Kennedy Center's boss says the arts are in trouble, blames lack of excellence and daring on timid administrators and funders

One of the last things one expects to hear from an arts impresario is disparagement of his product.

But that’s what Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., did this week, at least in general terms. 

“What Is Wrong With the Arts?” was the headline of his column in the Huffington Post.

“It is no surprise to most of us that the arts are in a parlous state….The arts are in trouble because there is simply not enough excellent art being created,” Kaiser wrote.

The names he dropped as having too few worthy heirs were Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins in dance; Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Richard Rodgers and Igor Stravinsky in music; and Tennessee Williams in theater.

Raw talent still abounds, Kaiser acknowledged, but “far more inventiveness can be found in popular entertainment than can be found in the classic arts.” He pinned the blame on arts administrators: “Boards, managers and producing consortia are overly-involved…overly conservative,” and too glued to the bottom line.

Culture Monster’s first response was to visit the Kennedy Center’s website to look for an updated advertising campaign for its shows –- maybe a new slogan along the lines of “we’ve got the goods –- well, they’re pretty good,” or “not great –- but still worth your money.”

But the marketing department apparently hasn’t gotten the word yet. Superlatives still rule in the descriptions of upcoming performances.

Few would dispute Kaiser’s main point –- that the job of arts managers and arts funders should be to provide creative folks with venues, opportunities, chicken soup for the soul, when needed, and lots and lots of money, and then let them go to town, within reason (or not, if a lavish enough underwriter can be found to indulge even that which might seem unreasonable).

But it seems useful to ask whether it’s reasonable to expect “enough excellent art” to arise like clockwork, decade in and decade out, in every artistic discipline. Can genius and excellence really be cultivated like crops? Or are they by definition mutant strains, a deviation from all predictable norms, marvelous, spontaneous outbursts that can’t be explained, only relished?

Can we legitimately ask more of artists than passion, preparation, commitment and effort -– then hope it will be enough to emit some sparks of greatness along with the general run of work that ranges from involving to interesting to serviceable to nice try to mistake?

How to explain the fact that while the English language was erupting in glorious poetry and fiction during the first 80 years of the 19th century (the Romantics, Tennyson, Browning, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen (pictured), George Eliot, Mark Twain and Herman Melville, among others), its theatrical product, as far as we are concerned today, was nil until Gilbert and Sullivan hit their stride?

In America, was a fallow century of the most vulgar popular entertainments – minstrelsy and vaudeville – an inescapable prerequisite for the flowering of brilliant 20th century musicals? Might cultural historians a few decades from now be tracing some as-yet unimagined 21st century efflorescence of theater and opera back to Cher, Alice Cooper, KISS and Lady Gaga (pictured)?

Should we, for art’s sake, engineer an acute foreign threat to our nation’s existence? It worked for the ancient Athenians (turn back the Persian invaders, reap a Golden Age) and the Elizabethans (sink the Spanish Armada, your reward is Shakespeare), and clicked again in artistic outpourings in Europe and America that followed each of the past century’s world wars.

If you have thoughts about Kaiser’s assessment of the state of the arts, or about what  can and can’t be done to nurture geniuses and great artworks, please write them in the comments section below. By the way, just in case it wasn't clear, that part about engineering a national threat to prime the pump for artistic achievement was a rhetorical flourish, not meant to be taken seriously.

RELATED:

Arts management guru Michael Kaiser says he's sorry

-- Mike Boehm

Photos: Michael Kaiser; John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Jane Austen; Lady Gaga at 2010 Grammy Awards.  Credits: Linda Spillers/AP (Kaiser); Richard T. Nowitz/Corbis (Kennedy Center); Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times (Gaga).

Comments

[Donald Frazell]

I would have to agree with him, though as someone in the visual arts, not performing though they try to invade that turf, it is about promising a career by buying a degree and only dealing with said pretenders that has stiffled art into self absorbed absurdity and careerism over creativity..

Outbursts of art have come from sudden shifts in view of mans place in the universe. There have always been artists, and creative arts, those which last have always been about defining a people, exploring the world around them, and searching for god. That is mind, body and soul, or in more Latin based terms. Philosophy, Science and Theology. These have always been present in art, From Phidias to Michelangelo to Cezanne to perhaps the only one allowed to show because he started as an art school brat, Anselm Kiefer. The rest is just chaff, only the wheat will remain with time.

But this exists all over our world, mostly nameless as most artists were considered workers, Rightly so as we have our role in culture, not just as a signature for commodity and investment, and have existed everywhere from Knossos to the Nigerian show now at UCLA, to India, Australia and the "new world". True artists understand this, and why Picasso and Braque refused to sign their works when developing cubism. Where signatures are for trading and speculation, and cannot be allowed to interfere with the work. Only in China and specifically Japan were artists in high enough regard to be known and recorded as individuals. Partially because artists in Japan were from the samurai caste after the beginning of the Shogunnate.

Now we are being bred as a investment, names to be bandered about by the chattering classes for amusement, and to seperate themselves form the "riffraff". Art no longer is about Us, it now splinters instead of binds. Creative Art seeks the essence of who We are, not I. It is the highest common denominator, now turned by producers, patrons and the academies into documentors for their social status, it is now about the society page, not that which brings us all together.

I worry for a talented young woman like Esperanza Spalding. Will she be stunted like Alicia Keys, who has talent but truly needs to expand her range and skillset, but instead fell into the pop machine and became homogenized? Her emotional development got stunted as all do who become but chattle for those who run the industries of entertainment. Which is the lowest common denominator, but can rise up into being more. From Bob Dylan to Bob Marley to Aretha Franklin to the Allman Bros, while some like Chaka Khan fall on the precipice of loosing themselves in their art.

Which is what art does, becoming more by losing ones self, through the means of elevating ones skills to true freedom beyond the mediocritizing norms of the Academies. Entertainment glorifying the individual through identifying with ones chosen "god", and taking on their PR driven lies of appearance as does a Beyonce. Those without character who will do anything to get fame and the drug of performing before adoring fans, a cult of individuality, Not the intelligent absorbtion and relating of listening to a Miles Davis or John Coltrane evoking our common passions. .

To some degree it is outside our control, in others creativity has been stiffled by the Codification and dogmas of those who control the arts, there is no freedom of expression, it has become glorification of selfish expression, which is easily tamed and neutrered. Few great visual artists have ever graduated from a fine art academy, some went and dropped out, most avoid them like the blight they are, a place of commerce, moneychangers before the temple. Pharisees, not prophets.

One cannot be shown without at least a degree from an art Bastille, an MFA more and more requirted as the bought ticket into the game. One whose rules have taken god, mankind and nature out of the product, to appease the nouveau riche and status quo, replacing them with games, therapy and mere decoration. Mind, body and soul no longer united as one. But divided as commerce. Look outside, in the real world, not the sterile and sheltered Ivory Towers of children and pseudo intellectuals. All art comes from the people, from the streets, from love. That is its subject, its passion, its purpose.

Seek, aloof and vain critics, and ye shall find. It is with, by, and about Us.
art collegia delenda est

[william wray]

Bad art has to be promoted because bad artists can be controlled and replaced. Good artists can be difficult to handle so the dealers and the critics promote the get along gang of interchangeable collage/ found objects/ bad painters that do empty work repeated in the same narrow criteria of glittery litter that can be overlaid with art speak theory by the critics.
It’s been happening for so long people are numb and bored with the same old junk a clever child could do. The problem is the heavy lifters of the art world are so deeply invested in bad art they can't allow good art in or their house of pyramid scams comes tumbling down. The snake is choking on its indigestible tale, but refuses to die.

[carole pigott]

"Can we legitimately ask more of artists than passion, preparation, commitment and effort -– then hope it will be enough to emit some sparks of greatness along with the general run of work that ranges from involving to interesting to serviceable to nice try to mistake? "

The art world has been asking that from artists my whole 35 year career as an artist - so what do you think of this work produced without outside financial help - in a life totally committed - passionate about creativity - and produced by dropping out ot the mainstream and following an idea driven by factors other than financial (although finances would be most welcome now ) - www.carolepigottstudio.com

[Donald Frazell]

Purpose is everything. The language developed from ones experience while always seeking what is essential, that which we all share. All else is self indulgence, ie. self expression. Creative art evokes and creates the myths of who WE are, it is always musical and poetic.

Creative art is about us, and lasts, fine art about providing the wealthy what they desire and seperates them from the masses. Contempt art but its retarded,in the literal sense, child. It is literary, psychological and hedonistic. Games, therapy and decoration replacing mind, body and soul as one.

This always happens in decadent times. Are we leaving such an age, that of Meism? Or will it conitnue? If the world fundamentally is changing, art must also. Are we serving mankind, or the nouveau riche? Decide.

It is time to put aside childish things.

[John]

Today art is popularity and being connected. We are at the ebb of change because this cannot sustain itself. Art breeds the numbers that number crunchers yearn to crunch. And they find new ways to do it. That's also a form of art.

There the thing: Computers made it easier to do everything and that's what it's doing. We as a mass society are becoming lazy. As humans we are losing the human experience. That's what art is. I'm not saying that computers are bad, it's not as simple as that. It's more to the fact that our society and lives demand time and results. This strains imagination and creativity.

We are at the point of a renaissance, but it must be taken up by those who are willing to sacrifice. Those who don't care for the limelight (not in a Banksy-style) but a true isolationist. Those who can live in poverty and still produce. There is not money in the arts anymore. There are too many pigs at the troff.

For now we will know what every insignificant surface-pebble looks like, since we can't soar to see how insignificant those pebbles are, in relation to the vast views that are out there. But one day. Maybe, today, Art is hope.

[Donald Frazell]

One needn't starve, but sacrifice is called for. Following truth and the real world rather than that of artificiality, farce, and self indulgence. I have been photographing and painting at the highest level for over 30 years, and took quite an economic hit becaue of it. Could easily have a big house and car. But have a beautiful small one, even more beautiful wife, and great car and lots of kids I have mentored and coached in basketball, Landry still killin with the Knicks.

This is America, it can be done. But isn't. Why? Lack of energy, passion andgeneral weakness in artistes, it is not about you. It is about us. That gives one focus and power, energy and purpose. Career isnt what counts, but intensity and communicative passion. As Miles and Trane and Monk and so many others have. Without a dime from the government or Foundations.

Just do it. Though we were an Adidas team in HS, with Russel Westbrook too.

Save the Watts Towers(Nuestro Pueblo), tear down the decadent and souless Ivories.