A Commentary on the Book "Art for the Millions"

Abstract

In what might be called from a cultural point of view the Age of Individualism in the Western World, stylistic analysis of art has increasingly emphasized the personality of artists, prizing their idiosyncrasies and extravagances as Promethean gifts that raise humanity to Olympian heights. This emphasis obscures the degree to which patronage governs the output of artists. Currently, artists accept dictation from a small financially powerful group, which may have refined sensibilities, but community patronage endowed the decoration of public sites on the acropolis in ancient Greece. Townspeople, mainly merchants, of the Romanesque and Gothic periods supported the construction of cathedrals as samples of the heaven to which they aspired and, at the same time, glorified their prosperity won in the growing new economy of the open market. Even a patron like Lorenzo de' Medici could guide a generation of artists during the Florentine protoRenaissance to reflect the practical interests of the community. Since the Renaissance, patrons have mostly preferred to support expression of their special interests. When the French court of the Bourbons supported Academic Classicism and the decorative fantasies of the rococo, which were aped by other dynasties in Europe, the more productive section of the population simultaneously supported realism in art that celebrated its simpler ways of life. Such outstanding artists as the Le Nain brothers and De La Tour led up to the more prominent mastery of Chardin in France. Dutch art of the 17th century was dedicated almost exclusively to this type of expression, in contrast to the exuberant baroque art of Rubens that was supported by aristocrats in nearby Flanders. Colonialism in North America has confused the relation of art to the realities of the socio-economic background of the U.S.A. by implications of the cultural superiority of art imported from European homelands. Though the tasks of early settlement and frontier life promoted practical and egalitarian emphases, a narrow but influential section of the population attempted to achieve elitist distinction by the importation of aristocratic European art forms and mannerisms. A tradition of realistic art celebrating native accomplishment managed to hold its own, however, until accumulations of corporate wealth toward the end of the 19th century produced a financial 'aristocracy' that began to form collections of costly old masters and works displaying fashionable European sophistication. The practice of