ARTIST AGAINST SOCIETY
75
to have given this a thought. They naturally find it hard to go
against current practice, which
is
to exact a quid pro quo for any–
thing paid out. Yet it
is
a solemn fact that their only hope of achiev–
ing results is: not to hunt them down. Let the miIlionaire endow an
artist chosen by lot. Let the foundations award lump sums without
applications, interviews, or progress reports, and without seeking for
their list of fellows the advertising value of well-known names.
If
the government enters the field, as it must in connection with public
building, let the worker's output be bought as a speculation, not as
supplies. Give a man a ceiling to paint, and don't come back till he is
through and has gone. This system- or lack of system-may seem
wasteful, prodigal, insane, but the truth is, if you want art-great
art-you must pay for it; and
if
you pay for it, you must not go
about spending the wealth of the Indies with the manners of Man–
chester.
No need to be afraid that this lavishness will ever justify the
charge of criminal generosity: no artist will grow as rich on it as any
simple racketeer or businessman holding a war contract. No need even
to fear that you will be doing something new. The principle pro–
posed is only a generalization from old practice wherever it has been
truly successful-in Greece, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance or
modern times. The only institutional alternative
is
Bertrand Rus–
sell's old notion of "the vagabond wage" to be provided-again
without strings-by a benevolent state. But it lies far, far in the future
of unpractical politics.
So much for bread, which is only one requisite. What spiritual
food does the great artist need in order to make his duel with
society something more than a personal brawl? Here, as society re–
assumes its role in the productions of genius, we find in our end our
beginning-plus a moral, if not a conclusion. American criticism has
for many years been asking why our great artists are so short-winded.
They make a fine start and then stop, kill their talents or them–
selves. These days we probably think first of Scott Fitzgerald, and we
say that perhaps he expected too much from life and not enough
from himself. Certainly he had no guidance except that which came
from selfish outsiders bent on exploiting him. This
is
another way of
saying that when an American discovers in himself gifts of a certain
kind, he has no traditional recipes for nurturing them. He is the
