THE SEPARATION OF ART AND STATE

The British people have just awakened to the fact that they're paying Antonio Pappano more than four times as much to conduct the Royal Opera as they're paying their prime minister to conduct the nation. Stay tuned for more on the Outrage Channel.

As the son of a business owner I grew up a free-market acolyte. Then I went to work in my state's legislature and learned the hard necessity of regulation and taxation. Some states don't tax or regulate much, and their people enjoy freer lives. But they suffer a lower quality of life by most measurable standards - income, education, crime, even divorce rate. So I've become a decided political moderate. Any society must manage a natural tension between freedom and comfort. State involvement should be about balance, not ideology.

Art, though, is the highest form of expression. I think my country has it right that expression needs special protection from the state. Therefore art should have the most special protection of all. It belongs in the unfettered market of truth.

When art sells its soul to government, what is happening at the Royal Opera House becomes inevitable. Not that art has no public worth. On the contrary, art's public worth is incalculable. The moment we try to calculate it, we undervalue it. Only the objective, invisible hand of taste can put a fair price on the baton of Anthony Pappano. I fear Britain will lose its masterful conductor, unless the Royal Opera House can shoulder the Sisyphean rock of public resentment on top of the already heavy burden all opera companies face to survive in a largely unartistic world.

When society aims to oppress, artists are the first to be silenced. Mr. Pappano won't be sent to the Gulag. But the effect of his loss on Britain would be the same: one less first-rate artistic voice to ring its undeniable truth above the cacaphony of mere public discourse. That truth, in the end, is what scares the state - and delights the masses - about art. Government can offer only a finite illusion of support to a force that cannot be tamed to serve it. In the end, the bargain is Faustian, and art is damned to eternal mediocrity.

 

Comments

[asperia]

Lots of people would love to do PM´s job for PM´s salary:-)) with similar results.

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In the article that Greg linked, the Pope said that the Legion of Christ is a sound congregation.

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The Big 12 officials should be fired for their performance! I'd have been pissed to had I been one of the Pelini brothers!

[amr]

Don't compare the cost of a artist show with a political show. In terms of cost they cannot be compared.