BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?

Subject: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 10:20 AM

Switched to NPR while fighting the traffic on the way to work this morning just in time to hear about:

New York Mayor Rudy G's latest foray into art censorship. Seems he objects to a picture of the Last Supper with a naked black woman as Jesus. Seems this is probably not an accurate depiction of the event and an attack on Catholicism.

Activists doing their best to disrupt fox hunters in Merry Olde England. Seems they object to the blood sport of the rich and faded.

Censorship?? Fox Hunting?? Luckily, just as I was despairing about where thousands of years of civilization had taken us, they did a feature on Alice Neel, a wonderful portrait artist. What can you say about someone who does a self-portrait at 80, naked. When one of us poor "humanoids" can manage to reach that place of real beauty and capture it on canvas, I know there's hope for this poor, seemingly cursed, species.

Brightened and cheered, I am through ranting for the week. I hope all 'catters in all corners have a wonderful weekend. I'm going to sit back, play a little guitar, and ponder on how one might ride the new folk resurgence to fortune and glory. Or at least have a few laughs along the way.

All the best
Bart

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 11:28 AM

Bartholomew said:

"Brightened and cheered, I am through ranting for the week."

Promises, promises!!!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 11:37 AM

You want to add absurdity to that?? The activists now want to outlaw ANGLING!!! Apparently the poor fishy suffers through being caught and then thrown back in. Now they have to be bashed on the head to kill them, regardless of whether they are undersized, breeding females or a protected species......

Ho hum..... please let filing be the next thing they want to outlaw... paper cuts are the bane of my life...

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 12:58 PM

I'm pretty sure I heard that about the art attack.. wasn't there also a picture of a naked woman, crusified?

I'm pretty sure that the mayors objection was to public money funding this kinds of stuff... And I think I have to agree...

About a year ago, some people in Windsor were up in arms over some tossers 'art display' that involved covering a track of waterfront land with breakfast cereal... I guess the argument went kinda like this.. why not spend the monty on breakfast cereal to feed hungry PEOPLE instead of overfed shit-hawks and starlings...

Why the public is funding art I have no idea...

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 01:04 PM

I'm all for banning 'sport killing.' Torturing small animals isn't a right, it's a perversion. Whether sport killers are sadistic or just ignorant, I'll kick their teeth in if they do their killing in my presence. :)

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 01:09 PM

How'd you like to be hooked though the face, draged underwater for a few minutes, have the hook removed with pliers and tossed back on shore?!?!?!

If yer not gonna eat ALL of it, don't hunt it!

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: wdyat12
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 01:33 PM

Clinton, I agee with you on all points. That's why I now go fishing without any bait on the hook. I just like to fish. The Golden Rule should apply to all God's creatures, not just humans.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: DougR
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 01:42 PM

I all for public funding for the arts as long as the money is spent responsibly (granted there are differences of opinion on what is responsible). In my opinion, the art in question should not have received public funding. Neither should have the Mapplethorpe "art" that received NEA funding a few years ago. Unfortunately, this type of grant (read controversial)is the only type we read about in the press.

Federal and state funding of the arts has been with us in the U. S. since the mid-sixties. The overwhelming majority of the funds have been used to stimulate private funding for the arts for worthwhile projects. Only a very small percentage, in my opinion, has been spent on the kind of art Bart refers to.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 01:50 PM

Maybe it's that I don't trust art on the public tit... I donno... I guess it'd be different if I could figure out a way to get my hands on some of this art money...

It shouldn't be allowed that a commity somewhere decides what art get's the $$ and what doesn't... so I guess if ya can't support it all, you shouldn't support any of it??

I donno.. I'm just thinking out loud at this point...

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: DougR
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 03:27 PM

Well, Clinton, assuming you live in the U.S. of A., why don't you write the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D. C. 20506, and ask them to send you guidelines for applying for a grant. You should also get the grant guidelines from your State Arts Council. In many states funds are available to make artists available to the schools. I would think folk music performers might qualify. Wouldn't you agree that young school children being exposed to the history and performing of folk music might be beneficial to them?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 04:40 PM

Here's a link to the NEA. :)

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: GUEST,John Hardly
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 06:26 PM

As a fellow who scrapes out a living in the arts I can tell you that, from my perspective, the national endowment is no friend to the artist.

The acceptance of art is a subjective thing, but its acceptance in a culture is highly suggestable.

When I do an art fair it is quickly evident that success breeds further success. When I'm busy selling, I significantly increase the likelihood that I will do more business. People go from interested crowd to interested crowd more than they go from booth to booth. In matters of taste people want what others want--there are very few taste pioneers.

When the gov't takes my tax money and gives it to my competition (other artists) that is insult.

The further injury then inflicted by that act is that they more than implicitly endorse my competition (with my tax money). They become the crowd at my competition's booth.

irony--the grant goes to the deserving by virtue of their skill, a skill that should make the grant unnecessary.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 07:27 PM

Clint said:

"Maybe it's that I don't trust art on the public tit... I donno... I guess it'd be different if I could figure out a way to get my hands on some of this...."

I see, you just want to get your hands on some public tits.

They have tax-funded statues you could fondle....

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Amos
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 08:53 PM

Ease off, you reactionary looneys. Just back up a sec. Consider the deep proposition that art communicates, and it is as good _artistically_ as it can be said to communicate. Leave economic success out of it for the moment; examine, instead, whether or not good works of art, whether or not they are popular enough to turn revenue streams, have any other final measure than their power to reach others in that physically impossible event called communication.

If you sense, as I must say I do, that whether oil or street happening, this is where the final merit of art stands revealed or not, then the next question is: what "SHOULD" art communicate? And how "SHOULD" art communicate it? WHich media "should we encourage, which proscribe? Are there things in the world which are both so real and so terrible that we "should" never COMMUNICATE about them? Would complying with such a doctrine mean that we would "understand them" less, or more? And which path (understanding less, or understanding more about a given thing or force) has caused more suffering in your experience?

Given that we're wending this terribly dangerous path, prescribing what art "should" say, let us think how we could approach the question. Art is created. If it is merely manufactured it falls into a different class, as a medium or commodity. Any work of art you have ever admired, been stung by or shriven in your iunner heart by or angered by or wept over has started with a blank canvas, an empty sheet, a cold lump of untouched stone and one other thing: a creative individual. Whether what he does hits a market stream or not, if she gathers her tools and makes something that communicates genuinely how should we then decide we "should" constrain her creative acts? What should we FORBID her to create? And, a little further, what communication are we thereby VOWING that we never want to receive? What happens to an individual spiritually, mentally or emionally if he accumulates an increasing number of decisions NEVER to receive more and more different kinds of communication?

Oh, well, it is obviosu that SOME artists aren't communicating, they are just flogging junk. My 4-year old could do better!

Sure, but isn't it equally obvious that EVERYONE east of the UK as far as California does a TERRIBLE job of communicating in English? There's more than half a planet out there whose whole VOCABULARIES should be banned and burned, I imagine, since everything that comes out of their mouths ois so absolutely NON-communicative and INcomprehensible. Isn't that OBVIOUS?

If they really wanted to communicate, they could just learn to write in English, just like everyone else does who is serious about communicating to you, and you would, of course. be much emlightened.

In commerce, when this problem arise, we hire translators. In the arts, these translators are often called teachers. 'Course if you a hire a translator who does not speak the language you want him to translate, you are right back where you started -- burning the other half of the planet for not communicating.

Public tit indeed! You should be absopissinglutely GRATEFUL that someone in the vicintiy of your so called civilization at least had the breadth of soul to see clearly about this event called art, and step in and prevent it from being squashed like some insignificant rain-forest bird species by the reasonable and popular desire to keep our minds clean, straight, unconfused, and ready for business. Because, after all, communication is mainly to serve business, isn't it? What good is communicating if you cannot earn a living and put aside a little money, I say!

How many times do you suppose that the tired rich, facing the latter end of their lives, have suddenly been sickened by the sneaking realization that in fact it is the other way AROUND?!! That the only reason for business is to provide, ultimately, more and better communication?

Holy Bloody Jumping Moley Molley Jeeehosophats! Yer lucky I'm stuck at the end of this keyboard!

Thanks for your kind attention, and good luck in your endeavours.

Regards,

Amos

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: GUEST,John Hardly
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 09:24 PM

Art doesn't need financing to exist. You could not stop a true artist from being creative. When the government gets involved it's not at the creative end of things, it's at the endorsement and commerce end.

Don't confuse the issue of free expression by paying for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Amos
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 10:04 PM

Perhaps the only reason we have Jackson Pollack's major works today, for just one example, is because a rich woman pulled him out of the stewpots of the Village and put him on a monthly stipend. I am all for the lean and hungry look but you can bet your boots that if someone is creative, sane and hungry, although capable of powerful and enduring art, the first thing he'll want to create is a buck for lunch. In some cases of equal endowment, it will be a buck for lunch BEFORE a buck for Indigo oil paint. And if you are arguing, friend John, that any art which is good will find its market and prosper economically, I think that history will not support this desirable hypothesis.

We are talking not about the shiftless derelicts, but about those unusual humans endowed with the rare power to actually create art. I mean art which actually communicates into our noisy, stodgy, overburdened and burned out little minds. If we (collectively) can do anything through organization, individual or (sigh) EVEN gummint to take them off the pressure point of normal material noise a bit, that their creative power could be unleashed just a small amount more freely, by gar, let us do so.

But it will never come about if we start standing up standards from the known against which to hold the explorers of the unknown, unless all we want is MORE Norman Rockwell or Keene puppies on black velvet.

That said, I concur that the entanglements of grants and favors that characterizes endowment government style is pretty awful, yes. It is not a pretty teat at all, is it?

I should perhaps just add that I was not talking about "paying for" free artistic expression. I was talking about, perhaps, allowing it to flourish by taking some of the edge off the harder physical pressures of a cuolture bound up in hard economic machinery. I don't think that would dull anyone's creative power; I think it would unleash it. It is certainly something I would try to do if I had the strange fortune of owning some wads of excess cash. Sure beats funding a dot-com, but of course it depends on what you are trying to accomplish! :>))

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Metchosin
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 10:29 PM

Publically funding art is like panning for gold, similar to reading threads, you sometimes have to sluice a lot of gravel before you find a nugget.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Metchosin
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 10:53 PM

Well said Amos, there would be no Starry Night if Van Gough's brother had not had faith in him and been prepared to subsidze him. Public funding is like having faith in one's brother in some small way.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Troll
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 11:27 PM

In my opinion the painting "Yo Mama'a Last Supper" is racist and an insult to Christians everywhere.
If eleven of the apostles had been white and one (Judas) black instead of the other way round, you'd be able to hear the screams on Mars.
The artist has stated that the theme is anti-Catholic. I do not believe that public monies should be spent to give art that is so deliberately offensive to specific segments of the population a forum.
I don't like sit-coms either.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 11:33 PM

art that dopens't offend, isn't good art... Who said that?

To answer a question way up there by my last post, I am not american...

But I'm still interested in the public tits if they're still around! LOL!!!

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Amos
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 11:59 PM

I haven't seen the painting about which all this controversy is swirling. If it is the oil equivalent of rap I wouldn't (probably) like it. That's just me. But if your icons are so brittle, and so precious, that a powerful painitng makes you feel all irritated and attacked, bless you, but maybe you ought to think about what you are worshiping. Is it a picture? A picture of a white guy with a reddish beard who just happened to show up at the Eastern end of the Med looking like a white movie star? Are we into worshiping images? I thought that was expressly discouraged by Jehovah himself. I could be misremembering, though. But that art....now, that surely did communicate, didn't it? You could spend ten grand on a shrink to bring you that deeply in touch with your anger. Interesting comparison.

I mean no offense, but I feel some of our hypocrisies have to be called out, lest we take them on as our natures.

Best regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 01:48 AM

sheesh, my spelling errors are glaring at times, how come only after I post though?

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: wdyat12
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 01:53 AM

Proofresding id the bane of litterary genius.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 02:02 AM

Well i must truly be a genius too wdyat12, because I didn't see any errors in you post until I had read it a second time as well. LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: wdyat12
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 02:44 AM

Methosin,

Your a good sport. Checkout my new thread. Any commints?

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: blt
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 03:14 AM

The painting was actually a photograph or a composite photograph. Artists of all stripes, IMHO, need to be able to create without worrying about censorship. The work was fascinating and I question the view that it is racist. It is not about rap, or rather it may share some of rap's insight into political/social truths but it is not really similar. It is well worth seeing this artwork before judging it.

blt

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Fortunato
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 04:12 AM

imho public money is to be spent for the common good. Art has not the common good as its aim. art is it's aim. when public money is spent on art the social contract would be this, that the artist's work HAPPENS be consistent with the common good.

the common good can include challenge, but never demeans one to illuminate another imho.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Mr Red
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 04:33 AM

As one who was born and bred in the dead centre of civilization - Wednesbury - the very dead centre. If we leave all the decicisions to the masses we get the lowest common denominator. Society is not a mono-culture, if it was we would get a latterday potato famine. Do we ALL want line dancing and head banging? Scuse me but I have some serious thumb twiddling to do.... let me see clockwise or anti-clock.......

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Fortunato
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 04:38 AM

And where, pray tell, does this centre of civilization lie?

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 05:05 AM

I'm with Amos here. The Irish government over the last century made us look right eejits by fulminating against virtually every work of modern art.

The "naked black woman as Christ" painting makes a fairly obvious point - it portrays the human figure of Christ in as great a position of humiliation as the real Christ was in his day.

To paint Jesus, nowadays, as a watery-blue-eyed longhair, the figure we're familiar with from our childhood, takes away the essential humanity which is at the core of Christianity - the idea that a real human represented suffering humanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: GUEST,JH
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 07:13 AM

Amos,

You gave examples of private endowment. (In the history of art this has always compared favorably to public funding in result).

It would be foolish to contend that NO good works have ever been publicly financed. That's not even my point.

My point is two-fold (basically). 1. You cannot FAIRLY fund the arts with public money--you aren't even aware of the myriad unfunded artists that get stomped by having their tax money taken to redistribute to "deserving" artists, while going un-recognized. The government has become one hell of a good advertising agency for the endowed--You do realize that THAT TOO IS MORE AKIN TO CENSORSHIP than is this equal non-funding I would like to see?

2. Not funding something is not the same as censorship.

JH

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 12:26 PM

JH:

Your points are well made. The positive spin of promoting "selected" artists chosen for endowment of course makes them tend to be more successful, increasing trhe shadow over the unselected in a reinforcing series. It is not censorship, in the usual sense, but it sure imposes a particular set of values in a similar way.

The artists--on the intake side of the equation--are equally disadvantaged by the tax system, so its a constant.

I can't speak to ultimate 'fairness' in matters of such subjective assessment as artistic merit, but I think some process could be designed which might workl better than the curtrent NEA system. But not to throw babies downstream with bathwater as Confusious always said....

Best regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: GUEST,JH
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 12:32 PM

No babies goin' downstream that I can see when there's plenty of private money with which to change their bath water.

Public money is unnecessary and nobody should be more aware of that than the folk culture.

JH

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 01:00 PM

JH, I would disagree, consider today's Pop Music field and the star maker machine, if that is the highest form of art private source private source funding can produce, despite vasts amounts of money to change the bathwater, it is sorely lacking.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 01:11 PM

Well, one man's Art is another man's rubbish.

In the past, Art has not been a product designed to appeal to the Hoi Palloi. It has represented a refinement and even rebellion against the concept of Public Taste and acceptibility. Art is depiction not of prettiness, but of Beauty. It is depiction not of adornment, but Truth. Therefore the Artist has always existed in the mode of a public pariah or outcast. Traditionally, because of the anti-popular essence of what he does, the artist has sought the support of a Patron; a member of the elite class, educated to the appreciation of possibility and nuance in Art. Michelangelo could have made a living as a maker of pretty clay pots, but he was an Artist and an innovator. Unfortunately, Public Demand would never have yielded the cash needed to finance him in the making of a Pieta or David. For this support, he needed a rich patron like the Vatican, a Patron not merely interested in profit, but in bettering his society, in claiming some share of the glory to be gained for God, Man, and Civilization. Patrons with this kind of long-term view seem rare today.

In American society, the government seems to have taken on the role of Patron, for better or worse. The necessity of some kind of patronage seems clear, if we are to experience the work of a Jackson Pollack in addition to the publicly pallatable material of a Norman Rockwell. That much of what is supported will be objectionable to the common man seems also to be part and parcel of the tradition.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 01:47 PM

LEJ, considering the tithing system, more onerous for some than meer taxes, art has in effect, always been subsidized by the poor, only the arbitrators of what will be supported have changed in some instances. Sad but true, no Patrons no art, Michelangelo and others of that time would probably have been toiling as a stone. masons. Thank God the Pope of the time at least had good taste as well as endless supply of money.

Folk art is the only art that has always been truly unsubsidized.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 01:53 PM

The only real way to support the arts with public money is to give everyone a guaranteed annual income and fund the public school system with arts and music programmes to the hilt. You want to grow a society of artists and art lovers, not use public money to support individual elite artists. If you have a decent artfostering society, individual elite artists will also survive and thrive. The current system is ridiculous.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: GUEST,JH
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 02:25 PM

I disagree.

We all make music. For how many of us is it our livelihood?

As to the pop music industry, yes you can always make more money selling to the masses. That is not even the question we are addressing here. For that to be part of the discussion you would have to show how it adversely affects, for instance, folk music. It does not. In fact we use independent sources never dreamed of in our youth to expand the knowledge of, and make accessible, a type of music that before this boom had become almost inaccessible.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 03:06 PM

Peter, I have to disagree on the concept that artists can be "grown". The manifestation of artistic creativity is a societal aberration more than a natural product of the environment. True, artistic appreciation should be encouraged, and the means to art provided to those who exhibit potential of creative expression, but without "the individual elite artist", the agonizing re-appraisal required of the true creative process would tend to degenerate into mere imitation.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 03:25 PM

LEJ!!! Duuuude!!!

Calling the production of artists a societal aberration is like calling Galileo Galilelei a neurotic. Artists-in-full, when they appear, are certain exceptions, and they are anomalies statistically -- but they are the lessaberrated event. They on more of a straight and true path than those whose abilities have been copcooned by semantic walls, emotional idiocies or culturally honored suppression.

What Peter T said was artists and art lovers. Under the right educational and culturasl framework, it is reasonable to expect a much larger number of these (one or the other) to appear. The agonizing reappraisdal which you refer to surely happens less often in sectors of society with a high index of consumer values, television exposure, sports worship or Beanie Baby fetishes.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 05:03 PM

JH, my statement regarding pop music was not addressing the amount of money which could be made, but the quality of the "art", which some believe is superior, when left to "the private sector" and "market forces" than "art" supported by the "public sector". In either case, public or private, ultimately some individual or group, makes the descion as to what will receive backing by direct funding. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

As far as "music" as a source of my livelihood, no, but I do derive my livelihood directly from "art". Is it publicly funded? Indirectly, yes, thankfully. I live in a country which has both a public medical and education system and I neither begrudge my taxes nor my signature on a cheque, to support the arts or anything else which I believe betters the human condition.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 05:55 PM

Tip of the hat to Amos. I am not suggesting that public funding should stop -- if artists are going to live under this stupid system, then I say more power to you. But the system is stupid. The concentrated point I was making is that there are societies -- for example, Finland -- where the school system is saturated with music, and as a result there are quartets, music competitions, ordinary people playing music together all over the damn country all the time, and many elite musicians -- the cream of the milk. I point out that (a) if people had a guaranteed base income, most really creative artists would probably be making money for a change! (b) if creative people needed extra resources, other people would see the need and pay them for it because they would have a desire for it since they would have some inkling of what it was. The current situation, where the schools are starved for arts and music teaching, so that only the completely desperate and hugely talented can make a living, and are constantly under attack for "wasting" society's resources, being useless parasites, elitists, or subject to committees to parcel out meagre funds to the artists who are the best at handling committees, is ridiculous and always under threat from know nothings.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 06:29 PM

Hey Amos. I meant aberration in a good way. Like the prize winning rose among the ordinary blooms. Besides, how often to I get to disagree with the honorable Mr Pete T, for whom I have nearly unlimited esteem?

I am definitely in favor of arts study in public schools, and in fact, I favor anything that would enhance the appreciation and fostering of the fine arts in our society. I fear, though, that the motive of profit=value is the prevailing mood, and that no amount of education can truly alter that. And I harbor a belief that the truly unique and powerful talent will out despite the circumstances. This certainly does not mean that repressive or vapid societies are somehow more conducive to forging genius, like a crucible.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Feb 01 - 12:33 AM

Right arm, Mister Leej. Understood now -- aberration away from the staistical herd. It means, originally, to "wander from", as in those whose thinking wanders from the straight (i.e. clear and direct, rationale) to the complexified. I agree with you completely, espedcially about the Peter T part.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Feb 01 - 10:21 AM

For the sake of the argument, I think it is possible to grow artists (as Amos noted, I was thinking about the larger pool of artists and art lovers, but let's go with this for the hell of it) -- what you don't want to do is assume that by following a method you will be able to predict which ones they will be from the larger pool. If you foster a society wherein everyone plays music, then you will generate lots of ordinary music, and some extraordinary musicians -- you will get both.
Our tradition is a Romantic one, based on 200 years of the breakdown of the original patron/royal/church system and its fitful replacement by the market. There are other models for the role of the artist and arts in society. There are (were) lots of other systems around -- the Javanese, the Navaho, the Tibetan -- all of which had the arts woven throughout their daily lives, and elite artists as well.
The real question is whether the state can do any of this, and my proposal is minimalist with regard to content and goals, maximalist with regard to basics. States are o.k. on infrastructure (roads, sewage, libraries), but lousy on content and goals.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilization, Where Art Thou?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Feb 01 - 12:56 PM

And while there is a certain art in designing good roads and sewers, I think we should clearly note that Art is not part of our infrastructure. One basic a government could support is that a small ratio of the funding for the public weal must go toward the shelter and nourishment of arts and artists. This is one of those transparent basics -- when it fades out the civilization starts going south.

Regards,

A