ESSAY: ‘Art and Patronage,’ Wyndham Lewis – BBC Annual – 1935

An edited version of an essay by Wyndham Lewis included in the BBC Annual, 1935.  Reproduced from Wyndham Lewis on Art, Collected Writings 1913-1956 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969), ed. by Walter Michel and C.J. Fox:

‘The problem of patronage is at present of great moment to every kind of artist.  How should it be otherwise, seeing that every great traditional institution has its back against the wall, fighting tooth and nail for survival, itself; so is far too harassed, too poor, too uncertain of the future, to lend an ear to the necessities of the scribbler, the singer of songs, or of the house-decorator (why decorate, when the roof may be tumbling about its ears in a fortnight?): and as to the Individual, he has his back against the wall, too, poor devil (or relatively poor devil), with the tax-collector’s fingers on his windpipe.  These are elementary truths that, in any consideration of patronage, must be thoroughly mastered at the outset.

That many people, under these circumstances (politicians, sociologists, economists), have meditated a world without art, and with considerable complacency, be it said – even with a vindictive chuckle or two (for at all times the artist has enjoyed a degree of privilege and popular romantic esteem which has not endeared him to the man of shekels, as jealous as is the legislator, or would-be legislator) all this is undeniable.  The Artist, whether writer, plastic artist, or musician – that man who is by way of being “a law unto himself,” that man who is “without dogma” or who “is his own dogma,” as George Moore described it – this privileged creature has been regarded very much askance as much by the salvationist politicians of Russia, as the by-no-means “art-loving” paladins of our own Bankers’ Olympus.

The artist, in his more politically troublesome forms, that of novelist, essayist, or playwright, for instance, is the typical “intellectual,” as thundered against by the masters of the new revolutionary societies (mostly “intellectuals” themselves!) for his “irresponsibility” – even, as often as not, sentencing him to be shot out of hand, just to show him, all his kind.  And the artist fares no better, except that shooting is dispensed with, at the hands of the new-rich money-masters of the old democratic societies of the West, who have not the same incentives to be “cultivated” as had their predecessors: they have not been at any pains to disguise the fact that commercial values are the only ones that mean a great deal to them; and that to all these intangible, non-commercial, non-quantitative values, resident in everything that can be labelled “art,” they are sublimely indifferent.  It is thus that the tennis-player, the sob-stuff film-star, the beauty-queen, the dirt-track rider, the money juggler or stunt-flyer (along with the exponent of the “perfect murder,” and the gunman, the armed sheikh of the gutter) now occupy the position formerly reserved for the Wagners and Beethovens, Goethes and Carlyles, Dickenses and Tolstois.  These were literally the saints of pre-war Europe, still as much Roman and pagan as anything else: Stratford-on-Avon was “the most celebrated birthplace of the Western World” (I quote Mr Shaw).  But neither the materialism of post-war democracy, not the “dialectic” materialism of the Marxist dictatorship, cares overmuch for this particular type of “great man” – in that matter as in some others, they agree.  It is a sort of “greatness,” an order of prestige, which is apt to interfere with the smooth working of materialist dogma, whether of the Kremlin or of Wall Street….

But we must assume, for argument’s sake, that the present rapidly evolving societies will, although starving or shooting (according to taste) all their artists on principle, yet leave a few, here and there, who may pretend at least to carry on the traditions of the greatest art; and who may serve, at all events, to keep up the commercial values, if only by contrast, of the “old masters” (whose works are regarded as in some ways a safer investment than precious stones, and if there were no living artist these objects might somehow, in some queer way , lose caste and so depreciate)…

But this, as a matter of fact, is a fairly safe assumption: for the artistic impulse is a very fundamental, semi-magical, thing, of deep organic importance in the life of man: and although the Money Man – who is detested by every true artist, and who heartily loathes the artist in return, if, for no other reason, because the latter, with his highbrow airs, makes him feel small – although this man of shekels would have as little compunction as the political gunman in shooting all the men of art within reach out of hand, people in general possess an uneasy conscience where art is concerned.  Their instinct tells them that it makes lide less hideous, that without it routine existence would become so unlovely, so stripped and black and snarling, that the very appetite for life would cease to operate, and the “gaiety of nations” so utterly disappear that all incentive even to act ( to fly, to make money, to kick footballs, to shave in the morning, to make love) would vanish; their instinct tells them this, so art, in some attenuated and rudimentary form, will be preserved – in spite of milord L.S.D, and his Salvationist excellency Ghengis Khan à la mode de Marx.

Having allowed this assumption, then, the position of a disreputable and distasteful axiom, we may proceed to consider how the life of the remnants of a once noble race, of mighty craftsmen, may (like the last survivors of the Redskins) be organised in State reservations, or else be supported (in the manner of the London Hospitals) upon voluntary contributions; and attempt to assess the value of these respective forms of patronage.

If you were to inquire of the artist – were you so eccentric, so courteous, as to do that – which sort of patronage would he prefer, that of the State. That of a great Corporation, or that of an individual person, nine artist out of ten would answer “Give me a rich little stockbroker every time!”  Richard Wagner would certainly have replied “Give me a mad king of Bavaria!” in preference to, say, the Prussian State, or a syndic of Wurttemburg tradesmen.  Michelangelo would have plumped for even the most cantankerous Pope, as against a committee of constipated bureaucrats,  or against institutional patronage.

The reason for this preference for an individual is obvious enough.  The individual, however odious, is one thing – is simple: whereas the state, or the corporation, is many things, and this complexity, masquerading as a unity, is suspect, especially to such a man as the artist.

Yet, of course, how corporate patronage works out depends upon the individuals involved – sometimes upon one individual, if influential enough: and it could be and occasionally has been an ideal arrangement; and needless to say the opulent stockbroker or the cantankerous Pope could well be dispensed with by the artist; indeed, the artist would be overjoyed to see the last of them, if he were sure that he would not be exchanging them for an abstract mass of stockbrokers and other categories of patron, amongst whom he would have primarily to reckon with the lowest of most common denominators.

But any patronage is better than one deriving from the politicians, that is fundamental.  And corporate patronage will be better or worse according to the personal detachment for the art, on the one hand, and from political faction, on the other, of the officials involved.  Broadcasting, for instance, if it came under so-called “business” control – namely, the big business interests in Films, Books, Theatres and the rest – would become a vast vehicle of Advertisement merely – one huge and particularly corrupt Blurb.  It is sincerely to be hoped that that may not happen…’

‘In the remainder of the essay, Lewis deals with the problem as it appears “today.”  He states that the individual patron can be left our of count (the rich never buy a contemporary work of art).  Of the possible forms of corporate patronage he feels that represented by the BBC to be “the best in the worst of all possible worlds for the artist.”)’