The Grant Proposal as a Genre. A Multiple Correspondence Analysis of Visual Artists and their Legitimations for Government Grants in Flanders, 1965–2015

Do artists’ justificatory strategies to obtain government grants reflect expectations from the funding body, or are they predominantly tied to artists’ field positions? Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis on Flemish (Belgium) visual artists’ grant proposals spanning 51 years (1965–2015, n = 494), we find that, with some notable exceptions, field positions and artists’ justifications for obtaining subsidies are only marginally related. Instead, strategies mainly reflect the period they are written in, showing the influence of both cultural policy and the art field. These findings support Bourdieu’s idea that there is no mechanical homology between positions and position-takings, but that the ‘space of possibles’ in which agents express themselves, strongly bears on this relationship. Furthermore, our study suggests that strategic considerations turn the grant proposal into a genre.