PERSPECTIVE ON ART : Cancel the NEA Stamp of Approval : Most grants go to the ‘aesthetically correct’--artists who should do fine without government patronage.

Much attention has been focused by Congress and the news media on the National Endowment for the Arts, a very small government program with a very high profile. The debate is seen as a contest between the arts community and middle-class values in a battle for the soul of the nation.

The NEA partisans’ chief argument holds that support of fine art (as opposed to entertainment or pop culture) is essential to the health of the nation, and that federal government support keeps the arts healthy, thus keeping the nation healthy. Though the first half of their argument is true, the second half is most definitely false. Just as the welfare system has had disastrous unintended consequences for the health of American families, so too the NEA is crippling a once lively national arts community with its misguided supports.

As a two-time recipient of NEA individual artist grants, I speak as one who has witnessed firsthand the way government support poisons those it claims to help and weakens the nation that gave birth to this agency and continues to pay its bills.

Every year the NEA gives grants in the form of money to numerous art institutions and artists, only a few of whom create outrageous (some say immoral or indecent) artworks. I fully support these artists’ right to create these works. However, because middle-class tax dollars foot the bill, congressional critics have focused the media’s attention on the most outrageous: a crucifix floating in urine, a naked woman smearing chocolate over her body. The meritorious work of the vast majority of grant recipients is ignored, creating an impression in the minds of many Americans that contemporary art is primarily concerned with the offensive and the outrageous. This alienates many who would be attracted to the more profound discourse that separates fine arts from most of popular culture.

All contemporary art suffers by association with these few outrageous pieces. Witness corporate collectors’ near abandonment of contemporary artists, who have been tarred with the same brush.

NEA grants do not usually go to needy artists who would otherwise be restricted in the creation of their art, but rather to successful practitioners whose productions are sufficiently mature to appeal to a committee of like-minded artists and academics. The grants have become a government seal of approval, honoring the work of artists deemed “aesthetically correct” by these panels. This is especially troublesome in academia, where a government seal of approval is doubly rewarding, giving grant winners an edge in the promotion and tenure process. Deans and department chairmen are always on the lookout for evidence of “national prominence” in the resumes of candidates for promotion and tenure.

Those who create art that is aesthetically or politically incorrect are far less likely to receive these awards and consequently are less likely to become part of the academic Establishment that so profoundly affects the intellectual health of the nation.

Far from being a first defense against censorship, the NEA practices censorship on such a grand scale that it escapes notice. At the NEA, whole categories of art, usually the more conservative and traditional, are excluded from serious consideration. Rarely will one find among the grantees members of the National Watercolor Society or painters who work in the zoologist/artist tradition of Audubon. Watercolor paintings in the tradition of Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth are held to be less than serious efforts, lacking in originality. It’s just not “art,” I’ve heard fellow grant winners say.

Great nations are judged by the quality and profundity of their art. The independence of American artists from government patronage and its concomitant meddling has been an important factor in the development of their special form of intense creativity. To blithely assert that contemporary artists and their creations cannot survive the loss of the NEA is nonsense. In fact, if history is any indication, the elimination of the NEA could mark a renaissance in contemporary American art and its influence on the soul of this nation.