What good is art?

I was perusing the forum section of a sculpture site and was struck by the profound cry of one sculptor.

"Is the art we make really important? Not just to the makers but, to people living and working today. Why do we do it, is it just self-fullfilling with imagined value?"

There were a number of answers to his plea, but it got me thinking about this age old question- especially in terms of the USA today. And that cogitation started me thinking about arts and government in general.

Today, the arts vs government issue, when it's discussed at all by our elected posse, is usually a battle between the forces of evil (artists) and the guardians of public morality (guess who?). It's fairly obvious to me that the guys and gals who hold the purse strings and regulatory power over the people and public art (including TV, painting, photography, et al) are the ones who dodged art classes in high school and rarely (if ever) visited a gallery or art museum for anything other than fund raising. Their sensitivity to the shocking effects of the nude human body appear to be as acute as the exotic mimosa... Go ahead- prove me wrong. Please.

So I tried to think how to prove to my aforementioned anguished artist that even the USA has put value on arts in the past.

First of all, I turned to that GI generation icon- JFK. At the ground breaking for the Robert Frost Library at Amherst, he said, "The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state.... I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. "

Strong stuff, indeed. So artists nourish the roots of our culture, eh? How many times have we been defined, for better or worse through the art we see?

Let's step back another 20 years to that other liberal who wasn't afraid of the title. "In encouraging the creation and enjoyment of beautiful things we are furthering democracy itself," FDR said at the dedication of MOMA in 1939. The whole WPA Arts section was the result of a belief that art has value to the people- In addition to providing employment to artists to keep their skills up during an impossible economic situation, the scheme would, according to planners, "provide encouragement to the free growth of artistic expression and will make the finest products of our native artistic genius available to everyone."

There was a lot of optimism in the early days of the New Deal- somehow the powers that be thought the American people just needed exposure to new ideas and art and they would eventually become cultured and thoughtful citizens of a newly educated land. Well....

There was a lot of controversy as to what was put up by these subsidized artists, and the dust hasn't fully settled yet. Art was branded second rate, or too bizarre for the public, but there were some examples of good stuff that's endured.One of the most beloved was the series of animal sculptures at the Jane Addam's Homes (a 1938 public housing project) in Chicago. Though the homes are gone, some of the pieces, which were labeled "an integral part of the pleasure and excitement of living at the Jane Addams Homes." still stand (see them above in their heyday, from the National Archives Photo Collection).