Dear Mr. Allen,
These are hard times for artists. As your career at Microsoft has given you financial stability, and you have already proven yourself to be creative in your giving, I appeal to you directly as a potential trendsetter and savior of the American arts.
The situation is grim. Despite an economy that is as bountiful as any in recorded history, the great majority of books published, films distributed, CDs pressed, MP3s encoded and paintings sold are, generously speaking, crap.
Our market-driven economy presents us largely with junk. From Hummel figurines to the pat, soul-sucking work of corporate tools like William Wegman and Thomas Kinkade, the American market system has proven itself capable only of creating and supporting simple-minded drivel. Keith Haring prints are ubiquitous, while world-class authors like Joseph Skibell and Adam Hochschild labor on in relative obscurity.
But there is another way to get things done.
There once was a time called the Renaissance. It was an awakening of artistic potential that flowered around the Borgia and Medici families in Italy, where partnerships between patrons and artists cultivated and nurtured exquisite talent. Artists like Michelangelo, Botticelli, da Vinci and Raphael were given financial support, freedom from the mundane task of earning a living and grandiose challenges to push them further toward greatness.
Patrons, in turn, were granted the prestige of being surrounded by great art and its makers. Members of the financial and social elite would vie with each other to support the finest craftsmen and boldest creators, supplanting and surpassing the work that had been forged under the watchful eye of the first master patron, the Church of Rome.
Before modern America can experience a return to Renaissance-like productivity and exposure of great art, great patrons — like yourself, perhaps — must step forward. Instead of a business class united by its indifference to the world of the humanities beyond socially compelled donations to the opera, symphony and ballet, we might begin to see a monied elite investing its buttery excess wealth in the minds and imaginations of future generations.
The new patrons of America must conspire together to create at least three critical seachanges in the American cultural swamp.
1. It must once again be chic to collect artists like so many trinkets upon a fat gold necklace. With your sponsorship of a dozen noted and upcoming writers and artists, you could establish yourself as a trendsetter, and become the envy of your peers.
2. Artists must be supported with rich exposure, as well as the bare essentials of life. Simply funding an artist is not enough. He or she must understand that his or her work will receive grand play across the world stage if the patron — you — is pleased by its stature and quality.
3. Finally, you must care about the artists you sponsor. This may be the hardest requirement to meet. You must challenge your artists, without overtaxing them, and constrain without constricting them. You must lay down a bold vision they may chase, without riding them daily and spoiling their progress with micro-management. You've already got copious money flowing through grants that support the arts, but that won't cut it. Great art is often the product of a passionate interchange between patron and artist. It's not enough to dole out grants through a foundation — you must passionately care about the grand projects you commission and the men and women of the arts you support.
Mr. Allen, I have novel I want to write. But I have bills to pay, and obligations to my employer I must meet. With a modest stipend, I could become freed from mundane concerns, and set myself upon the task of creating great fiction — yes, perhaps even great cyberfiction.
You would be the midwife of my grand undertaking. My books would be inscribed to you, and you alone. I would even use Microsoft Word to produce them, if that is the price I must pay.
I eagerly await your reply.
at your service,
James Norton
E-mail James Norton at jim@flakmag.com.
