Philip Goff is the founder of Art Uncut, an organisation which, in conjunction with UK Uncut, stages nights of music, comedy and short talks in opposition to government spending cuts. Mr Goff is a research fellow with the Phenomenal Qualities project at the University of Hertfordshire.
I think you should give his argument the consideration it deserves.
Here it is.
Art Uncut is founded on this principle, a belief about the kind of societal model that we believe to be better: a society with well-funded arts, well-funded public services, and where there is a certain amount of redistribution so that the gap between rich and poor does not get too wide. We began as a small group of artists and musicians involved in UK Uncut actions, but hope now to open up the anti-cuts movement to a broader audience: to those who are not temperamentally inclined to protest, or perhaps haven’t made their minds up yet. If we are serious about building a broad, sustained coalition of opposition with the potential for political influence, we need to reach out.
A week before the March for the Alternative on 26 March, Art Uncut staged a sell-out creative preliminary for the march: a night of music, comedy and short talks, headlined by UK Uncut, Josie Long and The Agitator. On the day, Art Uncut and UK Uncut jointly occupied BHS on Oxford Street, turning it into an artistic space with musicians, half a dozen poets and a performance from the actors Sam and Timothy West.
To entice you further, there is hostile mention of Robert Nozick in the main article and, in the comments, an artistic creation of genius, Clarence the Anti-Cuts Octopus.
Isn’t that precious.
Everyone knows that people won’t sing or dance or carve something or rub pigments on stuff without the right to confiscate as much of other peoples’ stuff as possible.
“Support for the arts – merde ! A government supported artist is an incompetent whore.”
Robert Heinlein
I’m firly against using tax money to support the arts in any way, shape, or form (with the exception of teaching arts and music in school. If we have to have public education, I’m okay with that), but I’d be far more willing to support the arts publicly if I was actually getting art. Granted, that is completely subjective, but I don’t think “Piss Christ”, Jackson Pollack randomly flinging paint, or a doll’s head on a turntable in the middle of a pile of rotting trash that represents mans inhumanity towards man or some such thing should be paid for by the taxpayer. Find some patron with no taste to foot the bill and leave my wallet alone.
Based on skimming half the comments on CIF, he is getting absolutely pilloried; excellent. My opinion of Guardian website readers goes up a notch (admitttedly from a pretty low base).
This does beg the question, is there any legitimate role for art and government to be hand-in-hand?” On its face the answer is no, but what about public buildings? There isn’t a capitol building in the world that isn’t festooned with fantastic paintings and sculptures and statues. Is it wrong to spend the tax dollars there? Or in schools or courthouses or other government facilities? What about in parks and memorials? Where is the line drawn?
Is government commissioning an artist to come up with a painting or photograph for an informational campaign (be it propaganda or just information) still public support of the arts or do we chalk that one up to paying for a service?
It opens an interesting can of worms for debate.
Mmmm. Octopus. Yummy.
This belief in property rights is superstitious and primitive. It is founded in a moral conviction… which is grounded in sentiment rather than reason.
The belief in property rights is getting in the way of Mr Goff’s sense of entitlement, which is lofty and sophisticated.
There ain’t no chutzpah like lefty chutzpah.
There are some works that we often get to see all over the internet, in various sites, for various reasons and purposes. All of us should spend some more time researching various forms of art as they all show up in our daily lives.
Amoral predators one and all… and they are indignant that their prey resent being the target of their predations.
Even Patrick Stewart has come out in defence of government funded arts, claiming it’s one of the most profitable industries in the UK. Which does beg the question: If it’s so lucrative, why does it need government money?
Jimbo, they believe that state art is a magic multiplying money tree – but like all trees, it will only grow if you plant the right seed. If you planted private money the magic wouldn’t work.
This is probably true to their own experience – private money wouldn’t work nearly so well for them.
I wonder what he thinks artists should express- the joy of largesse? Perhaps future statues could all be of grateful citizens with buckets catching the money that is thrown to them by a Public figure wearing a Mayoral hat? Heroic bludging, not heroic deeds?
Demanding the public funding of the arts is a curious thing. Clearly if the general public though the art was worthwhile they’d pay for it — no taxes required. So what they really want is tax money to pay for art that nobody wants.
Which is basically a way of saying: “You are a bunch of Philistines who can’t appreciate good art, so we’re going to force you to pay for it anyway you bunch of rubes.”
However, perhaps that doesn’t make such a good manifesto statement.
Like Michael Jennings, I want my octopus! Done the Maltese way with shedloads of garlic, a nice salad and plenty of good white wine.
It’s only fair.
This was good:
Yup, just what my deepwater engineering department needs, a load of artists giving me their input. Why did nobody tell me this earlier? And more mysterious is how my company developed subsea separation techniques at a water depth of a mile without the involvement of state-funded artists? Clearly, we’re not doing it right.
Other industries, such as technology, requires the inputs from the arts sector.
I believe that translates as “Work it may, shine it must.”
I want that small, pickled one on top of a huge green salad I once had somewhere on the West Coast…
JP,
The question we are all asking is “Where is my octopus?”
Some years ago a friend confided that she supported marijuana prohibition because she was afraid that if it were legal she’d try it. I guess I was naive before that, but it had not occurred to me that someone would want to substitute government coercion for their own free will.
Prior to that I probably assumed that people who supported funding for the arts wanted either (a) someone to give them money to practice their art or (b) someone else to pay for the creation of art they enjoy, and that the argument that it’s for the public good was just a rationalization. But now I understand that there’s a (slightly) more charitable explanation that probably applies to some people: they think they, personally, should support the arts but fear they don’t have the will to do it, so they want to be forced. And (as has been discussed on this site before), they assume that other people are like them so it seems perfectly reasonable to them that everyone should be forced.
Not defending tax funding of the arts, just adding an idea that has occurred to me about its supporters.
Absolutely Tedd. I personally know people like that. I do suspect that they are much more numerous than one would imagine – the reasons being that most of us don’t tend to have these kinds of conversations with most people around us, and also that most people are not that honest, even with themselves.
Tedd,
I dunno where you live but I suspect the prohibition of marijuana restricts it’s availability only very slightly so your friend’s argument is interesting. It isn’t realistically the gubbermunt say “no!” so I can’t get it but because the gubbermunt say that it’s wrong. Am I right here? I mean as far as most drugs are concerned it being illegal is not a bar to it being obtainable unless you’ve led a very sheltered life indeed.
Personally I don’t because it is illegal but not out of moral or legalistic grounds. I don’t because a bit of reason which makes you feel happy is almost impossible to obtain here. It’s all skunk that makes you very weird. Why? During alcohol Prohibition in the US the country turned from a nation of beer drinkers to the hard stuff. It’s a bang for buck thing. It just didn’t make any sense to the crims to smuggle anything weaker than gin.
I doubt it, Nick. At least for the people I know it is simply a fear of punishment, being associated with shady characters, having a criminal record, etc.
But, thinking about it some more, maybe you are right too, and it is both.
NickM:
It hadn’t occurred to me that my friend was counting on the government to make it difficult for her to obtain marijuana. Only that making it illegal made it easier for her to resist any temptation she might have had, out of a desire not to break the law, fear of legal sanction and having a criminal record, and stigma-avoidance. But I suspect the “sheltered life” argument makes more sense the younger you are. This woman is in her 60s, and I think for most of her life she would have had to go well out of her way, and probably embarrass herself somewhat, to find someone to buy it from. So that probably was a factor for her, too.
“a bit of reason”
I meant resin. That’s an odd slip!
Its true, all the while cannibis was “class c” it was easy to get resin. Now its all skunk.
Also, i believe tightened controls at ports make a difference, as more cannibis is grown within the borders, rather than smuggled in.
Tim Newman: “And more mysterious is how my company developed subsea separation techniques at a water depth of a mile without the involvement of state-funded artists? Clearly, we’re not doing it right.”
You see, Tim, you really needed a mime artist to show you what the fish look like swimming past your creation, a rap poet to empathise with the undersea currents and finally a performance artist to cycle (in explanatory t-shirt) from Land’s End to somewhere north of Inverness so you can measure the impact of public reaction to your ideas.
You just didn’t realise the wealth of informed fun you could have had.
Notice that when Mr Goff uses the word “society” he means “state” or “government” (not the web of voluntary interactions that make up civil society).
And also notice that he is utterly shameless in demanding “well funded arts” – i.e in demanding that money be taken by the threat of violence (taxation) and given to himself and his friends.
They work in the “arts” and they want money to be taken by violence and given to them.
This is not a man whose concern for the poor has made him, reluctantly, come to conclusion that tax money must be provided to them.
This is a person, indeed a group of people, who want money taken by violence – for their own personal benefit.
In short Mr Goff and his friends, are pigs.
Greedy pigs, with no moral standards what-so-ever.
And they should be told that this is what they are.
I’m the guy wrote this thing. I find it surprising that you chose not to give the argument itself, but rather the bit of the article which explains the history and aims of Art Uncut.
Nobody in these comments has engaged the argument I gave in this piece. My starting premise is that property rights follow from the laws we choose to have; there are no pre-legal property rights which we are duty bound to respect in our choice of law. Therefore, in addressing the question, ‘What kind of society ought we to have?’, there are no pre-societal property rights we need to toake into consideration. Property rights follow from, from rather than entail, the kind of society we ought to have.
The above comment, for example, talks of ‘taking money through threat of violence’. But this already assumes that the question of what legitimately belongs to whom has already been settled. If we decide that we ought to have an equal society, and this decision then determines what property rights we have, then redistributive taxation does not infringe property rights.
yawn
…they are not worth it Mr Goff – they can’t and won’t understand
let them spend their time non-constructively trawling/trolling through the blogs of those they hate
& writing whatever dull thoughts they can come up with in reaction to what they think they see.
Such sad, empty little lives.
yawn @ art funding.
doi what charities have to do, raise your own cash for yourown purposes.
cash for 1000 more nurses or cash for a pile of clothes on a floor classed as art. i know where i’d prefer my cash to go to.