Cultivating the spirit

Culture is a word that comes from the farming world, and originally just meant “cultivation”. However, the oldest Indo-European root means “take action, get going, live”. It was only during the 17th century that the Italian word “cultura” began, perhaps thanks to the influence of religious worship, to mean the world of arts, letters and knowledge as we know it today. Even more recently, in the 19th century, the word was used in an anthropological sense to describe the way of experiencing a society, its habits, institutions and beliefs.

Etymology is never sufficient justification for ideas, but this recent and rather confused origin of our linguistic use of the word culture helps us to see that there is something artificial in what we define with it: a choice made by civilisation, the laying claim to a value.

Although the Greeks did not have culture but “paideia”, i.e. education, and Romans had “humanitas” and “doctrina”, it is certain that neither of these civilisations, like many others, were lacking in art, architecture, theatre, music, literature, philosophy, science or history. In other words, the objects of culture have existed for millennia, but there was no “umbrella” category. Let’s look more closely at the origin. What do these activities have in common, why do we think of them as things with which to cultivate our soul? First of all, it is about producing works: objects or documents made to last. Secondly, these objects and documents give us a better understanding of the world, while perhaps not exactly representing it. Another thing: these activities and their objects produce pleasure, whether aesthetic or intellectual. What’s more: they are ours, they are deeply linked to the collective identity of the society that produced them. Finally, since the dawn of time, they have been useless works. Standing proud in their lack of function. Although in some cases they produce useful side effects (science), they attach themselves to functional buildings (architecture), they can contribute to religious worship and funeral celebrations (painting, sculpture, music), they are tools of political communication (poetry, theatre) and almost all of them can be used for education. Useless objects that are very complicated to produce, rare, precious and representative of an identity, like objets d’art, they have always been anomalous, in economic terms. On the one hand, they do not meet any material need, so they have no regular market based on supply and demand, and on the other, they are often extremely expensive, made from precious materials and the result of extremely long, specialised work. Culture is both useless and precious: a luxury. Although ancient, the art market has always been an anomaly. Every item in this strange market is unique. You can sell products that have been done before, but it is hard to have them produced when they are needed. Linked to an artist and his characteristics, the objects of culture are strictly limited. Their producer needs a long time of inactivity in order to learn, mature and create his objects. Nobody can really know for sure how much and to what standard he can produce.

In some cases (poetry since the dawn of time, literature, music and theatre until a short time ago), even with outstanding examples the market hardly ever manages to compensate the real cost of cultural production. This gives us another characteristic: almost always, objects of culture are not produced for the market, but for people who love them and invest in them, regardless of their saleability. In the past, these people have included governments, princes, noblemen, the wealthy, and religious institutions. Phidia and Euripides, Bach and Petrarch, Goethe, Raffaello, San Tommaso and Shakespeare and all the other “ancient masters” would not have been able to do their jobs unless they had been supported, financed and protected by noblemen, states and cities. In a few cases, especially for philosophers and writers, and gradually extended to other arts from the 19th century onwards, the cultural producer supported himself, but as a rule, art is never produced without patrons or sponsors.

Against this background, a new figure emerged after the industrial revolution. No longer public institutions or individuals seeking pleasure or glory, but businesses, pure profit-making machines. This led to a very significant change. If the Roman Maecenas was someone who loved art, a sponsor is a guarantor. Someone who offers his protection. In short, there is a relationship which is rightly perceived as having more to do with the legal and economic aspects than taste. Governments still intervene even now in cultural production, with institutions like museums, universities, festivals and so on.

Even private individuals are well-represented, such as collectors or art lovers. However, businesses who enter this market not just as sponsors but also as clients and investors, have a different motivation.
Getting involved in art and culture is a conscious, rational decision.

It means displaying a certain status on the market (the everyday economic market in which they operate, and in which prestige is important), or improving communications (art and culture are, above all, communication), or living up to the expectations of the local area and their stakeholders, the other people involved in the company.

Or even making a pure investment. In any case, their presence in culture and art is essential. Because, unless you want to fade into insignificance, you cannot produce culture that is detached from the machinations of economy and power, despite all the risks that this entails for artists and intellectuals. Today, it is these businesses who are able to wager on the importance of that strange phenomenon, so dear to our collective identity, that we call culture.