Artist and Public

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 218, 27 August 1943, Page 9

Artist and Public

Finally, we quote some extracts of a BBC talk by the novelist E. M. Forster, which, though not intended as a reply either to Friedman or to his critics, provide a kind of background to the controversy: i A GREAT deal has been said about the duty of the artist to society. "It is argued that the poet, the novelist, the painter, the musician, has a duty to the community; he is a citizen like

everyone else. He must pull his weight, he must not give himself airs or ask for special terms, he must pay his taxes honourably, and keep the laws which have been made for the general good. That is the argument, and it is a reasonable one. But there is another side: ‘What is the duty of society to the artist?’ Society certainly has, a duty to its members; it has a duty to the engineer who serves it loyally and competently; it must provide him with the necessary tools and not allow him to starve. It has a duty to the stockbroker who is a competent buyer of stockssince he is part of a financial system which it has accepted it must support him, and ensure him his due percentage. This is obvious enough. So what is its duty to the artist? If he does his bit, if he contributes loyally and competently, ought not society to reward him like any other professional man? "Unfortunately, the matter is not so simple. Art is a profession-that is quite true. The novelist or the musician has to learn his job just as the engineer or stockbroker has to learn his, and he, too, has to make both ends meet, and wants to be paid or otherwise supported. But it is such a queer job. I want first to consider society, the society we may expect to have after this war.

"We may expect a society that is highly centralised. It may be organised for peace-we hope it will. It may have to be organised against future wars, and if so, so much the worse. But in either case, it will be very tightly knit, it will be bureaucratic. Bureaucracy, in a technical age like ours, is inevitable. And as a result, society and the State will be the same thing. Never Like it Before "This has never happened in the past. Society used to be much more diffuse. The government was there, making laws and wars, but it could not interfere so much with the individual — it hadn’t the means. You cannot interfere with people unless you can get at them easily. For example, in the past, a" painter painted for the king at whose court he lived-who probably had some individual ideas about painting — or for the great aristocrats or for the local squire, or for the church, which was not an individual, but which knew what it wanted as regards subject-matter. He lived in a society which was broken up into groups and he had the chance of picking the group which suited him. That societyafter lasting for thousands of years-has suddenly hardened and become centralised, and in the future the only effective

patron will be the State. The State is in a position to commission pictures, statues, symphonies, novels, epics, films, hot jazz — anything. It has the money, and it commands the available talent. It can and will encourage the efficient engineer, or stockbroker, or butcher, What encouragement will it give to an artist?"