled upon the artistic community have allowed average and normal to become the standard where extreme used to reign supreme. Avant-gardism cannot be mainstream. For today, nobody can feel ok being average and normal. The desk-sitting boring man has been declared an outlaw. Originality has become the new average. Ironically this might get to the point were one has to make an art of being as boring as possible to be extreme.
