Into Britain's fracas about the "dumbing-down" of the arts has ambled the ponderous figure of Peter Hall. Like a prophet of old, he comes to tear the veil of illusion from before our eyes. According to him there is no debate; the art world has simply acquiesced in the tide of accountancy-led philistinism emanating from the Culture Department and its satraps at the Arts Council. This curious idea was unveiled at the press launch of the Shadow Arts Council, whose role Hall insists is not to whinge, but to provide a platform for "argument, debate and noise." Where has he been, one wondered? Has he not noticed that noise is what the arts generate above all else, whether it's over bricks at the Tate, Birtwistle at the Last Night of the Proms, or a large metal angel above the London-to-Newcastle railway?
The fact that everyone at the launch seemed to be nudging 60 gave a clue to the Shadow Arts Council's real aim. This is not to launch a debate, it is to return to the past. It is a last attempt by the generation nursed on the Third Programme, Scrutiny and Pevsner's The Englishness of Art to re-establish the founding principles of the Arts Council. To read these principles is to be taken back to a land far away and long ago, a land where the eternal verities of art and the personal taste of the ruling elite happily coincided. Art and culture were simply "the best that has been thought and said," in Arnold's phrase. The Council's resources were devoted "to the fine arts exclusively"; amateur and what later came to be known as "community arts" had to fend for themselves. The justification for putting public money into high culture was that it was a good in and of itself. The arts' lack of utility was their badge of honour and their guarantee of purity.
By making art an absolute good the creators of the Arts Council bequeathed us two problems. The first is the infinite appetite of the arts for funds. If art is an absolute good, you cannot have too much of it. The second is the slipperiness of the term "art," which has developed the same inflationary tendencies as the Arts Council's budget.
The latter problem was, at first, held in check by the Council's focus on the traditional fine arts. A sonnet or a symphony was either well-made, or it was not. But art was changing, and the Arts Council had to acknowledge this. The "happening," the action painting, the rise of "experimental" music, all caused much bewilderment among the establishment figures who ran the Arts Council. As the yardstick provided by a historic discipline disappeared, the criteria of judgement became more subjective. Meanwhile the Council was harried by the rise of "cultural studies," which put popular art on an equal footing with the high arts. The political agenda behind this widening of the definition of "art" came from the left; but feminists and multiculturalists soon joined in the battle to wrest art from its upper-class, western, male norms.
There was no outright victor in this ideological war for "art." But all the parties won a few battles, qualifying them for a slice of the cake. This is from the current mission statement of the Arts Council of England: "Our mission is to enable everyone to enjoy and derive inspiration from the arts. It will do so by nurturing creativity, responding to innovation, promoting excellence, sustaining our living traditions, supporting multicultural interests, fostering new audiences and helping more people to encounter the work of artists throughout England." Every faction is given its due: the experimentalists are embraced in the phrase "responding to innovation"; the traditional art forms and their "flagship companies" in the line "promoting excellence and sustaining our living traditions"; the ethnic minorities in the phrase "supporting multicultural interests."
The endless stretching of the term "art" is accepted without demur. To see how bizarre this is, you only have to compare "art" with another word similar in function and ambition. "Science," like "art," has a utilitarian side-it improves our lives-but it is also an absolute good. We think that the pursuit of knowledge is a good in itself. As the 1992 government research paper on science puts it: "Basic research is in the nature of a public good," and so it gets public funding. But unlike the arts, the pure side of science-the pursuit of knowledge-and the utilitarian side-the production of new technologies-are both answerable to tough, objective criteria. A new theory is supported by data, or it isn't; a new heat-resistant material for car brakes works, or it doesn't. Thanks to these criteria, we know that things which have a resemblance to science, like phrenology, are not in fact science.
Compare that to the arts, where making a claim to art and being art are the same thing. Any act of any kind can qualify as art, given good PR. The Arts Council, alert to this new spirit, knows it must keep its criteria of judgement vague, the better to allow the plurality of "arts" to flourish. This is why the romantic idea that what the arts give us is "ineffable," which seems a hangover from the mandarin days of Keynes, is so useful in the new climate. It provides the fig-leaf which hides the incompatible aims and concepts contained in the A-word. Take the fig-leaf away, and it becomes obvious that to describe a Beethoven symphony, a performance art piece on the agonies of Aids, and a community arts project performed by an entire village, as having something in common called "art," is absurd.
If the appeal to the ineffable side of art has been so successful in turning the tap of public funds, and in stifling any debate about what the word art means, why are Peter Hall and his allies so worried? The reason might be that, at last, the magic is starting to fade. The gap between the assertions by arts mandarins of the essential unity of the arts (they "appeal to our deepest natures," put us "in touch with ourselves") and the huge disparity between the many things called "the arts," has become too vast to gloss over.
Appeals to the eternal verities of art now have a nervy ring. In his introduction to the Arts Council's annual report, Chairman Gerry Robinson wrote: "We believe the arts enrich our lives in a variety of ways... They have enormous educational importance-and economic value, too, as one of the nation's largest and most successful industries." Robinson is clearly hedging his bets. Yes, of course, the arts are transcendent-but just in case they aren't, let's remind ourselves how much money they make. Will those arts worthies d'un certain age who make up the Shadow Arts Council succeed in pinning back the fig-leaf? I doubt it.
