The question of talent in the arts and creative industries (1)

Abstract

We examine the constituents of the talent development model in the arts. First, it is important to delimit the perimeter of the arts domain and define professionalism. An illustration of the historical and geographical variability of the delimitation of the arts is given, based on the work of French and American public statistics. The criteria for artistic professionalism are themselves multiple and competing, but also subject to controversy, since the export of the notion of talent outside the sphere of the arts, where it has historically been shaped, gives rise to a critique of the political economy of talent.

The next step is to identify the qualities in artistic work whose distribution motivates differences in success and the hierarchy of values. A paradox is constant: the arts offer a potential for individualization and differentiation without assignable limits, while at the same time eliciting comparative evaluations that rank artists, without possible reference to absolute criteria. Drawing on the research of Michael Baxandall, Martin Warnke and Antoine Schnapper [8], we show how the social history of creative practices in the visual arts cannot be reduced to a simple, routine distinction between ancient times, which knew nothing other than the work of the artisan artist who was a member of a guild, and an academic organization, which tightly controlled aesthetics and the organization of production, on the one hand, and modernity, which emerged in the 18th^centuryto celebrate the genius of the artist as demigod, then as martyr to misunderstanding, in its romantic or avant-garde version, on the other. Our historical investigation is organized around a principle of analysis. Whatever qualities can be identified in artists and observed in their works, assessments of these qualities are accompanied by ranges of variability such that certain qualities act as meta-rules. For example, as Baxandall writes:

"[ facilita results] from a natural talent and abilities acquired and developed through exercise, but, of course, the word was often used with more freedom and laxity. The agility implied in practice by the exercise of this virtue(facilita) was one of the most prized qualities of the Renaissance, but it was, and still is, difficult to define precisely." [9]

The same argumentative scheme applies to that other highly sought-after quality, pictorial "grace". Félibien, the^17th-centurytheorist of academic doctrine, evokes a "je-ne-sais-quoi" to define, so to speak, the grace and expressive value of a painting. This same indefinable element of aesthetic judgment is put forward by Abbé Du Bos in his treatise on aesthetics, who argues for a culture of comparison that allows us to discern the power of artists' originality, beyond any mastery of rules.

The general problem that emerges from this development is well known, and we can only indicate it here, without following it in all its relief: it is the problem posed by the enunciation of qualities that create hierarchies of appreciation or even, in their rigid application in the form of aesthetic canons taught and established in doctrine (like the rules of academic art), precepts for creation. In reality, the precision of these categories is highly variable, the margin of uncertainty and interpretation is high, and the interaction between these variables is in no way based on quasi-algorithmic formulas.

There is, however, a radical difference between two creative regimes. In the first, we are dealing with the many qualities sought in artists, but without the model value of the Ancients being challenged, imitation being rejected, or the canonical ideals of beauty being relativized. It is the combination of criteria for realization that creates a space for differentiation and competition between painters, and makes it possible to base the appreciation of works on qualities whose specification, relative importance and uses are highly flexible, when it comes to estimating the value accorded to works. This is the result I extract from Baxandall's survey. In the other creative regime, individualizing differentiation is based on originality: this criterion is openly stated as the guiding principle of competition. It progressively cracks the body of rules established on the influence of past masterpieces, such as the hierarchy of genres, and challenges the positive value of respectful imitation of inherited aesthetic canons.