PATRONAGE – WHO NEEDS IT?

The issue of corporate sponsorship is clearly an area fraught with difficulty for the art world, given the eternal tensions between the art world’s continual need for funding on the one hand, and the need to maintain artistic integrity, on the other. Last year protestors poured tar and feathers outside the Tate in protest at BP’s sponsorship.

However, it seems to me that when considering the pros and cons of sponsorship arrangements, or indeed any form of patronage, that there is another equally important issue to consider in addition to the implications of being associated with a particular brand or institution; namely, the extent to which such sponsorship will interfere with artistic freedom and development, both of the individual artist themselves and of society in general. This is what I will attempt to address here.

 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' was first commissioned of Damien Hirst by Charles Saatchi.

History

Derived from the Latin for ‘father’ (pater), the term ‘patron’ originated in Rome to describe, amongst other things, the relationship which arose when a Roman citizen agreed to vouch for and protect a ‘cliens’, normally meaning someone of a lower social status. Today, the term patronage is used almost exclusively to describe either the bestowing of offices or favours of a political kind (probably more a topic for another blog!) or to describe the practice of providing support (typically financial) to the arts.

Patronage in the arts has a long and distinguished history, which has included the sponsorship of Byzantine art by the early Christian church under Constantine and his successors, the emergence of more secular patronage with the rise of the Italian city-states during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, through to the rise of middle class patrons in seventeenth century Netherlands and the state sponsored museums of today. 

Turning to the issue at hand, I am going to try and analyse the impact of patronage on artistic development by dividing patronage into three principal categories, which I will call: ‘Patron as Fan’, ‘Patron as Client’ and ‘Patron as Arbiter’. 

Patron as Fan

What I have in mind here is the least contentious of the three categorisations and refers simply to a person who seeks to acquire an item purely because they admire the artist’s work, whether by commissioning a new work, purchasing an as yet unsold item from the artist or through the secondary market (i.e. from existing owners of the work).

Where the patron is simply buying an existing piece of work, the impact on the artist should be minimal other than to provide some helpful cashflow, and so would not appear to give much cause for concern.

However, where the patronage involves the commissioning of a new work, then clearly the impact will be greater.

Firstly, he is causing a painting to come into existence that may not otherwise have been produced (and potentially preventing the creation of an alternative painting that the artist would have created absent the commission). This all seems a bit too philosophical to worry about here!

Secondly, the patron may, depending on the commission, seek to influence the subject matter to be painted and potentially even the style to be adopted, with the effect that the work ceases to be solely a product of the artist’s self expression. However, this need not necessarily undermine the artistic process as any such reduction in the artist’s self expression is arguably off-set by the self- expression of the patron, with the effect that the work, in effect and to varying degrees, reflects the passions and interests of both the artist and the patron. It is a kind of artistic joint-venture.

In any event, given that an artist is normally commissioned for his or her particular style, then although the subject matter might occasionally be requested, the actual style and manner in which this subject is depicted is normally left to the artist. For you wouldn’t commission Constable to paint you a particular scene if what you really wanted was a cubist take on the matter!

As such, the impact of patron as fan seems minimal.

Patron as Client

The key distinguishing feature of this type of patronage is that the principal (not necessarily only) motivation for bestowing patronage is for a reason other than simple enjoyment – what I have in mind here is the commissioning or sponsorship of a piece of work for the purposes of promoting the patron in some way (i.e. to make the patron or an affiliated party ‘look good’).

These client patrons have historically taken many forms, most notably religious institutions, royalty of some description, wealthy individuals or commercial organisations (including the modern multi-national, that current bete noir which so invoked the ire of those Tate protesters). Their patronage can involve either the purchasing of existing work, commissioning of new work or the sponsorship of an exhibition.

Some examples of client patronage would include:

• Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII in 1537.
• Carravagio’s “The Calling of St Matthew” (above) completed in 1600 for the Catholic church in Rome.
• George Lambert and Samuel Scott’s “The Company’s Settlements”, a series of six oil painting depicting the principal ports and settlements of the East India Company, painted in about 1732.
• David’s “Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass”, painted in five versions between 1801 to 1805;
• Vincent Cavallaro’s commission by NASA to paint a series of pictures depicting the Saturn V Apollo programme in 1967-8.

Turning to the specific effect that such patronage has on the artistic process………..

As with the patron as fan, the patron is having an effect on the artistic process to the extent that he/she is causing a painting to come into existence that may not otherwise have been produced. Very often, this has turned out to be a good thing – imagine how deprived we would have been (albeit unknowingly) if Julius II had not coerced poor Michaelangelo into painting the Papal Apartments!

Generally, though, although the patron may request a specific subject matter (such as Charles I astride yet another horse!) the artist is normally left alone to decide on the style, that is to portray the image as they see fit. That is not to say that an artist’s style will not be challenged from time to time, as Caravaggio allegedly encountered when he was berated for depicting St Paul’s horse more prominently than the venerable saint himself in “The Conversion of Saint Paul”, supposedly leading to this exchange between the painter and an frustrated official of the commissioning church, Santa Maria del Popolo.

Official - "Why have you put a horse in the middle, and Saint Paul on the ground?"

Carravagio - "Because!"

Official - "Is the horse God?"

Caravaggio - "No, but he stands in God's light![1]    

But, notwithstanding such difficulties, artists generally retain the discretion to execute paintings in the manner they see fit. Again, you engage a particular artist because you admire their style (or at least believe it appropriate for the objective you are trying to achieve). Consequently, in artistic terms, the impact of client patronage on the artistic process will often be minimal.

Where this form of patronage could give rise to issues is where the fact that the client patron is, by definition, using the picture merely as a means to an end (such as to convey the might and prowess of a particular institution) rather than to create the work for its own sake, renders the exercise somewhat artificial with neither the artist nor the patron sufficiently invested in the work (from an artistic perspective). This, in turn, can undermine the ability of the artist to retain the passion and sincerity which is so fundamental to maintaining the integrity of the artistic process – Rothko’s acceptance and subsequent repudiation of the Seagram Murals commission suggests itself here. Clearly, it is down to the artist to identify any such instances, as and when they arise, and take the appropriate steps to resolve the situation (such as ceasing the commission or insisting on artistic independence etc).

Even this proviso is riddled with exceptions, though, for sometimes one has the distinct impression that a patron, far from adversely limited the artist’s individual expression, positively enhances it, the rampant energy evident in David’s pictures of Napoleon being an obvious example.

In any event, it is with my next and final category, namely that of ‘Patron as Arbiter’ that I think the most significant issues arise.

Patron as Arbiter

This category of patron potentially straddles both fan and client patron categories and consists of those patrons whose acts of patronage have an impact on the arts beyond just themselves and their immediate environment.  Examples could include Abbot Suger, Cosimo di Medici, Adolf Hitler, Peggy Guggenheim and Charles Saatchi, with the merits of their influence being largely a matter of personal preference.

These patrons typically influence events by either commissioning large scale projects (such as the Medici’s transformation of Florence - see the Medici Laurentian Library steps by Michaelangelo) or sponsoring (often by collecting) significant volumes of art.

But it is not the scale of their commissions or sponsorship which mark them as arbiters. Rather the two defining characteristics of these patrons are (1) that they are in a position of influence and (2) that they are regarded by other as having ‘good’ artistic judgment

For example, Lambeth Council might commission a large volume of civic architecture but this is unlikely to have a significant influence on the artistic landscape of the nation (although the same, unfortunately, cannot be said of its effect on the physical landscape of Lambeth). As such, the Council would not constitute an arbiter, despite having a significant degree of influence.

Equally, Hitler’s patronage of Albert Speer and his Welthaupstadt Germaina project to rebuild Berlin in that infamous oversized monumental style, whilst clearly backed by a not insignificant degree of influence, would probably not have had any meaningful impact on the wider development of Western art (other than out of pure coercion) since Hitler would be unlikely to have been regarded as a connoisseur of artistic taste.

In contrast, Peggy Guggenheim’s considerable impact on the emerging Abstract Expressionist movement, through her New York Gallery “Art of This Century”, was achieved not only by virtue of the fact that she had influence (through her considerable wealth) but because she was perceived to have astute artistic judgement. The same could be said for Lorenzo and Cosimo Medici (and who could argue!).

As regards the impact on artistic freedom and development, well presumably, if you are a Michelangelo, a Clyfford Still or a Damien Hirst you are pretty happy to have your work lauded (and funded) in such a public way. But the most significant impact caused by arbiters is not on the artists they do patronise but rather on those they don’t. This is by virtue of the fact that the ability of arbiters to set trends and fashions which define what is current, acceptable and desirable has an obvious corollary – they also partly define what isn’t.

As such, in contrast to the other two categories of patron whose involvement in the artistic process is usually minimal, arbiters do have considerable ability to affect artistic freedom and development.

But, in considering the impact of such patrons, let us not forget that patronage can take many forms, and does not necessarily require any direct economic nexus with the artist . For is there any more powerful arbiter than the art critic, where writers such as John Ruskin and Marcel Duchamp have had a hugely significant effect on how different genres of art are received.

Whilst we are at it, let’s not forget the power of galleries (with their decisions as to who to exhibit) as well as those institutions on whom we depend for so much of our shapers of new talent, the art education establishment, whose frequently dogmatic and myopic agendas are well documented. Anyway, that’s enough for one day, so I’ll try and reach some form of conclusion.

Conclusion

Although I appreciate that my attempts at categorisation above are overly simplistic (and that, more often than not, patronage will not fall neatly into any of these categories) there is one thing that has struck me during the exercise and that is the somewhat perverse conclusion that, from a purely artistic perspective, the more impersonal and remote from the art world the patron is, the less the interference in the artistic process, and hence the better. And vice versa.

For example, when BP sponsors an exhibition its impact on the artistic process is minimal, because BP is not seen as an arbiter of artistic tastes or merits and hence does not influence the artistic landscape in any meaningful way. Conversely, an acerbic article by a prominent art critic can mark the death knell for a particular artist, whilst an impassioned lecture by a charismatic (but ideologically driven) lecturer can send hundreds of art students down an ill-lit artistic cul-de-sac.

Maybe we have bigger things to worry about than whether or not an oil company should contribute funds to an art exhibition.

www.galleryviolet.com

---

[1] Quoted without attribution in Gilles Lambert, "Caravaggio",

Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake at the National Gallery (020 7747 2885, nationalgallery.org.uk) runs until October 30. Open Sat-Thurs, 10am-6pm; Fri 10am-9pm; admission free. The biography, Art for the Nation: The Eastlakes and the Victorian Art World, by Susanna Avery-Quash and Julie Sheldon is published by the National Gallery, £25.

POP-ism - Warhol's Sixties

A review of POP-ism - Andy Warhol and Pat Hacket's 1980 Kiss and Tell Review of Warhol's 60s.

‘People say that you always want what you can’t have, that ‘the grass is always greener’ and all that, but in the mid-sixties I never, never, never felt that way for a single minute. I was so happy doing what I was doing, with the people I was doing it with’

Andy Warhol 1977

Andy Warhol is an art world phenomenon: a character that seems to mystify everyone, despite his assurances that his art was only ever surface deep. I read his second autobiography, POPism, in an attempt to better understand this enigmatic figure, especially after attempting his previous volume, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, which, intent on concealment to the point of incoherence, barely gave anything away. 


His second book is more accessible and reveals an underlying connection between his writing style and artistic approach.

POPism is set out chronologically, as opposed to The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, which is thematic. It charts Warhol’s 1960s: as the years progressed, so did the artist’s notoriety, social circle, and artistic style. He started out the decade a lowly graphic designer and ended it a cultural icon. The scene is set with his first solo show at the Stable Gallery in 1962, which showcased works which now litter the collections of major art galleries worldwide: Elvis, Marilyn, and the disaster series. The infamous Factory, haunt of Warhol’s Superstars, was founded on East 47^th Street in 1963. The space was loved by students, artists, and celebrities, and became the location of constant mass production of art, with every visitor recorded in a Screen Test.

The Screen Tests were a natural progression from the large celebrity silkscreens into a different art medium; Warhol made around 500 silent portrait films in 2 years of his studio’s visitors, and in doing so solidified his industrial method and aesthetic. A major turning point came at the end of 1964 when Warhol bought a sound camera, which he used to create 33 minute reels with his scriptwriters Chuck Wein and Ronald Tavel, previously of the Theatre of the Ridiculous. Now the Screen Tests evolved to become talking silkscreens, and the Superstars were really born.

Still with Nico and Ondine in the final scene from 'Chelsea Girls' from the 2003 Italian DVD print of the film.

The Superstars were immortalised in Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls, a 3 hour experiment comprising of collated episodes of the Superstars’ shenanigans in the Chelsea Hotel. Pope Ondine, Ingrid Superstar, and Gerard Malanga all made appearances, and played themselves so well that the film got good reviews in the mainstream press and was commercially released nationally in 1967. The film marked Warhol’s step from the underground into the mainstream. The Chelsea Girls was followed up by an even more ambitious project, ****; a 25 hour long epic which was only screened once, at the New Cinema Playhouse on 15^th and 16^th December 1967.

It was around this time that Andy Warhol met the Velvet Underground, and his artistic experiments entered the field of music. By branching out into other artistic mediums, Warhol began to realise he could monopolise multiple art forms in the city simultaneously. At one point he had films playing uptown at the Film Makers’ Co-Op, the Silver Clouds and cow print wallpaper installation on show at the Castelli Gallery, and the multimedia performance piece the Exploding Plastic Inevitable – which featured live music, a light show, and multi-screen film projections –  on at a dance hall on St Mark’s Place. By the end of 1967 Warhol’s meteoric rise engulfed all areas of the New York arts and social scenes.

Warhol’s writing mimics his art: it is at once detached, chatty and frank, and very funny in places, just as he would be in life. Just as Pop-Art took a wry and open dance with consumerism and made it art; Warhol described Pop as referring to ‘just the surface things’, and this is reflected in his directness of dialogue and catty observations.

Andy Warhol Dollar Signs

The apex of the book comes in June 1968, when Valerie Solanas, a sometime Factory visitor, shot Warhol. This event perhaps marks the point at which the artist’s fame became most acute: compared to the Warhol at the start of the decade, his shooting cemented his iconic status. Similarly, his survival perhaps echoes the persistence of his tongue-in-cheek Pop humour: just as he got away with being shot, his themes of celebrity, status, and money are still ever present in art and society today.


Written by Alexandra Bannister at Gallery Violet.
www.galleryviolet.com

Pollock in the Hall of Fame.

In December 1956, New York’s Museum of Modern Art hosted an exhibition that was as much a celebration of Jackson Pollock’s life as it was a retrospective study of his art. Pollock had died four months earlier and MoMA’s marking of the artist’s passing underlines how seriously the gallery took his work and the shockwaves it had sent out across America and the Atlantic Ocean.  

Pollock was only 44 by the time of his death but the wildly innovative approach to painting that he’d perfected between 1947 and 1950 – in what has become known as his ‘drip period’ - had established him as a superstar of the New York art world as well as an intriguing if not perplexing fixation of the US media.  The challenging nature of his work and his own personal fierce charisma made him a regular subject for feature writers and critics in TIME and LIFE as well as a number of high profile and acclaimed showings at MoMA.

Since his death, Pollock’s stature as both a great artist and a modern American icon has only grown in its magnitude.  Along with the enigmatic portrait of a spectral Warhol in dark glasses, Hans Namuth’s photographs of Pollock brooding over a paint struck canvas have become definitive images in the technicolour narrative of American culture whilst Pollock’s mythic reputation as a reclusive and troubled genius has also allowed commentators from historians to actors to claim him as a quintessentially rugged example of American individualism.

The problem with Pollock’s induction into the Hall of Fame for All-American Mavericks - where the brooding poses of John Wayne and James Dean guard the entrance - is that it allows the cult of his personality to undermine the gravity of his creative brilliance.  Pollock’s art and its relationship to American life in the turbulence of the mid-twentieth century is both troubling and complex.  The image of him as a pin-up for those who wish to export the notion of American individualism and exceptionalism and champion the First Amendment above all else is certainly one that is worthy of suspicion. Although it is obviously politically motivated - bearing the scars of the ideological battlegrounds of the Cold War – it is also a simplistic rendering of the man that undermines the sheer complexity of his art and as a result, his genius.

Paintings like No. 5, 1948 (1948) and No. 1, 1950 (1950) with their complete rejection of figurative imagery and their embrace of dramatic textures cut savagely by fraught lines of explosive colour are impossible to fix with any one interpretation. Do they reflect the speed of modernity refracted in the electric skyline of Manhattan?  Do they constitute a desperate attempt to create an aesthetic capable of dealing with life after the Second World War and its atrocities? Are they an ecstatic celebration of creative freedom in an age of tyranny and dictatorships?  Or are they far more introspective than that?  Do they channel Pollock’s own understanding of psychoanalysis and his troubled psyche?  Or perhaps are they simply the visceral expression of one man’s existential angst.

It is a testament to the intensity of Pollock’s art that all these readings are possible, though it is exactly this intensity that eclipses everything else in his painting.  The sheer scale and force of a piece like No. 31, 1950 (1950) is what makes a multitude of meanings possible as the work presents an occasion for subjective experience rather than objective interpretation.  It is Pollock’s almost primal approach to the act of painting that reveals his genius because in an age where even the most banal aspects of culture were being politicised he was able to present a form of artistic expression that was genuinely uncompromising.   The irony here however is that Pollock’s radical refusal to facilitate linear and simplistic interpretations through his paintings also creates a narrative absence that actually allows the potent myth of his celebrity to distort the viewer’s subjective and instinctive experience of the artwork itself.

Pollock’s status as both a preeminent figure of the avant-garde confronting mainstream culture and as an American icon rooted firmly in it presents a paradox that is emblematic of a particularly volatile time in American history where the country needed figures that symbolised the qualities of democracy.  The fact that leaders of the American avant-garde like Pollock, William Burroughs and John Cage were capable of being subversive (and even explicitly transgressive in Burroughs’ case) only served to ensure their eventual canonisation as it allowed politicians, historians and critics to point to these artists as proof that an egalitarian state could tolerate dissenting voices in ways that their ideological enemies never could.  This recontextualising of the American avant-garde as Liberal celebrities embodying all-American values would undermine the power of the art were it believable – Pollock’s work transcends politics and the time it was created in and thus carves the fault line in this narrative.

Despite Pollock’s emergence as an American icon and what this may say about how nations construct their own myths for explicitly ideological reasons, the tension between the man’s idealised image with his art’s multifarious treatment of meaning ultimately serves to undermine the assumptions inherent in any kind of idealism. It is also analogous to the contradictions implicit in American culture and rhetoric because although Pollock’s search for a mode of uninhibited artistic expression is an inherently optimistic act, it is complicated by the intimidating mood and intensity of his work and the knowledge of his personal demons. 

This tension between optimism and intimidation, or hope and fear, is central to Pollock’s art. It is possible to understand this as a parallel to the constant battle of promise and volatility, faith and despair that have characterised American society in the twentieth century. 

It is in somehow embodying the dualities and the complexities of his country as it forges a meaning for itself in the world, rather than the facile image of the painter as a rugged all American  individualist that makes Pollock a truly great American artist.

Gallery Violet.

www.galleryviolet.com