DavidThompson: For readers with an interest in really bad art and its coercive public funding, this post and subsequent discussion over at Artblog, which some of you may have missed, offers quite a lot to chew on. Because I’m vain and shallow, I’ll quote myself:
The political uniformity and extraordinary conceits of our own publicly-funded arts establishment have entertained us many, many times. As when the writer Hanif Kureishi told Guardian readers that culture, as represented by him, is “a form of dissent,” while the paper’s theatre critic Michael Billington claimed that a reduction of taxpayer subsidy for loss-making plays is nothing less than “suppression” of that “dissent.” Likewise, when the playwright Jonathan Holmes claimed that he and his peers are “speaking truth to power” – I kid you not – and insisted, based on nothing, that “the sole genuine reason for cuts is censorship of some form” and “the only governments to systematically attack the arts have been the ones that also attacked democracy.” MORE
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The public will pay for great art, but better we do so by choice at the box office than involuntarily through taxation. That way, artists have to produce art worth seeing.
How did you get that picture of me? Well, that’s embarrassing.
By it’s very nature, government-funded art is bad art. If it was good art, the public would support it voluntarily.
Tony R
Spot on correct. When i was a kid my parents took us to the LA Museum of art. This was in the 1960s we laughed our way through it. I remember one paint splattered mess called “after the bath”. I wondered what it looked like before the bath.
I was probably 11 or 12 years old at least he time.
At the time. Effin iPhone.
There is an ‘art community’ a half a block from my shop.
The only difference between those people and the welfare trash in the trailer parks of W Virginia is that the government pays them better for wasting time and resources while consuming drugs and alcohol.
They had an ‘exhibition’ a couple of weeks back. Parades of young people, faces adorned with items from Home Depot, buying or smoking any drug offered to them, often without even asking what it was.
Then the parade of fire trucks and ambulances hauling off the spazed out or passed out.
Talked to the guy running the place the next day. He called it a success.
JohnS
Stop writing about shit you know nothing about.
You’re only exposing your ignorance as an arrogant Leftist troll.
West Virginians – including those in trailer parks – are, for the most part, decent (if poor) folks.
Enjoy your fecally-friendly SanFran neighbors.
Yes john shit is trying to mimmick his king porky pig when speaking. Just glad I can’t hear it but it is just as bad reading it.
So that was you passed out, sitting on a broken toilet outside your trailer by a pile of Coors cans?
Sorry, Czar, I didn’t know.
Until I went through W Virginia I had a hard time believing the statistic that more whites were on welfare than blacks.
That place drove home the sad reality.
Sorry trailer king, being broke is a condition, and should be a temporary one. Being poor is a state of mind generally brought about by laziness or drug abuse.
I hope that President Trump will consider reappointing Dana Gioia to head the NEA. Dana held that post from 2003 to 2009, and did a wonderful job. He’s a devout Catholic who is classically educated (two degrees from Stanford and one from Harvard) and is not only a trained French horn player but also a published poet. No Virgin Marys in piss masquerading as “art” for him.
His accomplishments at NEA included promoting more education in classical literature (i.e. dead white guys’ books and plays) on the grounds that these readings are critical to “an informed citizenry,” and starting the One City, One Book program, which gave us, for example, half the citizenry of Chicago reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the same time.
President Obama wanted Gioia to keep his appointment, but Dana’s the kind of guy who thinks that all recent presidential greatness begins and ends with Ronald Reagan. He took a hard look at Obama, correctly made him out to be a liberal douchenozzle, and politely resigned.
Doubling down is not, in this case, winning. JohnS.
There’s a hella sad reality everywhere. Statistically speaking there are more native born white than black on welfare, pretty much anywhere you choose to look. Blacks tend to be over-represented in urban areas.
Do you really want to reel this out? Mebbe try to not fall into those tired archetypes as a way to express your point.
Rosa I did not come from wealth, and I have traveled much of this country. I spent a year hitchhiking and living on my wits in the early 70’s.
Giving a fancy name to a situation doesn’t change a thing about it. It only allows you to ignore it.
If you like your tangent, you can keep your tangent.
Or something.
Art is Art when it lifts the spirit.
Putting a light bulb up someone’s ass, or plastic barf on a chair to raise awareness about bulimia, is not Art
Plays at the government funded level are as a rule, spectacularly awful. Usually centered around weird gender issues written with a High School level of dramatic irony.
All these miscreants would benefit from being forced by starvation into learning a marketable skill.
Other than Barista.
Art for arts’ sake.
Money for Gods’ sake.