TOWARDS AN AMERICAN ARTS INDUSTRY (page 4)

PERFORMANCE  

The final facet of the IO model is performance or the socio-economic results achieved by an industry.  Three are examined.  They are:

• the cost disease;

• cultural tectonics; and,

• the contribution of the Arts to human ecology - physical and psychic.

(a) The Cost Disease  

Confirmed in studies conducted around the world, the Arts (both live and recorded) suffer an inherent cost disease.  First, in the live arts it takes the same time to rehearse and perform a Mozart concerto today as in his own time.  In other industries, new NSE or SSH technology can substitute, complement or better motivate workers increasing the productivity of labor and allowing wages (per remaining worker) to rise without increasing the price of other goods and services (Baumol, Bowen 1966).

In the live arts, substitution of NSE or SSHs technology for artistic labor is usually not possible and often not desirable.  Consider an example from music. In the case of NSE technology, a 17th century Stradivarius out performs any contemporary violin; Carnegie Hall is a better venue for Mozart - with respect to sight line and sound - than the Kennedy Center.  In the case of SSH, conservatory training takes the same time today as during Mozart's life allowing for the randomness of genius.

In effect, the live arts are a 'non-productive' industry in which an income gap opens up between what can be reasonably charged at the box office and the rising costs of production.  One factor filling this gap has been artistic labor which traditionally has worked for less than other professions requiring similar years of 'tertiary' education and training.  Low wages have been offset, somewhat, by what economists call 'psychic income', i.e. love of the job.

Non-artistic personnel, however, such as administrators, backstage artisans, office workers, technicians and other support personnel must be paid relatively competitive wages. Eventually, no matter how much love of the job, ticket prices inevitably increase unless the gap can be filled.  In the past, princes and popes filled the gap, so-called 'patrons of the arts'; today, they have become government and the philanthropic sector.

From an economic perspective, patrons 'patronize' for self-serving purposes (Boulding 1973).  They have two primary motives: preservation of a particular vision of our collective cultural past or of themselves and/or selective promotion of contemporary creativity.  Only limited consideration is paid, to live arts R&D. A recent exception is the Disney Corporation that has reversed the traditional pattern of stage-to-screen with Beauty and the Beast.  The live arts community has responded positively (Chartrand 1998)

Second, studies of media art including broadcasting, motion pictures and sound recording reveal the same cost disease (Baumol, Baumol 1984).  In television, for example, about 10 per cent of the budget is for transmission which benefits most from NSE technological change.  However, more than 60 per cent is for programs which, like the live arts, benefits least from this type of technological change.  While new NSE technology may enormously increase productivity at the outset, i.e. decreasing cost per audience members, once these productivity gains are made, media art suffers the same cost disease.  A similar situation exists in the computer industry where rapidly falling hardware costs are accompanied by more slowly decreasing costs of programming.  Inevitably, labor intensive programming becomes the dominant cost factor.  The media arts and computers are thus 'initially productive' industries.

A corollary to the cost disease is "techno-aesthetic progress".  During downturns and depressions, the scale of art production grows due to the decline of real wages.  In upturns and boom times, rising real wages result in smaller scale productions, e.g. "one-person shows".  Thus there is an inverse relation between economic prosperity and scale, if not quality, of arts production (Leroy 1980).

b) Cultural Tectonics  

Using the geologic analogy of tectonic plates, it has been argued the Cold War between Marx and markets has been replaced by a clash of cultures based on language and religion (Huntington 1993: 22-49).  One example is the Balkans where Catholic Croat, Orthodox Serb and Moslem are at each others' throats yet are of the same race, speak the same language and have only different faiths.  With respect to the arts, language and religion are ongoing fault lines within and between the Arts and society, e.g. clashes between freedom of expression and religion, between multiculturalism and mainstream culture.  Three such tectonic plates involve: ideology, law and geography.

i - Ideology  

Ideology is the basis of political economic systems.  It continues to be a disruptive force as in the clash between those who believe in public funding of the Arts and those who place their faith in the free market and philanthropy.  At the international level, there is a related clash between the United States and countries that protect their arts industry.  Many nations argue artistic and cultural goods and services are carriers of 'values' not just utilitarian functions like a coffee pot, an automobile or a bank account.  Accordingly, they encourage production of art work consistent with their national values and beliefs.  This argument fuels ongoing international debate about 'cultural sovereignty' and the 'morals clause' of the GATT agreement.  In international trade, all countries reserve the right to prohibit import of goods and services that threaten public morals, e.g. Islamic countries prohibiting images of the naked human body or the United States prohibiting import of 'kiddy porn'.

ii - Legal  

Beyond ideology there are legal tectonics. The Civil Code concept of creator's rights differs from Common Law copyright.  The battle between the French and Americans at the World Trade Organization reflects not just nationalist animus but a clash of legal philosophies.  The U.S. wants Europe to extend moral rights of individuals to corporations; Europe resists.  There is also controversy between developed and industrializing countries over who is a creator.  In the preamble to the treaty concerning trade-related intellectual property (TRIPS), community intellectual property rights are excluded. TRIPS only includes individual or corporate intellectual property and only if capable of industrial application.  By definition, this excludes all kinds of knowledge, ideas and innovations produced in the intellectual commons, e.g. in villages among farmers, in forests among tribal peoples, and in universities (Shiva 1993).

Another legal tectonic concerns Aboriginal Heritage Rights.  The question of 'appropriation' has become a painful problem in the artistic community.  Some in the community accept ownership by aboriginal peoples of their own cultural heritage; others believe if artists restrict themselves to their own culture, humanity will be deprived of a significant cultural enrichment (Chartrand 1996b).

iii - Geography

The final cultural tectonic involves geography, specifically, geographic mobility of people, e.g. by immigration and mass movement of populations from one continent or country to another.  Peoples from different continents, races, languages and religions are coming into closer and closer daily contact both inside multicultural societies like Australia, Canada and the United States, with those remaining in the mother country and with tourists.  The result is a cross-pollination of art and art forms and a growth of multicultural expression in the literary, media, performing and visual arts.

(c) Human Ecology  

As a species humanity occupies, shapes and is shaped by its physical and psychic environments.  The arts industry contributes to both.

i - Physical  

The physical human environment is molded by architects, designers, and urban planners.  They are the visual ecologists of society.  If architects and designers are concerned about the present, preservationists are concerned about the past and planners are concerned about the future.  It is architects and designers who apply art to the skylines of our cities, the clothes we wear, the malls at which we shop, the picture on the cereal box in the morning, our homes and furnishings, the cars we drive, the places at which we work and the churches and temples in which we pray.  From Frank Lloyd Wright through the German Expressionists and the Bauhaus Movement to the International Style, architects and designers believed good design could change the world.  They wanted to contribute to the kosmos or our sense of the right ordering of the multiple parts of the world (Hillman 1981).  Together, architects and designers make up more than 45% of the total arts labor force (Chartrand 1996b).

ii - Psychic

Beyond the physical environment there is the psychic commons filled with the values, images and attitudes that shape how we treat one another and our own self-image.  Ongoing controversy about sex and violence in the media is an example of art shaping the psychic environment.  On the one hand, there are those who argue sex and violence in the media is a catharsis allowing psychic release and reducing antisocial behavior.  On the other, there are those who argue the media fosters and encourages anti-social behavior creating a 'psychic epidemic'.

From a welfare economist's perspective, there are two types of social behavior.  The first are onerous activities not performed for inherent satisfaction but for what they yield, i.e. work.  Thus the disutility of work is theoretically to be compensated by a pay check.  Second, there are activities that are the opposite of work.  They give satisfaction to those performing them.  In turn there are two types of such activities.  The first are antisocial activities that give pleasure by inflicting pain or suffering on others.  Social costs usually outweigh benefits because benefits are transitory while suffering is often long lasting or permanent.  Third, there are 'social' activities that impose no physical burden or harm on anyone yet can give satisfaction or pleasure to all.  They include the most benign and valuable of human activities such as love, learning and the Arts (Scitovsky 1989).

Conclusions  

My intention, as an economist, was to demonstrate the concept of an American arts industry.  This was done by applying a textbook 'industrial organization' framework drawn from mainstream economics and partially filling it with evidence collected over more than two decades of cultural economics research conducted by myself and others.  My intention, as a citizen, is broader.

If the concept of an American arts industry has been demonstrated then it has significant implications.  First, it could help cool traditional tensions between professional and amateur art, contemporary and heritage art, high and pop art, and profit and nonprofit art - what I call 'artistic apartheid'.  It shows each to be part of a larger, greater and potentially integrated whole.

Second, it could be the first step towards a unified public, private and philanthropic arts strategy like those of more politically coherent sectors such as business, environment, government, health care, science and technology.  It should enhance public discourse by permitting the Arts to communicate with these sectors using the common language of contemporary society - economics.

Third, it could help explain transformation from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy meaning national wealth will come increasingly out of heads, not out of the ground or from the strength of our arms.  A knowledge-based economy does not, however, mean the end of farming, fishing, mining or manufacturing.  Like Maslov's 'need hierarchy', economic development is a process of adding to, not subtracting from, the means available to satisfy human wants.  In economics, it means national income 'at the margin' will increase fastest in knowledge industries.  'At the margin', in economics, means a unit increase in resources to the knowledge industries will generate the greatest increase in National Income relative to other industries.

The two-chambers at the heart of this new economy are the Arts and Natural Sciences & Engineering.  The Natural Sciences & Engineering provide the medium, the Arts provide the message, and the Social Sciences & Humanities provide the social context.  Computers, fiber optics and satellites require actors, dancers, directors, impresarios, musicians, painters, playwrights, producers, sculptors and teams of highly skilled artisans and technicians to fulfill their destiny like any empty theater stage in ancient Greece.  The difference today, is that we have more stages than plays, more medium than message.

Finally, in this century the Natural Sciences & Engineering have given us a futuristic vision of the Earth from space - one world, one biosphere and one human race.  In the next, the Arts must mold and sculpt a humanistic mask for this new vision - a mask to transform a world of warriors into a celestial sphere filled with artists and creators in all domains of human knowledge.