Alan Davey says funded organisations do not lose their right to question and seek the truth.
This year’s Edinburgh Festival opened with a typically thoughtful and provocative speech from the playwright Mark Ravenhill, about the relationship between the artist and society, and whether, to the truly adventurous spirit, public investment might prove as much a restriction as a security.
It’s an important debate, because artists have always had a complex relationship with their sponsors. The public has never paid the full price of art: the true cost has been born by the state, or church, or some patron, but mostly by the artists themselves, who make sacrifices to learn their craft and pursue their art. Such privations are only partly compensated by critical and public acclaim - and rarely by great riches. Public funding is part of an effort to provide an overall framework within which artists can develop their talent, practice their art - and simply live.
Ravenhill makes the point that artists and organisations in receipt of funding can be obliged to do some paperwork. It is true that public accountability and transparency requires we ensure investment is applied judiciously, fairly and in a way we can justify, but, glancing down the list of great artistic patrons, it is on the whole safer to take Arts Council support than say, money from the Borgias or other Renaissance patrons. Michelangelo himself, commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel by his patron and tormentor Pope Julius II, was beaten with a stick when he refused to give his Holiness a completion date, which is not part of the training we give our relationship managers.
This year’s Edinburgh Festival opened with a typically thoughtful and provocative speech from the playwright Mark Ravenhill, about the relationship between the artist and society, and whether, to the truly adventurous spirit, public investment might prove as much a restriction as a security.
It’s an important debate, because artists have always had a complex relationship with their sponsors. The public has never paid the full price of art: the true cost has been born by the state, or church, or some patron, but mostly by the artists themselves, who make sacrifices to learn their craft and pursue their art. Such privations are only partly compensated by critical and public acclaim - and rarely by great riches. Public funding is part of an effort to provide an overall framework within which artists can develop their talent, practice their art - and simply live.
Ravenhill makes the point that artists and organisations in receipt of funding can be obliged to do some paperwork. It is true that public accountability and transparency requires we ensure investment is applied judiciously, fairly and in a way we can justify, but, glancing down the list of great artistic patrons, it is on the whole safer to take Arts Council support than say, money from the Borgias or other Renaissance patrons. Michelangelo himself, commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel by his patron and tormentor Pope Julius II, was beaten with a stick when he refused to give his Holiness a completion date, which is not part of the training we give our relationship managers.