Absolut-ly Linked: Arts, Corporations : Arts funding: Big business spends almost $500 million a year on culture in return for intangible good will, tangible tax breaks and maybe a sale.

It’s tough being a good guy, even if you are entrusted with spending millions of dollars. Not everyone loves you and, strangely enough, the job isn’t getting any easier.

We call them our modern Medicis, the corporate underwriters, the people who bring us traveling blockbuster art shows, operas, symphonies, pop concerts, festivals and public television programs. American corporations, good guys like the Philip Morrises, the AT&Ts;, the American Expresses, spend in total almost $500 million a year on cultural programs, getting in return intangible good will along with tangible tax considerations and maybe an occasional sale.

In the last two years, corporate dollars budgeted for the arts have shrunk because of the recession, while artists and institutions turned away from diminishing government resources have had to seek more help from corporate sponsors.

Michel Roux is an example of a corporate good guy who seems to relish what he’s doing and sees a future in supporting the arts in any number of different forms, despite getting caught in the recent cross-fire between the Joffrey Ballet and the Music Center, which broke off its support of the dance company earlier this year.

Roux is president and chief executive officer of Carillon Importers Ltd., a Teaneck, N.J., firm that imports liquor. Seven years ago, he hit upon an arts-support adventure unlike any other. Its success so far could become a model for other corporate givers. Its artistic value may be a totally different matter. What he has been able to accomplish is to give financial rewards to a broad range of artists, the famous and the not-yet-so famous.

In introducing a little-known but established Swedish vodka named Absolut to this country, Roux decided to mix two of his interests, art and commerce, to sell the unknown by connecting it to the well-known. He commissioned a still-life of the Swedish vodka bottle from artist Andy Warhol for an advertising campaign that would feature only the painting and the two-word message: Absolut Warhol. The campaign got the attention the advertisers wanted.

Subsequently, other artists were signed up to paint their versions of the bottle. Among them: Ed Ruscha, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf. What started as a curious mixing of Warhol and an advertisement has grown into a multimillion dollar annual program of commissioned or sponsored works ranging from paintings to art pieces to fashion designs, usually with depictions of the well-traveled Absolut bottle.

Where most corporations distribute funds through specific internal departments of philanthropy, in this case the marketing department became the modern Medicis. In the late 15th Century, the Medicis hired artists and in many cases had their likenesses included in paintings and frescoes. Botticelli’s several Magi portrayals became eternal messages from his Florentine sponsors.

However, not all of Absolut’s adventures in the arts require product portraits, the involvement with the Joffrey being the most recent example.

Roux last year said he would commission a 35th anniversary salute for the Joffrey Company. It was presented March 5 in New York and will be the opening-night gala May 7 at the Music Center here. It would be pure ballet, of course no dancing bottles of Absolut, no tutus tattooed with corporate logos. Just the title: Absolut Joffrey Gala. The commission was specifically for three young choreographers: the late Edward Stierle, Charles Moulton and Christopher d’Amboise. It also included a revival of Robert Joffrey’s “Postcards.”

What started out as a $300,000 commitment, however, ended up closer to $450,000. Beside the initial creative fees, the vodka importers found out, there would be costs on top of costs: costumes, music, sets, revisions and rehearsals.

Then, just as the Joffrey was regaling in critical acclaim following the premiere in Manhattan, the dance company found itself almost canceled in Los Angeles.

“I originally told the Joffrey I was ready to help them and at the same time I wanted them to present something new in choreography. I wanted something that would stay in the history of ballet,” Roux says.

“At the same time we want to help, we want to help artists but we have to get something in return, some good will perhaps. Otherwise, we cannot do the many good things we have been doing. It was not just giving the money to the Joffrey but it was creating something that the Joffrey would be able to interpret and present.”

Many good things seems to be an operative phrase for Roux’s style of patronage, for it ranges from new music by John Adams to concerts by Antonio Carlos Jobim to performances by Al Jarreau.

Twenty-six Soviet and emigre artists learned about capitalism when they were commissioned to paint still-lifes of the non-Russian vodka bottle. The work of nine American folk artists was put together in one exhibition of Americana. A furniture designer and major fashion designers have received commissions, among others.

Roux has some bigger plans. Four years from now he hopes to finance an opera, actually three one-act, one-hour operas, with each act devoted to a distinct theme. One act would be on Americans Indians, another on this country’s immigrant experiences and the third on the environment. He has talked to several opera scientists, including Peter Sellars, and is beginning to put money away toward the $2 million he says it will cost to stage the opera.

Roux’s company spends between $3 million and $4 million annually in developing artist tie-ins.

The link-up between corporations and artists has become an American tradition, for government backing of the arts is not as big a ticket item as it is in Europe and other parts of the world.

Like most American traditions, there’s always a connected worry. One such concern has been expressed by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Michael Useem, who studies the patterns of corporate donations to the arts. What he sees over the past 10 years is a steady percentage of giving, usually about 2% of pretax net income.

Last year, the percentage began to slip, moving downward. But percentages can tell a more threatening story when translated into dollars. When earnings go down, as they have the last two years, no matter how steady the percentages, the dollars committed to support programs also drop.

Judith Jedlicka of the Business Committee for the Arts sees another concern in the field of art sponsorship. Increasingly because of worries over the state of American education, more private businesses are getting involved in non-controversial education programs. While grants to schools are a major part of corporate giving, the trends indicate more will be going in that direction.

And if that happens, will there ever be enough for everyone, the schools, the artists, the performers? Is there ever enough?