Art for art‟s sake and art for profit

The fundamental dilemma between art and commerce is older than the idea of cultural or creative industries. The idea of the tension between the economic sphere and the arts can be traced back to Weberian sociology (Swedberg 2006). This dilemma has subsequently received considerable attention in the literature on the cultural and creative industries.

Eikhof and Haunschild (2007, p. 536) find that there is a paradox in the commercialisation of creativity. They state that as artistic motivation is brought to market it is weakened or even destroyed. This means that the commercialisation of art turns out to be impossible as the vital creative resources are destroyed in the process. The act of selling destroys what is to be sold. This view, however, is at the extreme end of the spectrum. From the artist‘s viewpoint the dilemma represents a tension between, on the one hand, a personalised world-view and aesthetic, and on the other hand, the service of a market with its own preferences. (Kibbe 1982, p. 121) This perspective frames the dilemma as differences in taste between the producers and the buyers. Thus the market does not destroy the artistic expression but shapes its direction. According to Hirsch (1972b) there is a clear gap between the critical standards employed by distributors and producers. Distributors perceive cultural products in terms of format and genre that are targeted at a heterogeneous mass market, whereas producers place high value on originality and uniqueness and target their creations at a more knowledgeable audience with more articulate tastes and standards. This leads to a conflict as distributors shape the work of producers to make it attractive to a wide audience while the producers are perhaps more interested in popularity in a much smaller subculture. Lampel et al.

(2000, p. 265) conceptualise this as a balance between artistic and entertainment value. Cultural goods need an audience that can support them and that is acquired through the entertainment services that the goods can provide.

DeFillippi et al. (2007, p. 514) see the dilemma as inherent antagonism between communities governed by professional ethos and the organisational and corporate logics that they have to face.

This view brings the tension to the level of the firm, where artists have to deal with managers responsible for bottom line and vice versa. According to Bilton and Leary (2002, p. 56) many creative people have an ambivalent relationship with business and they may not share the commercial goals of the firm.

While the topic of tension between the artistic and economic logics of the cultural and creative industries is widely recognised, empirical research on it is scarce. One of the few such studies is Glynn‘s (2000) research on the conflict between, on the one hand, financial return and, on the other hand, artistic creativity and excellence in the context of a symphony orchestra. In an overview of cultural industries research Lawrence and Phillips (2002) place the tension between art and commerce centre stage. They state that because of this tension management within the cultural industries requires new kinds of research approaches.

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An alternative view to the tension between art and commerce is introduced by Cowen (2000, pp. 16-23). He takes the view that a strong commercial market and resulting financial independence is necessary for artists to be able to express their aesthetic aspirations. Cowen argues that, despite romantic connotations attached to the artists of olden times, such as Bach, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, they were all obsessed with earning money, and Charlie Chaplin, too, entered the business for money. After all, many are motivated by the massive pecuniary awards available for the most successful artists. Furthermore, Cowen finds that the growing markets for music, literature and the fine arts are benefitting artistic freedom as they have moved artists away from the system of patronage, where artistic direction was dictated by one individual. Markets create various tastes and can thus support a wider diversity of artistic directions.

However, prior to reaching the market the artists have to pass through several gates that shape artistic direction. For example, recording artists are not engaged in natural expression but in calculated and conscious activity where image, lifestyle and point of identification are carefully designed by the record label (Negus 1992, p. 62). Record company personnel do not discover readymade acts but bring out talent through artist development (ibid. p. 81; Thompson et al. 2007, p. 633). This is also a matter of power. Once the recording contract has been signed, the musician assigns the rights to his material to the company and the company can work on it as it sees fit (Thompson et al. 2007, p. 637). A further complication is that cultural and creative goods are sold according to the originality of the good and the creator and thus carefully designed offerings have to be made to look like authentic expressions of raw creativity. The phenomenon of manufactured authenticity in cultural industries has received some research attention (see Jones et al. 2005).

Denisoff (1975) takes a very practical stance and states that the description of the conflict as art for art‘s sake versus art for profit, or creativity versus accounting, misses the economic reality. Artists, records and record companies rise and fall by the bottom line. In practice this means that the artist would usually like to spend more time in the studio perfecting the sound while the record producer has the next act waiting in the corridor (p. 147). The cost-creativity conflict is at its strongest in the studio where the rent, engineers, sidemen and studio musicians are paid by the hour. The producer is the timekeeper and controller who reminds the artists when they are wasting money. But the artists often feel that musical quality is more important than the dollars. (pp. 161-163) A similar practical bottom line approach is taken in Hjorth-Andersen‘s (2003, p. 399) research on book publishing. According to him manuscripts are assessed on the basis of their artistic merit and possibilities for commercial success. For this reason rejection does not necessarily mean any lack of artistic merit.

Within the games industry the tension between creativity and revenue is particularly apparent in the interaction between the more creatively concerned developers and the revenue driven publishers (Johns 2006, p. 165). Grantham and Kaplinsky (2005, p. 184) describe game development as the whimsical side of the games industry that needs to be controlled to keep the development studio from harming the publisher or itself by missing deadlines, wasting budget money or playing around.

Even though the creativity and revenue tension has been identified between the developers and

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publishers, most research deals with game developers‘ internal dilemmas between the managers and artists.

According to Cohendet and Simon (2007, pp. 587-588) video game development is especially problematic because it entails a complex mix of technology, art and interactive story-telling. In the development process scenarios, interactivity, programming, graphics, sound, music and testing need to be integrated seamlessly through the work of various professions, such as script writers, game designers, 2D and 3D graphic artists, sound designers and programmers. As the managers need to make both the artistic and technological sides of the project happen within the constraints of time and money the tension becomes apparent. (ibid.; Autier and Picq 2005, p. 205) Baba and Tschang (2001) find that game development works best when the workers are given autonomy that encourages them to give their best and there is a benevolent dictator in charge of the project who makes informed decisions. This, however, does not remove the tension.

Baba and Tschang (2001) state that game development is by no means efficient as the projects entail considerable amounts of revisions of the basic structure of the game and the reusability of the code is minimal. New ideas are generated throughout the project and integrated into the game design (Tschang and Szczypula 2006). Teams need to be coordinated on a daily basis as the multitude of components that a videogame includes must fit together seamlessly (Tschang 2005, p. 127). Cohendet and Simon (2007) studied the conflict of efficiency and creativity in game development. They found that the creative people in such firms form communities of specialists and function in both formal projects and informal gatherings across company and project borders. These communities serve as sources of ideas and repositories of knowledge. This way the space for creativity is taken. On the other hand, there are strong integration forces implemented by the managers. These include projects, scripts and strictly defined interfaces. This way the commercial logic can be applied in everyday creative work. Furthermore, Cohendet and Simon (2007) argue that such methods of integration that improve the efficiency of the firm allow the generation of creative slacks with the help of which creativity can be expanded further.

Autier and Picq‘s (2005) study on the evolution of the game development companies revealed an interesting paradox. As the company grows it gets rid of creative skills, such as game experts, and the proportion of generic skills, such as management, increases. This is explained by the difficulty of managing such socially complex and ambiguous creative assets and the people behind them.

These problems are aggravated as the organisation grows and thus the shift in skills is inevitable in growing firms.

The work reviewed above implies that management challenges grow disproportionately to firm size.

Furthermore, Baumol‘s cost disease may prohibit the development of economies of scale in cultural and creative production. This means that efficiency gains and scale economies in creative work are debatable. The industry life-cycle theory assumes that there are cumulative efficiency gains and economies of scale in production which lead to the incumbent advantage. It appears that in cultural and creative production this is not a foregone conclusion.

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