Art: Wanted: New Goose

“In a few years there will be no art except ‘commercial art,’ and no painter except the ‘weekend’ painter . . . Unless subsidized or protected, [painting] is at an end.” .

Thus in a recent issue of BBC’s The Listener, testy, old (64) Artist-Author Wyndham Lewis* rings a knell for his fellow English painters. One reason for the bell’s toll, says Lewis, is high taxes which sop up the spare cash of collectors who were once well-to-do. Other reasons for the artist’s sad state: his expenses have more than doubled in recent years; dealers demand 337% commission on everything they sell.

Britain’s government, says Lewis, is trying to do something about this state of affairs, but it is doing it all wrong. It is spending most of its art appropriations on lectures, official salaries and historical art exhibitions, and setting aside less than £5,000 a year to buy the works of living artists.

“The State,” moans Lewis, “has killed the geese that laid the golden eggs . . . but it has not itself become a giant goose.”

* Not to be confused with British Humorist and Biographer D. B. Wyndham Lewis (The Hooded Hawk, Francois Villon), no kin.