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PARTISAN REVIEW
Hilton Kramer:
Before calling for questions and comments from the
audience, would the speakers respond
to
one another?
Jules Olitski: I
agreed with almost everything Bob said . I'm not sure that
the government owes anything to artists. After all, who asked artists to
be artists? And when artists complain, I think of that sculptor with
Tilted Arc,
Richard Serra-what a pain in the ass. But I thought that
practically everything Bob said was excellent. The reading was wonder–
ful. Cynthia Ozick's piece was lively and delightful, just lovely.
Robert Brustein: Just
to
defend my defense of the National Endowment,
I'm not really making a case for individual artists so much as a case for
institutional support. In this country, nonprofit institutions can't survive
without subsidy, and we obviously are not receiving subsidies from
major private foundations, because they are mostly, with the singular
exception of the Mellon Foundation, supporting multicultural endeavors
and trying
to
get institutions such as nonprofit theaters, dance compa–
nies, and operas
to
change the nature of their repertory
to
accommodate
a diverse audience, as they put it. This really means just changing the
plays you put on, changing your whole approach
to
the art. So they're
not giving money for operating funds, as they once did. The ational
Endowment, which used
to
provide at least 5 percent of an institution's
capital support, has virtually disappeared . Private funding is, of course,
seriously affected by the downturn of the stock market, so we're facing
a situation where institutions that help to produce high art in this coun–
try are undernourished and starving as a result of many factors, one of
which is this censoriousness regarding what they do.
Jules Olitski:
Bob, the problem I have with the government supporting
institutions, I'm speaking particu larly of visual arts, is that the kind of
art that has been supported is dreadful.
It
reminds me of yard sales
where a bit of trash is taken from here and put over there, is spread
around, and the spreading around of bad art isn't useful. It may sound
hypocritical, but I would want institutions
to
support opera, ballet,
where the level is higher than the art that gets supported by the NEA.
Robert Brustein:Jules,
the National Institute for Science also supports
a lot of experiments that don't work, 90 percent of them don't. Maybe
I
percent is going
to
break through and find a cure for polio, cancer, or
AIDS, which will be worth all the subsidy. And
to
judge the value of a
funding agency by its mistakes is really not
to
recognize that the small
