When the Art is Absent in the Conversation About Business

It's bad for everyone when one lion hoards the killing grounds for food, when the few gate keep the money pile.

The divide between Americans today has many facets to it. The obvious markers of the liberal worldview and the conservative outlook, the identitarian vision of both the Progressives and the Alt-Right struggling with one another, the haves and the have nots are easier and more oft trodden territory. Lately I've been thinking about another division that tracks the partisan divide on a fundamental perspective difference: Art vs. Commerce.

For this article, let's suppose that for any business, any organization, there is an artistic side. The art is that which we create, the collaboration between the creative types, the dream of making a thing or a product that will benefit an audience. There is an art to creation and that art can be present in the execution of a perfect iPad charger or engaging podcast, baking cakes or a self-driving vehicle.

When the artistic types take over and bully the numbers people, the business usually creates amazing, risky stuff and then goes out of business soon after. WeWork is a perfect example. Adam Neumann was certainly a hustler but, first and foremost, his passion was the creation. The idea was sound but his disregard for the financial solvency of his project resulted in a monumental failure.

The flip side is far more common.

When the artists are silenced and money-changers are almost exclusively in charge the very soul of an organization turns into a golem, all clay and malevolence. It's a dark turn for a business and, while artists in charge will inevitably fuck things up and the business dies, the death of a business run by the accountants is more like a living decay, a zombie continuing to consume and make money but without any purpose beyond that acquisition of wealth.

Torey Malatia was a CEO with the soul of an artist. At WBEZ, the Chicago affiliate for NPR, Malatia was a force to be reckoned with. He co-created This American Life which seems like a no-brainer but at the time was a huge leap, a monumental risk. When I was hired to run their events in 2007, he pulled me aside and asked me "Are you here for the audience or for the donors?" Given my background as the producer of some of least commercial commercially viable theater in Chicago and a dude with "Art For Art's Sake" tattooed in my right shoulder, the answer was easy.

From that moment on he would grab me and usher me into a conference room to tell me about his next risky idea and wonder what crazy events I had planned. Being in the room with the man was electric. Malatia was what those of us who appreciate such things would call a visionary.

The Board of Directors were the bean counters. That was their job. When they finally had the leverage to oust him they did so with no grace. He was just out. No speeches, no farewells. We all found out they had fired him from a notice in a local trade magazine. I was both devastated and incensed. I contacted a few people and used WBEZ funds to throw him a farewell party. It was bittersweet but he was grateful and gracious.

The Board brought in a woman known for her financial successes with Conde Nast. She had no use for we artists and slowly started running them out of the building. Her method was insidious. She'd hire someone with the soon-to-be-replaced artist's exact job description and hope they figured it out. A number got the message and immediately started looking for another job while someone else did theirs. In a year of her reign, she and I met exactly twice (once because I pissed off Ira Glass of This American Life because I suggested he wasn't that famous). She hired a woman with my exact job description but I'm a stubborn fuck. I held out until they offered me severance. She wanted to throw me a going away party and I refused.

I've since visited the place and the soul is gone. So is she but that Walking Dead sort of replacement can go on for decades. The few people working there seemed fine but they admitted they didn't actually knowvery many people in the building anymore. The place had be redesigned dramatically. It was nice but looked just a bit like Apple raped a Pottery Barn and was slightly antiseptic (perfect for the years of COVID but without the warmth of the artist haven I had left in 2017). Money was definitely being made but at what cost in humanity?

Acquisition of wealth and resource is a very natural impulse. All of us have things required on some level to live and the generation of money to get them is a lifelong task. No shade thrown at that daily grind. Corporations are created to acquire wealth—for employees, for management, for stakeholders. As the Mandalorian would intone "This is the Way." We can rail at capitalism as the ultimate evil in the world but that doesn't make it so. Hoarding resource? That's bad. It's bad for everyone when one lion hoards the killing grounds for food, when the few gate keep the money pile.

The Yin to that Yang is the art. Art is a creation of the soul and the mind. Artists tend to lose themselves in the Muse at the cost of survival because it is their purpose in the party. Never trust an artist with money because all artists, on some level, are insane and self-destructive creatures. Artists should not be in charge but neither should the locusts of the financial world.

Eliminate the bean counters and accountants and money-focused CFOs and we all starve to death. Eliminate the artists and we lose our meaning. The same can be said about the two sides of our political divide—eliminate the conservatives and we all starve to death and die in ridiculous crime or get taken over by China. Eliminate the liberals and we become China.

Perhaps the notion is cliché but balance. Each in equal moderation. Art in a common tug of war with Commerce garners the best of us and the best possible outcome.