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Art needs a super-rich elite in order to flourish, according to professor of English at London University, Lisa Jardine. Jardine, who completed a major study into Renaissance art in mid-1997, points to the era as one to emulate an age when millionaire patrons were responsible for many of the world’s great artistic masterpieces.
"Committees do not create good art," she says, referring to the current system of state-sponsored arts funding in Britain. "We need enlightened patrons; this is my passionate plea. If you believe that art is just something that a society ought to have--something that a committee can decide to promote, or not, depending on the acceptability of the artist--then art will be dead in 100 years."
Professor Jardine is a committed socialist. But her new Study of the great Italian Renaissance families of the 15th and l6th centuries--the Medicis and other free-spending dynasties--has fired in her an almost missionary zeal for the rich as great art’s only true promoters.
It was the Renaissance, she points out, that kindled the desire to purchase the rare and beautiful. Merchants and bankers, such as Medicis, used their money to ensure the creation of the finest artifacts.
"These people were powerful. They had status, but they also had taste," says Jardine. "They were supremely cultivated or, if they were not, they knew they needed advice. Today’s art lovers are benefiting from their patronage. ’
For people who visit the great collections in the National Gallery in London, the Vatican museums in Rome and the Louvre in Paris, the Renaissance is one of the most evocative terms in the history of art. It conjures up images of Botticelli angels, a far-off era when some of the greatest artists the world has known were at the height of their powers. To Professor Jardine, however, this is not a long-lost golden age but a time with more similarities than differences to contemporary Europe. "We are the Renaissance’s direct inheritors,’ she explains. "The Renaissance made and shaped the Europe of today."
Jardine sees the Renaissance as the first consumer boom. Its great, memorable works, she argues, came about because of acquisitiveness, bordering on avarice. New-found wealth, often the profits of the silk and spice trades, was spent on exquisite possessions, from jewels and globes to paintings and sculpture.
"Conspicuous consumption was a manifestation of power. It was the key way to demonstrate your prosperity, but at the same time it was a manifestation of taste. Many of those who were collectors during the Renaissance were nouveau riche, but they did have a responsibility; just as the newly rich today have a responsibility to ensure that art flourishes."
Inevitably, under such a system, there will be craftspeople working for very little money, she says. "But that is the price we have to pay to have somebody painting works like the Mona Lisa that challenge society. I only wish’ you could have Utopia and create good art as well."
State sponsorship of the arts in Britain may soon be a thing of the. past. Jardine points to the US where, she says, they understand the importance of the entrepreneurial patron. "We need such patrons in Britain, too."
Britain does have some wealthy families who are interested in the arts. These include the Sainsbury family, owners of one of the country’s largest supermarket chains; and the Saatchi brothers, founders of the world famous international advertising agency of Saatchi＆Saatchi. "Firms like Sainsbury’s,"says Jardine, "do their best to patronize young architects, even if it is only to build local supermarkets. ’
At present, however, such patrons are not common. "Art mattered to the patrons of the Renaissance," she says. "The Popes understood that they were spending money for the future when they spent money on books. And for other patrons, like the Medicis, there was a sense of dynastic responsibility. In a culture which values creativity enough, if people spend large sums at the top then you have freedom of expression, and the impact of that art trickles down and affects ordinary people."
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