Craig at Is the BBC BIased? (seems to be ever-increasingly so) is writing up the EU’s spendthrift proclivities:
The Great European Disaster Movie Part II
…noting that the film was in part funded by the EU…such a fact having been denied by the BBC…which of course raises many questions as Craig lays out in further posts.
But the EU’s desire to fund a bit of propaganda doesn’t stop there….a mere £70,000 is but a drop in the ocean…the few millions that the EU sends the BBC’s way makes hardly a dent in its budget.
The EU has set aside nearly €1.5 billion to fund creative projects across Europe over 7 years:
European culture, cinema, television, music, literature, performing arts, heritage and related areas will benefit from increased support under the European Commission’s new Creative Europe programme, which was approved by the European Parliament today. With a budget of €1.46 billion1 over the next seven years – 9% more than current levels – the programme will provide a boost for the cultural and creative sectors, which are a major source of jobs and growth. Creative Europe will provide funding for at least 250 000 artists and cultural professionals, 2 000 cinemas, 800 films and 4 500 book translations. It will also launch a new financial guarantee facility enabling small cultural and creative businesses to access up to €750 million in bank loans.
Why spend so much money? Is it purely to encourage the growth of the Arts and creative industries? Or is there some over-arching reason, a political reason?….
Culture Programme 2007-2013: general and specific objectives
General objective
To enhance the cultural area shared by Europeans, based on a common cultural heritage through the development of cultural cooperation between creators, cultural players and cultural institutions taking part in the programme, with a view to encouraging the emergence of European citizenship.
‘….with a view to encouraging the emergence of European citizenship.‘?….in other words this is a massive project to further the Grand EU political project….to make us love each other and the EU.
Who are to be the EU cultural stormtroopers?
Creative Europe: who benefits?
Creative Europe will support:
250 000 artists and cultural professionals and their work, allowing them to reach new audiences beyond their home countries;
The European cultural and creative sectors represent up to 4.5% of EU GDP and employ more than 8 million people. Creative Europe will help them to contribute even more to the European economy by seizing the opportunities created by globalisation and the digital shift.
So at least 250,000 artists and creative types (not to mention the 8 million who indirectly benefit) will be the grateful recipients of the EU largesse…and everytime they do an interview, or go to a party or just talk to friends they will tell of how the EU really helped them out….how great the EU is….and of course how many will include a bit of EU praise in their work?
Think not? Here’s Armando Iannucci lavishing praise on the BBC.…why? Because he tells us:
“I feel I owe it my professional life”
Which is why he makes endless speeches ‘defending’ the BBC and attacking the government review of the BBC Charter.
The same mindset is being created, bought, by the EU. 250,000 EU ambassadors, all paid for and willing to serve the cause in however a small way.
You just know that when politics gets involved in “art” there must be an ulterior motive behind it. One would think that art would die a death without EU funding, just as music would have died a death with too much home-taping – as if people would stop painting pictures or writing music, etc. just because there are no EU subsidies.
The whole point of art is that it is never created as art. It becomes art. It is something that cannot be funded. That’s just pretend art.
Sorry, but I hate so-called “culture”. It’s a load of bo**ocks!
The significant difference today is that art is seen as ‘perceived art’. In other words without the necessary level of perception granted by wealth, education and that so difficult to define but very special gift which marks the perceptive out from their fellow men, attempting to understand and appreciate the art of today is beyond so many of us. We enjoy a definitive Catch-22 situation designed by the select few to create and keep a tangible resource, unaffected by financial fluctuations while at the same time being incomprehensible and thus valueless to the ‘common herd’.
The work of recent ‘modern artists’ from Rothko and Pollock to Emin and Hirst is of course deliberately incomprehensible and meaningless garbage with a staggering yet cleverly inflated value created by investors like Rockefeller and Saachi. This reality demeans the genuine efforts of those few properly gifted artists who exist but are not recognised but, like so many aspects of ‘civilisation’ today, our descendants to come – assuming they will exist – will look back at this period and, one would hope, have a good laugh.
Art is whatever floats your boat I say, and I agree with you that “art” as it is, is merely what’s perceived and presented by a cultural and intellectual elite. Everyone else mostly shrug their shoulders, sneer or are totally indifferent and often I don’t blame them. Much contemporary art is deliberately made seem clever and obscure to lend it an air of sophistication and this is done deliberately.
In days gone by paintings could only be bought by the very wealthy individuals and institutions like the church, which is why so much early medieval art is what I call (with tongue in cheek) the Bible’s greatest hits. With the rise of the gentry and middle class after the Renaissance the themes and subjects changed adding still lifes, landscapes and animal painting. With portraiture, painting existed mainly to glorify the patron, but also glorified our culture and heritage. Of course aesthetics and realistic depiction were extremely important as well. Ultimately, painters/artists had earned their reputation because of their skill, by wowing the public with the beauty and illusions they could conjure up. In Italy, at the beginning of the Renaissance, those with money used to decorate their houses with gold. After a recession hit, many of these could no longer afford this, so hired painters like Botticelli instead. Leonardo and others managed to seal the reputation of painters propelling them to the forefront of the arts with their achievements
After the advent of photography in the mid-1800s, painters/illustrators were no longer in such high demand and therefore had to adjust with the times and began imbuing their work with concepts and ideas, abandoning realistic depiction with sometimes startling and appealing results, think of the Impressionists and their followers. Already artists had begun to attempt to shock the public with their work, such as Courbet in Paris, and over time many movements came and went. What’s interesting is the political dimension, many movements of the 20th century were specifically of the left, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, De Stijl etc.
Today, it’s practically impossible to separate politics and the art world. Aesthetic experimentation has been largely exhausted and I think painting mainly appears because of its vaunted historical reputation. Nevertheless, this is why art is can seem so difficult and yet preachy. It’s really trying to tell you something, but you’re too stupid to understand it. Somehow painting as art — and now art without the painting — was always there to flatter much of the elite and powerful, it says as much about them as it does about the artist. Today, we know who that elite are, and through the art, how they see themselves. Contemporary art with its supposed intellectual heft, gives them a sense of superiority which they are prepared to pay huge sums for. This is why an artist can make a fortune selling a pile of bricks. It’s the ideas that are important, but what are those ideas? Are they any good? Myself, I think they’re pretty tedious and usually want to attack Western society’s values.
I just believe you can’t really separate the politics from much art today and I agree with Alan, be always wary of government sponsored art, once you understand that there’s an agenda, then much of the work begins to make sense. Think of Tracey Emin for example and her unmade bed. The people who commission, promote and review these works have their own agenda whether they realise it or not. Just like the BBC.
There are still artists worth paying attention to, it’s just that the mediums (media?) change with the times. In a free society there will always be artists trying to speak to others. For example, many who went to art college became rock stars etc. to reach a wider audience. Today, movies occupy the space paintings used to in society. In the future it’ll be something else. And remember, at least 90% of everything that’s created is rubbish anyway! Don’t listen to the art world, in the future I think a lot of the art of today will be seen for what it is, part of the wider malaise of a culture that was slowly dying.
I think there’s plenty of good art out there, funded in many different ways. The problem as I see it is that the stuff that is relentlessly promoted through the MSM, and the BBC in particular, is largely worthless, modish rubbish, often with a political agenda attached.
I also fail to understand why a film which, unlike, say, a live musical performance, can be duplicated and screened in 5,000 cinemas simultaneously, not to mention DVDs, needs public funding. My brother watched a film called “Robot Overlords” a couple of weeks ago. The film, as the title suggests, should be capable of standing on its own two feet commercially, but it had received public (lottery, I think) funding. Why?
‘Art’ is simply being redefined as the art of persuasion – a logical, if ruthless, corporate decision to ’embrace and extend’ the corrupt core of the modern movement in art.
In that arguably insane movement Art is already largely centred on persuasion, propped up by a progressive abandonment and vilification of aesthetic merit.
When Art becomes instrumental, it re-enacts daily the evisceration of Liberty.
Art is like the BBC. The people who want it should pay for it.
Fine, but it must apply to everything, sport included.