The Morrison Government’s recent decision to roll the Department of Communication and the Arts into a new super Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications has drawn widespread condemnation from the arts community. For a start, there is no mention of the arts in this new super department. There is no reference to its arts responsibilities at all.
The arts haven’t always been treated with such callous disregard during tough economic times. We only have to look back to what happened during the great depression in the United States to find a more enlightened attitude.
The Works Progress Administration was established by Franklin D Roosevelt shortly after he was elected US President in 1932. It was part of his New Deal which involved massive programs to provide employment for the millions who were out of work. The WPA provided programs to struggling writers and artists.
Artists were commissioned to paint murals in post offices, town halls and railroad stations across the country. And whilst this may have produced a lot of idealized kitsch, it did keep a lot of artists alive. One such artist was Jack Levine. “Prior to the depression, many American artists were traveling to the left bank in Paris and were enjoying this hedonistic lifestyle until the money ran out, then they all returned to the US. Many artists became very political and I became politicized out of my own poverty. I didn’t have a dime. I became very bitter and nobody wanted my work, so I went on the New Deal for a while and it felt as if someone had thrown me a life saver.”
Another WPA artist was Vincent Campanella “artists were able to see themselves as part of the working class and they saw themselves as free to be what they wanted to be under the WPA, painters who were free to paint the common life. They were free to share opinions, share thoughts, share peoples financial difficulties, freedom to dedicate yourself and say I am a painter who is a human being and my fellow human beings are my subjects.”
Campanella’s portrait of Thomas Hart Benton
Corporations also encouraged public art at this time. New York’s Rockefeller Centre is full of it. There is a sample of it on the Associated Press Building by Isamu Noguchi.
Isamu Noguchi
The famous photographer Lewis Hine worked as chief photographer for the WPA’s National Research Project, which studied changes in industry and their effect on employment. During the depression he produced images of “worker as hero” to use Robert Hughes’ terminology including images of construction workers on the Empire State Building.
Lewis Hine Construction workers on the Empire State Building
Contrast all this to the Morrison Government’s attitude to the arts. The government denies that the arts has been downgraded by this decision, but the outgoing Secretary of the Departments of Communications and the Arts, Mike Mrdak disagrees. In an email sent to his staff on the day the new super department was announced, Mrdak (pictured below) made his feelings plain. "We were not permitted any opportunity to provide advice on the machinery of government changes, nor were our views ever sought on any proposal to abolish the department or to changes to our structure and operations."
Many bureaucrats are concerned a departmental secretary managing the competing demands of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications may never prioritise a Cabinet submission from Arts.
Needless to say this move by the Morrison Government has been labelled philistine, and it ignores recent studies showing the link between involvement in the arts and good mental health. But to me, the argument goes beyond this. It ignores the many thousands involved in the manufacture of artist’s materials, and their retailers. And then there are the thousands of galleries across the country and their staff they employ, the performing arts, theatres and writers. It’s an entire creative industry potentially being trashed by a government fixated on mining and infrastructure. A 2017 report from the Department of Communications and the Arts stated that the “creative industries” contributed 6.4% to the nations GDP.
But what else would you expect from a third rate advertising man who got kicked out of Tourism Australia. So we made him Prime Minister instead.
REFERENCES
ABC News Online
“American Visions”, Robert Hughes, ABC TV
“Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art, Made In The USA” , Waldemar Januszczak