Today I gave a presentation to the regional Italian Circle on the subject of art in Italy during the fascist period. The development of modern art in Italy is a topic that has interested me for some time, and I admit that my ideas are very much in the process of developing. I still vacillate very much over the question with which I ended my talk. Does it matter who is the patron of art?
We tend to be very critical these days of the part played by state patronage of the arts in the fascist regimes in Europe’s past, as also of state socialism in the Soviet field of influence. I don’t know a great deal about the latter, but it does strike me that artists in Italy at least, dung the period in question, were treated very favourably. The state spent huge sums in support of the arts, and despite the overtones of the term “totalitarian” it was surprisingly open in its toleration of a variety of styles and themes (short, of course, of open challenges to the political regime.) I have been asking myself (so far without a clear answer) whether this situation is better or worse, from the point of view of the artist, than our own dependence on the market for patronage.
The market can be less than beneficial as a mechanism for promoting and supporting art. Fashion is both fickle and typically less than well-informed about the quality of work. Also, a small number of powerful patrons, such as there Saatchis in the UK, can exercise quite disproportionate influence on trends in the market. What is more, there seems to me to be a kind of levelling down, and diminution of the adventurousness that artists bring to work, as they attempt to confirm to styles or subject-matter that is selling well at the moment.
I know more than one colleague who is continuing to plough a furrow because it has yielded a crop of good sales, abandoning any attempt to explore and develop their own creativity. Of course, a swing in fashion could leave them high and dry at any moment. Certainly the Italian state in the twenties and early thirties was far more generous in its willingness to back individual experiments in style and approach, and there was less of an incentive to remain “safe” inside the limits of what artists knew the market would bear.
Of course, patronage will always be a thorny subject for artists. As I concluded my talk, however, it is necessary to bear in mind one fact. “I have to admit that there has never been anywhere a utopia in which we artists have been free to produce our work while following our own Muses, and in which society has simply been grateful for the opportunity to buy it.” The acceptance of patronage of any kind is going to impose upon us compromises of one kind or another….and we are always going to complain that we have a rough deal.