Entering an old debate

July 15, 2011 by
Filed under: Arts and Society 

So at the moment I am ingratiating myself with the current debates and discussions around arts and climate change.  Those in this field or familiar with it will be aware of the RSA Arts and Ecology work that has taken place over the last few years, and we have been considering on how to build on this and to help further the debate. 

The other night the Green Alliance held their summer reception at the Royal Opera House  their deliberately provocative topic for the evening was ‘What have the arts ever done for the environment?’  And following a fantastic excerpt from the Opera Group’s Seven Angels about a neglected garden to fix the arts in our minds, the debate ensued under the chairing of Alison Tickell from Julie’s Bicycle amongst a largely arty panel of Jude Kelly, Matthew Taylor, Dr David Frame, Ben Todd and Peter Randall-Page.  The thing that got me was how the debate reverted to type around the ‘instrumental vs intrinsic’ debate.  Artists should not be instrumental it was claimed to much nodding and agreement. The arts as a moral compass?  That’s an abhorrent idea.  Yet the plot thickened later on with declarations such as ‘I don’t like it that artists shouldn’t be allowed to show works that have a moral view’ and ‘artists should not be afraid to make you think (about) how you live your lives, what is necessary’.   

Why can’t both instrumental and intrinsic qualities be valued together or indeed separately in and of themselves at different times?  Where is the space for artists to decide? Why is there a homogenous view of artists and what art should be?  Audiences are hugely varied, they can cope.

The idea that we should stop cutting down rainforests because of their inherent value is absolutely valid but not cutting them down because they could contain the cure for cancer is important too. Why the need for either, or?  Perhaps it is because the inherent value gets lost somewhere within the messaging if it becomes all about the message.  But then where do you draw the line between say, an artist, an illustrator, a graphic designer or a creative communications professional.  Creativity is so very blurry.

The debate is picked up head on in the John Knell paper ‘Arts funding, Austerity and the Big Society’. It asserts that the case for the arts needs to be re-made and in doing so that instrumentalism needs to be reinvented.  Knell argues that ‘the so-called arts for arts sake plea – is a form of instrumentalism and that understanding the deeper value of the arts is better advanced by envisioning  a spectrum of instrumental arguments that can be made, rather than a polarity in which one pole always trumps the other’.

This brings us to the ‘value’ word.  In the same paper, Bill Ivey talks about a need for a new set of research metrics that link the public’s contact with a vibrant arts scene to overall quality of life – with the long term result that the health of our cultural, healthcare and transport systems are considered of equal value by policy makers.  Wouldn’t that be wonderful?  The Liverpool Arts Regeneration Consortium is paving the way on this front with its recent intrinsic impact study that investigates a range of reactions an audience member may have to a specific performance or visual experience such as ‘captivation, intellectual stimulation, emotional resilience, spiritual value, aesthetic growth and social bonding’.  I’m looking forward to reading this in more detail as the next step for climate change art has to be exploring impact, so we can better articulate value in this context for policy makers and provide ways to better engage the public with this work.  Don’t you think?

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Comments

  • http://twitter.com/BenBennetts Ben Bennetts

    Georgina, I want to engage in these ideas, I really do, but this article (not least the quotation from the John Knell paper) is a case in point of what I was talking about on RSA Comment last month - http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2011/06/16/language-barriers/.

    • Georgina Chatfield

      Hello Ben,

      I’ve just read your blog with great interest – I couldn’t agree more. Really. There’s nothing more frustrating than being in the excluded half of the audience that is sitting there interested but totally puzzled and intellectually left out by the speaker or writer.  And (perhaps boringly, sorry) I also agree with you on John Knell’s paper, there are times when I find the language a little inpenetrable and had to ask others their views to get a better understanding. Perhaps there is something in that? It did encourage me to ask more questions.  Though as a debate it gets to a point and I think it is a bit superfluous.  I’d rather see things get done.

      Whilst I’m on this though, isn’t the term ‘an idiot’s guide’ frustrating! It suggests there is something inept on the part of the reader rather than a writer’s inability to get across complex messages simply to a wide range of people, not just the super brainy or those with 30 years experience in the field.  

      I did like your line “there is, to be sure, a skill in being able to convey complex ideas simply but for any idea or concept orf meaning, there is a point beyond which it cannot be simplified without distorting or destroying its meaning.  The greater skill, surely, is knowing where to stop.”

      Georgina

    • Georgina Chatfield

      Also Ben – I’ve just sent a link to your blog around the Projects team. Thanks.
      G

  • Toby Lowe

    The idea of “intrinsic value” is spurious. Value is a human-created concept. So, by definition, things only have value because they are part of a particular person’s value system. In other words – because it has instrumental value to that person. “Intrinsic value” arguments are simply attempts to avoid answering the question “why does this have value to you?”.

  • Toby Lowe

    The idea of “intrinsic value” is spurious. Value is a human-created concept. So, by definition, things only have value because they are part of a particular person’s value system. In other words – because it has instrumental value to that person. “Intrinsic value” arguments are simply attempts to avoid answering the question “why does this have value to you?”.

    • Georgina Chatfield

      Hello Toby,

      Thanks for your thoughts.  As I was saying to Christian above – apologies for not responding in a more prompt fashion.

      Quick and timely plug for my latest blog! – ‘Values, the art and us’ touches on what you are saying – and I’d recommend the Common Causes Handbook for a simple way of unpicking the human-based value systems that are naturally within us all. Check out their website for other comments and blogs on this topic… http://valuesandframes.org/

      What I think is interesting how this can polarise arts professionals, genuinely people get very hot under the collar about it, that there is a right and a wrong set of values. That can’t be very healthy when in broader society, valuing the arts is something which it would be wonderful if everyone did, whatever your own value system.

      Georgina

  • http://truthandprogress.wordpress.com Christian Flores-Carignan

    I see no problem with instrumentalism. If certain people enjoy the aesthetics of a piece of art, that art work has instrumental value. It seems to me that the “art for art’s sake” people miss this point. They don’t realize that the artwork is a means toward the end of human pleasure.

    Indeed art should produce as much pleasure as possible, whether directly through being aesthetically pleasing to people or indirectly through teaching a moral or intellectual lesson which leads to behavioral changes which in turn leads to an increase in the level of societal happiness.

    My argument indeed is based on ethics (in particular a utilitarian ethics). I know of no other way of evaluating the worth of something.

  • http://truthandprogress.wordpress.com Christian Flores-Carignan

    I see no problem with instrumentalism. If certain people enjoy the aesthetics of a piece of art, that art work has instrumental value. It seems to me that the “art for art’s sake” people miss this point. They don’t realize that the artwork is a means toward the end of human pleasure.

    Indeed art should produce as much pleasure as possible, whether directly through being aesthetically pleasing to people or indirectly through teaching a moral or intellectual lesson which leads to behavioral changes which in turn leads to an increase in the level of societal happiness.

    My argument indeed is based on ethics (in particular a utilitarian ethics). I know of no other way of evaluating the worth of something.

    • Georgina Chatfield

      Hello Christian – thanks for your comment – sorry it’s taken a while to respond, I didn’t realise these comments were here (note to self, sort that out).

      Isn’t it interesting how the aesthetics of a piece of art lead you to have an emotional response.  Intrinsic = instrumentalism.

      I’m not sure whether I agree that art should always produce as much pleasure as possible – for me the best art challenges, provokes and is beautiful but not necessarily all at the same time.  I still remember being really moved by Kienholz’s exhibition at the Baltic some years ago now – but it definitely wasn’t pleasurable. http://www.balticmill.com/whatsOn/past/ExhibitionDetail.php?exhibID=43

      Georgina

  • Georgina Chatfield

    Hello Ben,

    I’ve just read your blog with great interest – I couldn’t agree more. Really. There’s nothing more frustrating than being in the excluded half of the audience that is sitting there interested but totally puzzled and intellectually left out by the speaker or writer.  And (perhaps boringly, sorry) I also agree with you on John Knell’s paper, there are times when I find the language a little inpenetrable and had to ask others their views to get a better understanding. Perhaps there is something in that? It did encourage me to ask more questions.  Though as a debate it gets to a point and I think it is a bit superfluous.  I’d rather see things get done.

    Whilst I’m on this though, isn’t the term ‘an idiot’s guide’ frustrating! It suggests there is something inept on the part of the reader rather than a writer’s inability to get across complex messages simply to a wide range of people, not just the super brainy or those with 30 years experience in the field.  

    I did like your line “there is, to be sure, a skill in being able to convey complex ideas simply but for any idea or concept orf meaning, there is a point beyond which it cannot be simplified without distorting or destroying its meaning.  The greater skill, surely, is knowing where to stop.”

    Georgina

  • Georgina Chatfield

    Also Ben – I’ve just sent a link to your blog around the Projects team. Thanks.
    G