Soloman Fagan’s article on the Canada Council controversy is the clearest and sanest I’ve yet read, raising pertinent points. If I’d been able to read this back in November instead of a bunch of alarmist rhetoric and petitions, I’d probably have been more comfortable on the artist’s side than on the Canada Council’s.

I know of two other people who agree with me that the changes aren’t that bad, and we all agree that the Council rocking the boat here is a good thing – shaking up this lame scene. I’ve found myself on the C.C.’s side because basically I find the council’s programs as they are now suck and aren’t worth saving.

Fagan lays it out for us (again finally) clear-as-day as to why they’re gonna suck even more now. I’m left thinking the Council is driving itself to irrelevancy. Since I have friends who are either about to graduate, or who are recent art school grads, they already don’t care about this because they’re ineligible for Council funding for the next few years anyway. And I since I’ve only been able to apply myself for the past couple of years, I’ve developed no loyalty for their programs. I’d like to think that Canadian art is capable of sustaining itself without the beneficence of one institution. If it is not, than we should ask ourselves why, and ask ourselves what are we gonna do about it.

The most obvious point here, is that with a success rate of less than 10%, the Canada Council clearly isn’t that important. There are city and provincial arts councils, whose programs for emerging artists are easier to access, and artists find ways to make their work if it matters to them. Ninety percent clearly already don’t need to the Canada Council, so why aren’t we more honest to say that this is about nostalgia and prestige? Nostalgia from a generation who once benefited from what was once a generous endowment (one that rose from 3 million in 1965 to 24 million in 1975 – a difference of 686% – while the current budget, at 150 million, represents a rise of 652% in the last 30 years – 30%less) and prestige among those who actually pass the jury system, driving home and developing another level of unhealthy elitism in an already pretty elite bunch.

The larger discussion that Fagan raises is to why someone like Janet Cardiff is an example to them, when she isn’t even living in Canada anymore. Why is Canadian art defined as a success when someone else outside of Canada cares about it? Why do we want to play a game of wasting big bucks on megalomaniac works? Hell, if wasting money on mega-projects is what it’s about now, I’d probably support shutting down the Canada Council to put their funding into health care or the child care program.

The issue here, I think, isn’t that they’re gonna be screwing emerging artists – they already are – but that they want to support a fashion of big-budget art that probably isn’t worth supporting.

Ultimately, what I’d like to see is the Canada Council have enough money to subsidise all artists in Canada. This is something that the country can afford – you’d need less than 1 Billion dollars and the government has been running multi-billion dollar surpluses for years now. Stop working with funds that haven’t kept up with inflation, stop having to limit its support to people who are playing the game as defined by the American-European order, and to focus on supporting artists who want to live in Canada, and who want to develop a Canadian discourse.

I read all this stuff and I feel screwed not only by the Canada Council, but I feel screwed by the art establishment that gushes over the work of Cardiff.

I use her as an example because she’s who Fagan mentions, although her work isn’t as big-budget as some. Her work is worth sharing with the world, and she got famous for her audio-walks, which aren’t big budget at all.

But if it’s now about funneling money into mega-art, I have to say that I have no love for this stuff, nor do I have any love for the ‘international game’. Personally, I don’t give a fuck about the Venice Biennial. I don’t see why I should.

I used to question, well, if biennials are the game, why doesn’t Halifax start one? That was back when I was living there – and I think they tried to get one off the ground in 2000 but it didn’t quite work out. Not enough money etc.

Artists here keep chasing after the ribbons of wealthy collectors whose taste is dependent on Parkett and the biennials, because only the wealthy collectors are willing to transfer some of their funds into the hands of our country’s cultural workers. And, if it’s not the wealthy collector, it’s the MOMA, Tate, McGuggenheim, the Getty. The cultural institutions of the Anglo-American Empire. As Robert Enright said about the work of Attila Richard Lukacs:

The side of his career in which he was sort of let down – and this is because he didn’t have dealers who were powerful enough largely, was that he never got integrated into that public collecting art world. Once you’re in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles – once those guys are collecting you, in a sense they can’t afford to divest their interest in you because now you’re a part of American art history. So then once collected, forever collected basically. If you don’t do that, you’re selling lots of paintings and you’re making lots of money because collectors are buying your work in Canada and in Germany, but if you don’t have a dealer whose helping you manage your career, all you’re gonna do is sell paintings, and that’s not enough, because once people stop buying, and you’re not in the major public institutions, frankly, who gives a damn about you?

For Robert Enright to say this, to lay it out that simply, is to basically point out the truth about being a Canadian artist – we are a province of the American Empire, as populous in total as California, and that culturally, we are as American as Americans. Ok. Fine. If that’s the way it is, we should start applying to the N.E.A. All of Sheila Cops’ fucking flags and magazine wars to the contrary, there is no home-grown Canadian culture anymore. We’re assimilated. No wonder we get so upset about the Bush administration.

The Canada Council was developed to prevent that assessment. I suspect it is still wrong. There is a Canadian experience that differs from that of the United States. The Canada Council was developed to support Canadian artists and Canadian art, and to help us find out what that difference is. At least that’s how I understand it, especially when I read the Massey Report.

Set up in 1957, it was there to give us a voice different from Jackson Pollock’s and that whole American game they played of associating culture with anti-Communist foreign policy. And what happened? Isn’t fair to say they supported Jack Bush all the way to a New York dealer?

As it says here, giving a brief two sentence CV of Bush – “Senior Canada Council Grant for European and U.S.A. Study, 1962.”

So what is the mission of the Canada Council then? Is it to support Canadian artists in becoming art stars, leaving the country as a type of foreign service cultural ambassador?

Is that what’s art’s about then? National and cultural propaganda, because we’re still stuck in not only the court of Louis XIV, but in the Cold War?

If that’s what the Canada Council’s about, why hasn’t someone woken them up to the reality that in our globalized world, a national identity is important in order to distinguish one’s voice against the chorus?

I imagine this is what they hope to do – support voices loud enough to yell with the best of them at the international biennial megaphone, while forgetting that they are, and have been, doing a lousy job of helping Canada find that voice.

If the art world is one big American Idol, the role of the Canada Council seems to be a Simon Cowell figure – to tell some singers they suck, and to help those that can sing find themselves in the positions they deserve to be in. That seems to be how they justify their 8% success rate, and their desire to support the big names that are playing now.

If the artworld is American Idol, it should be reminded that art isn’t supposed to be about fashion. It could be reminded of this if Canadian Artists were good enough in spite of this international system. I think what we all hope for is that the rest of the world would take notice and say to themselves, ‘wow, look what they’re doing in Canada’. The Seattle Grunge music phenom was best summed up when I read this years ago – ‘when there’s no possibility of success, there’s no possibility of failure’. We should feel free here to do whatever, instead of chasing international validation. Expressing our reality in a vibrant way, which would result in success by default. I mean definition of sucess here is to have people from elsewhere think what we’re doing is amazing, in a way that would drive them to come here and visit our galleries.

All of Canada’s ‘successful’ artists, who don’t live in Canada anymore, or who aren’t taken seriously at home – have made work that goes against being merely trendy, and something that was unique, and whose example help younger people understand a Canadian experience.

But the question remains. Do we really need the Canada Council?