First Things First Manifesto 2010 Minus 46

Then Achor Achor told him the story of the tampon box. There was a different pair of Lost Boys [immigrants from Sudan], who had recently been taken shopping for the first time, at an enormous grocery store. Along the way, they had picked out a very special box and put it in their cart. Their sponsor, a woman in her fifties, smiled and tried to explain what was in the box, which was in fact tampons. “For women,” she said… She thought she had accomplished her task, only to find that they wanted the package anyway. “It is beautiful,” they said, and bought it, took it home, and displayed it on their coffee table for months.

What is the What by Dave Eggers, p. 175

There is a solid chance that the most talented artist you know is working 80+ hours this week designing a box of tampons. Today’s most creative artists are culled from universities all over the world to work for the highest bidder cranking out art for just about anything you can imagine, from toothpaste to lady’s razors. Within this system, a good artist can have a lifelong career making more than enough money to raise a family, build a home, or invest and save. Outside this system, a good artist will have a hard time finding enough food to eat.

Almost 46 years ago, a group of influential artists and designers wrote the First Things First manifesto. They feel they were “brought up in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents… applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion … By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.”

Even then it seemed they had “reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise.” But that high pitched scream has grown over the decades into the deafening drone of ‘messages’ bombarding us from the moment we open our eyes till the moment we fall asleep.

How did it get like this? Creativity tends to arise from necessity. Those with means but lacking the creativity have sought those with creativity but lacking any kind of means to solve creative problems for them. This is essentially the idea known as patronage. Samuel Johnson once defined a patron as “one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help.” Johnson’s definition might have been appropriate thousands of years ago, but hardly paints an accurate portrayal of the arts over the past millennium.

For most of history, the major patrons of artists have been the church and the aristocracy. More often than not, these artists were sponsored to endorse political positions and social ambitions. Today, the same artists would be sponsored by the church of consumerism and sovereign nations propaganda machines to much the same ends. And while the purposes of the church and king were hardly more noble than the purposes of a modern marketing firm or one of today’s governments, there is a stark contrast in the use of the arts by its largest patrons.

In the political world, the principle of ‘temporary use’ explains a curious effect. If you are the King or Pope, generally you intend to be in charge for a considerable number of years. It would behoove you to undertake projects that would bring as much prestige to you as possible for as long into the future as possible. Having a remarkable ceiling for your Sistine Chapel or a gallery featuring the Mona Lisa would be a worthwhile endeavor for an arts’ patron when considering a lengthy reign. Creating a pilgrimage-worthy attraction could be very lucrative while infusing a new element of culture could increase any leader’s stature immensely.

This contrasts starkly with patrons in modern times. If you sell tampons in today’s world, you need to sell more tampons this quarter or you may not have a job next quarter. If you are a politician, you need to win the next election or nothing else matters. Longer term contributions to the public sphere are hardly considered worthwhile. And as such, today’s Michelangelo’s and Leonardo’s are designing tampon packaging or surface-to-air missiles. While these products are arguably just as beautiful and innovative, is it really what we want? Do we as a society agree that what we need is more beautiful tampon packaging and less Sistine Chapels?

Where does it end? The designers that wrote the First Things First manifesto thought they had the solution :

“We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world… We are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes. With this in mind we propose to share our experience and opinions, and to make them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested.”

Judging from the pervasiveness of the gimmick merchants and hidden persuaders all around us, it would seem we have not tired of their presence in the least. Nor have we reversed our priorities as artists and consumers. It is hard to say if anything can change the corporate culture of modern art. However, it is clear that at least some artists have been fed up with the system for decades now. And it would seem that this minority is still where hope for a change lies. While it is not a solution, at least there is hope.

Are we headed for a world where our finest galleries are filled with tampon boxes and advertisements? Or are we headed for an artistic renaissance driven by a desire to make a beautiful world instead of a quick buck? One way or another, the future of art is at stake and only time will tell which direction we as artists and as a civilization choose. Let’s hope we take the beautiful path.