The real art world
Luk
understand the art world. Humbled by such a stinging reprimand,
I hope to reeducate myself about the hopes and struggles of
those I have clumsily wronged.
Work to do. Find out who pulls the strings in the world
of art.
Why do exhibitors exhibit, painters paint, cow dung dotters dot?
Perhaps the New York Times
Title of article: The Collector, author Deborah Solomon
New York Times Magazine Sept.26, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/19990926mag-saatchi-art.html
Or go to the index of the NYT magazine,
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/index.html
Look for "The Collector" and the supplementary "Side Show".
Charles Saatchi: The "world's most influential patron of art
and person responsible for the soon to come celebrated exhibit
(assuming the Brooklyn Museum holds its ground).
Charles Saatchi is an ad man. His art collection is described
as the largest collection of contemporary art in private hands.
Saatchi is the founder (along with brother Maurice) of the huge
firm of Saatchi & Saatchi....the firm which masterminded the
advertising campaign which helped defeat the Labor Party and
1979.
We here have been been hearing liberals moan all week
end about cold hearted conservatives that pick on unfortunate,
misunderstood members of the art world who only ask a bit
of help from government to go on in their pursuit. With
humble flats and tattered clothes they just ask to be able to work.
Without such help, Michael argues, art lovers everywhere
would quickly findthemseves and their kids without art
exhibits to view on Sundays.
What seems closer to reality is that when dung gets slung,
(no, "dotted") on a portrait of the Virgin Mary, the sacred
principle at stake is money.
That's what the liberals are actually defending. With passion.
They want to prolong governmental participation in the
operation of a lucrative business. A business that would
happily march along, unabated, without having its hand held
by taxpayer dollars.
Luk
Excerpts from "The Collector"
Very miscellaneous
_________________________________________________
They speak of Saatchi as a "human Hoover" who
buys art in bulk and manipulates the market for personal
gain. His traveling show, "Sensation: Young British Artists
From the Saatchi Collection," opens Saturday at the
Brooklyn Museum of Art, and already the criticism is
mounting.
Saatchi, one might say, brings an adman's eye to the practice
of connoisseurship; he favors art that makes an instant
impact, art that surprises you and lodges in your brain, art
with kicked-up visual appeal.
Advertising is about marketing
and selling, about creating a mystique around a product so
that consumers will buy one brand of soap instead of
another.
The abstract painter Sean Scully, some of
whose canvases were once owned by Saatchi, says: "He's
really a commodities broker who has been let loose on the
art world. He claims to love art, but his is the love that the
wolf has for the lamb."
Skeptics see the exhibition as Saatchi's latest
effort to inflate the value of his holdings, the sly move of a
man for whom art is mainly a speculator's game.
Saatchi, of course, is an advertising wizard, the founder with
his younger brother Maurice of the huge firm of Saatchi &
Saatchi.
Saatchi masterminded the
advertising campaign that helped defeat the Labor Party and
put Thatcher into 10 Downing Street in the 1979 election.
He conceived the poster that was considered among the
most pernicious in all of British history — an image of
hundreds of jobless men lined up outside an employment
office, beneath the slogan: "Labour Isn't Working."
a defiant outsider who isn't even from
England. No one was ever more self-made. Born in
Baghdad, the son of a textile-mill operator, Saatchi grew up
in a Jewish family in north London. An indifferent student
and college dropout, he was 27 when he and his kid brother
started Saatchi & Saatchi. That was in 1970. Maurice
oversaw the business side and Charles took care of the
creative side. By 1986, the firm had become the biggest ad
agency in the world, but Charles was already off on a second
career. If he brought an American-style brashness to British
advertising, he would soon do the same thing to the British
art scene.
For about a decade, he has
been buying the latest art in large quantities and exhibiting it
at the Saatchi Gallery, his palatial if hard-to-find museum in
residential north London. In the process, he has brought
international recognition to a generation of hypercaffeinated
artists led by Damien Hirst of pickled-shark fame, and
reinvented drizzly London as a shining capital of
contemporary art.
For ours is the era in which
advertising became more artful, and art became more like
advertising; ever since Warhol, who began his career
drawing ads for I. Miller shoes, artists have been crossing the
line into popular culture to give their work a jolt of real life.
Surely no collector today is more temperamentally allied to
the art of the 90's, more in sync with the pop thrust of
contemporary art, than Charles Saatchi, he of the
Elvis-embracing heart.
His critics insist that Saatchi is not a
bona fide collector but a glorified art
dealer interested only in stimulating
markets and making a killing.
In Brooklyn,....There is, for
starters, Damien Hirst, Brit Art's
charismatic forerunner, who remains
best known for suspending a shark in
an enormous tank of formaldehyde, a
symbol of the coming art invasion.
There is Rachel Whiteread, a sculptor
whose plaster casts of whole rooms, or of old bathroom
sinks and tubs, have a ghostly, nearly classical presence. The
show has lots of serious painting -- from the good-taste
abstractions of Fiona Rae, Jason Martin and Gary Hume to
the figurative sublimities of Jenny Saville, whose obese
female nudes make cellulite seem almost appealing.
More about Saatchi -
Moreover, he and his brother not long ago financed the
construction of a London synagogue and named it after their
(still-living) parents. The new Saatchi Synagogue is highly
unusual, not least because it is looking to generate buzz.
When the temple opened, a poster for it was plastered
throughout the London Underground — a spoof of a
Damien Hirst dead-animal sculpture featuring a chicken
floating in a tank of chicken soup. "My parents think I'm
nuts," Saatchi tells me.
______________________________________NYT____
AgonyInBlk
prompted me to respond. (Not necessarilyin defense of Luk, but on this point
only)
<< It is true that since you (and your ilk) are quite miserly, museums, dance
companies and theatre groups have all become to some extent reliant on
government assistance. Perhaps if you and all of the other miserly rich folk
would voluntarily put a certain amount of your ducats into supporting the arts
there would be no reason to attempt to force the issue. >>
Why should anybody voluntarily put their hard-earned cash into supporting the
arts? If theatre companies, dance companies, and museums don't make enough
money on their own, why should people voluntarily support them? If a sports
team loses money should the government support them as well? Or a bookstore? Or
your local art-house movie theater?
As somebody who's dealt with the art world (from galleries to artists to
representatives to a small museum) enough times on the business side of it to
know enough about how it works, you have to remember that it *is* a business at
every end. If your suggestion is that "miserly rich folk" put "a certain
amount" of money back into the arts, I have to question that. Voluntarily, I'm
sure many miserly old folks, as well as working class people like myself, spend
money on the arts as we see fit. I don't agree with the pricing to see Phantom
of the Opera in New York City, but I've done it. Liked it enough to go three
times, and take my whole family for Christmas one year. But I'm still appalled
at the ticket price for that theater event. Off Broadway? Been lots of times,
and never felt the ticket price was warrented by the "live theater" experience,
even though some of the shows were pretty good. If a play, or dance program, or
opera, or anything of the like cannot sustain itself by public revenues, then
so be it. To mandate that the government supports somebody's creative vision,
or demand that "miserly rich folk" *volunteer* a certain amount of money to the
arts, simply because they're "The Arts" is as ludicrous as the producers behind
"Wild Wild West" asking for government assistance because it lost money and
they want to make another film.
best,
JM
___________________________________________
The Nightmare never ends...
AGONY IN BLACK
http://www.mediasi.com/chantingmonks
Come worship at the new house of horrors
___________________________________________
Maggie
**Well said. I have the same feeling about PBS and NPR.
Maggie
"I don't pay them for sex. I pay them to leave."--Clark Gable on why he used
prostitutes
Luk
Lord Sir wrote:
> In article <37EF98AB...@mindspring.com>, Luk says...
> >
> >Lord Sir is helping me see that I have miserably failed to
> >understand the art world.
>
> I doubt it Lucy, I really don't have any hope that you can be helped at all.
That's disappointing.
You really got my hopes up.
> >Humbled by such a stinging reprimand,
>
> You've always been less humble than my at-c nym.
I'm not humble?
> > Find out who pulls the strings in the world
> >of art.
>
> Rich assholes
So my morning's work wasn't wasted?
>>Why do exhibitors exhibit, painters paint, cow dung dotters dot?
> >Saatchi is the founder (along with brother Maurice) of the huge
> >firm of Saatchi & Saatchi....the firm which masterminded the
> >advertising campaign which helped defeat the Labor Party and
> >1979.
>
> Yep. Friend of Reagan's.
Has anyone ever accused you of being repetitious, Lord Sir?
> No one I know of asks for or gets gov't. help, Lucy. In fact you are the only
> one making this claim. Support it with facts or shut up.
Lord Sir then follows up with :
> It is true that since you (and your ilk) are quite miserly, museums, dance
> companies and theatre groups have all become to some extent reliant on
> government assistance.
RELIANT ON GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE?
Wait. What happened to "No one I know of asks
for or gets gov't. help, Lucy!" ?
(six lines up)
> Perhaps if you and all of the other miserly rich folk
> would voluntarily put a certain amount of your ducats into supporting
> the arts there would be no reason to attempt to force the issue.
Lord Sir, the "filthy rich" have carried artists on their backs
since the beginning of time.
> >What seems closer to reality is that when dung gets slung,
> >(no, "dotted") on a portrait of the Virgin Mary, the sacred
> >principle at stake is money.
>
> That should come as no surprise nor be of too much concern to a material girl
> like you. You love money. It is almost all you can talk about.
Money is good. Money is bad. Money is whatever you want
it to be. But when government gets involved, it's the taxpayers
who get ripped off.
> >That's what the liberals are actually defending. With passion.
> >They want to prolong governmental participation in the
> >operation of a lucrative business.
>
> Sez you. How about tax subsidies to petrochemical and pharmeceutical companies ?
What about them? Do you see me promoting tax subsidies?
> The tax subsidies to the tentacles of the military industrial complex ?
Government contracts?
Are you under the impression the government has a knack for
building bombs and aircraft?
> Try to see the whole picture,
You mean, "try to agree with me".
> not just the cowdung dots that catch your
> attention.
>
> What does any of this have to do with at-c ? Why don't you
> take it to an art newsgroup or private email ?
That was covered last week.
If you missed it, get together with Michael.
Luk
kkramer
The problem was solved long ago in the Real World. It's called economics:
supply and demand.
In the Real Art World, artists rent space in a museum and sell tickets.
If people aren't buying tickets eg people don't want to see those paintings,
the exhibit CLOSES. When there is no demand, the supply stops supplying.
Kramer
Luk wrote in message <37EF98AB...@mindspring.com>...
Luk
>
> BTW, most artists have made their art without so much as a lump of coal from
> any of the rich since prehistric times. You have a typical American view of
> art, artists and where they get their support from. You are - quite simply -
> wrong.
Artists practice their art in many ways and for many reasons.
Some get compensated. Some don't. But for thousands
of years there have been wealthy people who enthusiastically
patronized the arts. Are you really disputing that?
I responded to everything in your post I could
make sense out of. Sorry about the rest.
Luk
Desilets
Every9man wrote in message <19990928001949...@ng-cm1.aol.com>...
>Subject: Re: The real art world
>From: rred...@mindspring.com (Roger Redding)
>Date: Tue, 28 September 1999 01:05 AM EDT
>Message-id: <37f04afe...@news.mindspring.com>
>
>the queen of mean <jet...@see.sig> wrote:
>
>
>>same here. when i was in massachusetts, the news was flooded by the
>>bidding war between massachusetts and connecticut to keep the new
>>england patriots. the team decided whether to stay or leave based on who
>>could bribe them with the most stuff. i believe the winning bid did
>>indeed promise a new stadium.
>>
>>- jetgirl (glad she lives somewhere more sane now)
>>
>/For God's sake and yours, stay out of Houston, Jen. A Liberian
>/tanker full of TNT couldn't do more damage to downtown
>/than the Houston Sports Authority.
>
>/ Roger
>
>
>
>
>
>In New York, Mayor Giuliani has proposed spending billions resettling
Yankee
>Stadium from the Bronx, to right in the middle of the most traffic
congested
>center of Manhattan.
>
>I love New York but I do think that might be the last straw and drive me
right
>out.
>
>Barbara
Right to hell? We hope :) :))
D
George Byrd
on "Re: The real art world"
agony...@aol.com (AgonyInBlk) wrote:
>Why should anybody voluntarily put their hard-earned cash into supporting the
>arts? If theatre companies, dance companies, and museums don't make enough
>money on their own, why should people voluntarily support them? If a sports
>team loses money should the government support them as well?
Matter of fact, pro sports teams get all manner of subsidies in the
form of city or county backed bonds to build sports arenas, at least
in my neck of the woods.
Personally, I'd rather the city or county float bonds to build
theatres, opera houses and museums.
GB
--
Opinions above are NOT those of APAN, Inc. & are NOT legal advice.
"Once politics become a tug-of-war for shares in the income
pie, decent government is impossible."
<< Friedrich A. Hayek >>
Maggie
>
>>Why should anybody voluntarily put their hard-earned cash into supporting
>the
>>arts? If theatre companies, dance companies, and museums don't make enough
>>money on their own, why should people voluntarily support them? If a sports
>>team loses money should the government support them as well?
>
>Matter of fact, pro sports teams get all manner of subsidies in the
>form of city or county backed bonds to build sports arenas, at least
>in my neck of the woods.
>
>Personally, I'd rather the city or county float bonds to build
>theatres, opera houses and museums.
***Businesses of all types receive monetary incentives to encourage them to
locate in a given area--not because the area is enriched culturally by their
presence, but because those states and municipalities believe that the money
will be returned to them in the form of taxes paid by the business, its
employees and its patrons. It's a completely different issue from the art
question (which is never a good *economic* decision).
Roger Redding
>same here. when i was in massachusetts, the news was flooded by the
>bidding war between massachusetts and connecticut to keep the new
>england patriots. the team decided whether to stay or leave based on who
>could bribe them with the most stuff. i believe the winning bid did
>indeed promise a new stadium.
>
>- jetgirl (glad she lives somewhere more sane now)
>
For God's sake and yours, stay out of Houston, Jen. A Liberian
tanker full of TNT couldn't do more damage to downtown
than the Houston Sports Authority.
Roger
AgonyInBlk
>I know what you mean. Do you know what I mean ?
>Thanks, forgive my clumsy english and obscured point...I don't think anyone
should be forced to support the arts or anything else they
don't feel like supporting >>>
I sure do, LS, and I hope my post didn't come across as a "slam" of sorts. I
like a lot of different types of art, from photography to theater to museum
exhibits, etc. (But *not* the ballet, no matter which one it is! :) Opera,
sometimes, but not the ballet..grumble...)
However, when it comes to this:
>since
>the U.S. is not inclined to instill any appreciation for the arts into it's
>educational system, its citizens are generally deprived of garnering such an
>appreciation and are less likely to understand or be supportive of art they
>can't understand.>>>
While I don't totally agree, I've always felt that if somebody has the
interest, they will seek out "art" in whatever form it may take. Maybe you hear
Wagner's Valkyrie or The Ring for the first time in a snippet (we all know
which one ;) ) and you try classical music. Maybe you go to the movies and
since The WATERBOY is sold out you see an art-house release instead. Maybe The
Magnificent Seven is out at the local Blockbuster, so you give SEVEN SAMURAI a
shot...and on and on. I don't see any blockade to people of any society
garnering an appreciation of art. Less likely to understand it? Possible, but I
don't understand a word of Rigoletto or Die Fledermaus, but I enjoy them both
when I put them on the stereo. if they're less supportive, for *any* reason, so
be it.
>Also, many small, local arts organizations that do provide this form of
>remedial arts education will be the fiirst to go without such funds and then
>there is even less of a chance that people will have access to an education
>in
>things related to the arts.
Again, if people want to learn about art, there's nothing stopping them from
doing it on their own. There's nothing to stop people from using the Internet
or the library to learn more about art, or auto mechanics. Why is it somebody's
responsibility to provide people with a remedial education to appreciate art?
That has to be funded by somebody, as you suggest, and I don't see any reason
why the artists themselves shouldn't do it, or the people seeking to be
educated as opposed to anybody else, especially the government.
>Afterall, most Americans don't understand and thus can't
>appreciate the arts anyway.>>>
Pretty cheap pot shot there, Lord Sir. I don't see any reason for this.
(I'll make the assumption you may be from the UK, by the screen name, if I'm
wrong, I'm sure you can set me right in a reply.) Should I suggest that people
in the UK cannot appreciate public sporting events without stampeding over one
another and threatening referees as I see during soccer games all the time? No,
I think not.
>Most of them won't take advantage of the opportunities to learn about these
>types of things and won't miss them if they don't perform well in a
>capitalistic
>system.
Perhaps. But, I'd hesitate to agree. It would seem to me that art has always
survived, in every culture. I think Gary Larson came closest to dating the
origin of art in a far side cartoon showing two cavemen getting in trouble for
scribbling on the walls.
Art has been around longer than government, longer than the First Amendment,
and *far* longer than subsidy(ies). It's kinda like politics...I don't believe
that if there were no matching funds, that we would no longer have Presidential
elections. They'd survive, just as art will, whether or not it's understood, or
appreciated.
Best,
AgonyInBlk
>Matter of fact, pro sports teams get all manner of subsidies in the
>form of city or county backed bonds to build sports arenas, at least
>in my neck of the woods.>>>
This does happen everywhere, but you won't see the government giving teams
money to pay salaries, or throwing subsidies into team revenues. The
municipalities who go offering teams stadiums, etc., are doing so because they
believe in the economic viability of garnering local income (as seen in
Cleveland's new downtown stadium) and boosting the economy, as well as fear of
losing said teams. I lived in NYC until this year, and every time the city gave
in to Geo. Steinbrenner's demands, it was because of the fear of losing the
profit machine the NY Yankees are, and the way the Bronx economy would crumble
around the stadium, *not* because the team needed to be subsidized. Plus, even
with the huge tax breaks most cities give to the sports teams, it hedges
against the outright loss of tax revenues when a team moves (as when the Oilers
departed Houston, or when the Whalers left Hartford. That building in Hartford
is now empty, mall revenues--the arena is built right in the Hartford Mall--
have dropped, and there is *no* tax revenue since there's no tenant, coupled of
course with all the lost jobs when a pro team departs its home city.)
I do agree, that I'd rather see monies that cities pledge to stadiums go to
other uses, but in the case of a city like Cleveland, where urban renewal was a
goal (and one achieved), it doesn't really equate to straight subsidization of
the team itself.
>Personally, I'd rather the city or county float bonds to build
>theatres, opera houses and museums.>>>
If they're gonna do that, that's great, NYC renovated a theater just last year.
But, those should also be operated as businesses, and should have to make a
profit if they're going to stay open, not just survive on tax dollars. Me, I'd
be just as happy to see more urban renewal projects, and affordable housing
built, (and the rickety Williamsburg Bridge made safe again!), but I certainly
don't mean to *dismiss* opera houses, art theaters, museums, etc.
best,
Every9man
From: rred...@mindspring.com (Roger Redding)
Date: Tue, 28 September 1999 01:05 AM EDT
Message-id: <37f04afe...@news.mindspring.com>
the queen of mean <jet...@see.sig> wrote:
>same here. when i was in massachusetts, the news was flooded by the
>bidding war between massachusetts and connecticut to keep the new
>england patriots. the team decided whether to stay or leave based on who
>could bribe them with the most stuff. i believe the winning bid did
>indeed promise a new stadium.
>
>- jetgirl (glad she lives somewhere more sane now)
>
AgonyInBlk
>Why are artists different from anyone else?
>
>The problem was solved long ago in the Real World. It's called economics:
>supply and demand.
>
>In the Real Art World, artists rent space in a museum and sell tickets.
>
>If people aren't buying tickets eg people don't want to see those paintings,
>the exhibit CLOSES.>
Couldn't agree more, Kramer. And, regardless of the economics, "art" itself is
not in danger. It will continue to evolve and be created no matter what the
social or economic climate around it.
I was doing some reading about Bonsai trees because it's a hobby of mine, but
in essence it's treated very seriously as a living "art" by those involved with
it. In addition to the fact that even the poorest people throughout the ages
have been able to create this type of art, I also got onto the subject of rock
gardens, also a form of art, and also a format for creativity that throughout
the ages, even the poorest of the poor could be involved with. Just two
examples, showing that economics aside, art not only can be appreciated by
those with no education or training, but it *is.*, Art can also be understood
without anybody needing to subsidize a possible patron's "education."
Maggie
>
> It's a completely different issue from the art
>>question (which is never a good *economic* decision).
LS said:
>It seems to work quite well for landlords in most US cities who rent otherwise
>unrentable properties to artists who then fix up the properties and improve
>the
>lifestyle of the areas to the point that they get evicted and the landlords
>can
>then rent at high rates to the yuppies who want to move in because the artists
>improved and revived the area's culture and economy.
***Holy friggin' cow!!!!! Right after I read a post from you complaining about
Luk's snipping habit, you do exactly the same thing to me that you are bitching
about Luk doing to you. Have you no shame? ....or sense?
As you well know, my post was regarding government subsidies to artists and art
galleries. My statement has absolutely nothing to do with private rental
arrangements between landlords and tennants. What an incredibly stupid thing
to bring into this discussion.
PLONK!
kkramer
redundant!
I studied Economics in undergraduate school and applied those principles.
So, I guess it was good for something!
Kramer
AgonyInBlk wrote
Nancy Rudins
|>
|> You are right about those with an interest having the ability to seek it out.
|>
|> But what do we have which lays the groundwork for nurturing such interests ?
|>
|> In my own experieces as a young person it was The Art Institute of Chicago - The
|> Field Museum of Natural History, The Planetarium, etc.
|>
My experiences as a young person parallel yours. I'd also include
the Civic Opera House. What a thrill it was to take a field trip
to the Opera House to see a dress-rehearsal production of
La Boheme. We studied the opera for weeks in class prior to the
trip, as we did with appropriate materials related to field trips
to the Art Institute, the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, and the
Planetarium.
|> Almost if not all of these institutions which are charged with providing
|> historical contect as well as keeping us current are to some extent reliant on
|> public funds to function and fulfill their tasks regardless of the general
|> public taste or beliefs.
|>
|> If these funds go away, the institutions suffer by offering less serviced,
|> exhibits and less current exhibits and then the public suffers because it is
|> deprived the opportunity to experience these things.
|>
Almost any patron of the arts can testify that viewing the exhibit
at a museum, or attending a production of an opera, is *not*
equivalent to viewing a reproduction of an exhibit in a book or
on the internet, or listening to a recording of an opera on a CD
or via RealAudio.
Kind regards,
Nancy
--
Live life like making pudding. Cook, then chill.
Nancy Rudins nru...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/nrudins/
Douglas M. Case
agony...@aol.com (AgonyInBlk) wrote:
>george wrote:
>
>>Matter of fact, pro sports teams get all manner of subsidies in the
>>form of city or county backed bonds to build sports arenas, at least
>>in my neck of the woods.>>>
>
>This does happen everywhere, but you won't see the government giving teams
>money to pay salaries, or throwing subsidies into team revenues.
No, you won't *see* it, for obvious reasons, but it's not the case that
municipalities simply build stadiums and lease them to professional
teams. The deals typically involve sharing-or giving away-revenue from
concessions, parking, and the sale of luxury boxes.
The situation here may or may not be typical, but it is telling.
Taxpayers here built a dome on spec, without a team to put in it, then
swiped one from another city. The deal reportedly involves compensating
the team for any unsold tickets by increasing its share of concessions and
parking revenues. And the team has already floated rumors that it will
move at the expiration of the lease unless the city ponies up for luxury
boxes. Pro basketball will move into a new stadium this season, built (by
you-know-who) after the owners floated rumors they might have to sell the
team unless they could get luxury boxes. And the minor league baseball
team plays in a new stadium, built after MLB came to town and said it
would move the team unless one was built or the old stadium upgraded.
Guess who paid for it? And the funny thing was, it turned out that 90% of
minor league ballparks were not up to standard. Where were they going to
move?
All this has been accomplished by creating a non-elective board *with
the power to tax* which funnels public and private monies wherever it sees
fit. And despite the fact that state law requires an annual public
accounting, the pro teams have refused to open their books, citing "trade
secrets". Mainly, the secret is what they're trading the taxpayers's
money for.
Money is frangible. Salaries are paid from an owner's total take. And
government subsidies are part of that.
>The
>municipalities who go offering teams stadiums, etc., are doing so because they
>believe in the economic viability of garnering local income (as seen in
>Cleveland's new downtown stadium) and boosting the economy, as well as fear of
>losing said teams. I lived in NYC until this year, and every time the city gave
>in to Geo. Steinbrenner's demands, it was because of the fear of losing the
>profit machine the NY Yankees are, and the way the Bronx economy would crumble
>around the stadium, *not* because the team needed to be subsidized. Plus, even
>with the huge tax breaks most cities give to the sports teams, it hedges
>against the outright loss of tax revenues when a team moves (as when the Oilers
>departed Houston, or when the Whalers left Hartford. That building in Hartford
>is now empty, mall revenues--the arena is built right in the Hartford Mall--
>have dropped, and there is *no* tax revenue since there's no tenant, coupled of
>course with all the lost jobs when a pro team departs its home city.)
And the arts community counters that more people attend the arts, more
money is spent by arts patrons, than is spent on sports. I've no idea
whether it's true, but that's what they claim. And the reason
professional sports teams can hold cities hostage is that they've been
awarded an exemption from anti-trust legislation. Imagine the leverage
Major League Museums, Inc., or the National Hospital Association would
have.
>I do agree, that I'd rather see monies that cities pledge to stadiums go to
>other uses, but in the case of a city like Cleveland, where urban renewal was a
>goal (and one achieved), it doesn't really equate to straight subsidization of
>the team itself.
The argument isn't over whether subsidies have benefits. It's over the
claim that the arts ought to fend for themselves
>
>>Personally, I'd rather the city or county float bonds to build
>>theatres, opera houses and museums.>>>
>
>If they're gonna do that, that's great, NYC renovated a theater just last year.
>But, those should also be operated as businesses, and should have to make a
>profit if they're going to stay open, not just survive on tax dollars.
Would you say the same about public parks, public education, or public
highways? Or turn it around: a sizeable chunk of the profits to
professional sports comes from television revenues. The public owns the
airwaves, and leases them out to profit-making operations *for a
pittance*. What would happen if licensing fees were raised to reflect
what a private owner would charge?
dmc
------------------
I like this kid. He's completed five of his last seven handoffs.
-Dan Jenkins
Luk
Lord Sir wrote:
> In my own experieces as a young person it was The Art Institute of Chicago - The
> Field Museum of Natural History, The Planetarium, etc.
>
> Almost if not all of these institutions which are charged with providing
> historical contect as well as keeping us current are to some extent reliant on
> public funds to function and fulfill their tasks regardless of the general
> public taste or beliefs.
>
> If these funds go away, the institutions suffer by offering less serviced,
> exhibits and less current exhibits and then the public suffers because it is
> deprived the opportunity to experience these things.
You're asking us to believe that government and only government
is willing to offer historical information, keep the public current, and
provide other desirable services. And that the private sector won't
and can't. How does that square with familiar examples of public
versus private education?
> It is more difficult in a culture which denigrates ary and artists - as the US
> citizenery so flippantly does.
Can you blame the US citizenry, given the ludicrous examples
we are now given to view?
> Now you are talking about a different kond of understanding - an aesthetic
> response which goes beyond mere words.
I know it's difficult to put into "words" but what is your "aesthetic"
response to pickled pig carcasses?
> Again, my point was that these institutions provide nurturance precisely for
> those people who have a desire to pursue learning about the arts, including art
> which is contemporary and perhaps a little ahead of the understanding of the
> culture at large.
What is it the culture at large doesn't understand about rotting
cow heads?
> It is not an artist responsibility to make works which address the common
> denominator. Perhaps it is their responsibility to give the common a good kick
> forward.
> It takes a financial
> commitment in one form or another to make work from raw materials. Artists
> commit precious financial resources to a pursuit that holds out very little in
> terms of payback despite that fact.
Especially when they have to send off for elephant dung.
> Very few peple choose to make any kind of in depth study of the
> arts. If they did, we wouldn't be having this petty debate.
How would one pursue an in depth study to help one
appreciate a rotting cow's head or a shark preserved
in formaldehyde?
Luk
George Byrd
on "Re: The real art world"
four...@earthlink.net (Douglas M. Case) wrote:
> Money is frangible. Salaries are paid from an owner's total take. And
>government subsidies are part of that.
I think you mpsplelt "fungible", but thanks for making my point better
than I did.
GB
>dmc
> -Dan Jenkins
AgonyInBlk
<< Would you say the same about public parks, public education, or public
highways? >>
Yep, I would, in the cases of public parks (especially after working in the VS
Dept. of Parks & Recreation for 16 years) and seeing how much better things
would have been had it been run as a business. For 14 years the Incorporated
Village of VAlley Stream was the largest operating Incorporated in the country,
eventually surpassed by one in California. Compared to other municipalities
which ran their parks more like businesses, we were woefully behind the times.
As for public roads, now that I live in Florida, every time I go three miles to
the movies I have to pay tolls. If that's what it takes to maintain good roads,
so be it.
As for public education, here is where the government needs to utilize tax
dollars to provide a service. I'd rather see every dime the Brooklyn Museum
ordinarily gets, pumped into education, and a higher % of NY Lotto & gaming
dollars spent on education, and affordable housing, than the arts. I think
that's a matter of priorities.
Lastly:
<< a sizeable chunk of the profits to
professional sports comes from television revenues. The public owns the
airwaves, and leases them out to profit-making operations *for a
pittance*. What would happen if licensing fees were raised to reflect
what a private owner would charge? >>
Fine by me. If people want to get into bidding wars that way, so be it. Some
people already pay for cable, if broadcast TV were to go the same route, well,
that's what happens. Now, if you *really* want to turn it around, why doesn't
the art world license out broadcasts on pay-per-view and support themselves
that way? If TVKO can sell boxing, why doesn't the art world broadcast live
from the Met for PPV events, or from Broadway theaters?
The world is a competitive place. The art world is, essentially a business. If
it can't survive on it's own, then it will (as it has for centuries) evolve and
thrive in other fashions.
AgonyInBlk
the Bklyn Museum, et al.
Now, I never suggested that museums, opera houses, etc. should be closed down,
but here's a quick example of the way I equate the situation.
Opera house and movie theater in the same neighborhood. Opera house running at
a defecit, needs to be bailed out by the government. Movie theater starts
losing money, shuts down. Now, since I see both as businesses, I don't see the
reason that the government has an obligation to help out the opera house. I'm
firmly *not* of the opinion that the Opera House should close just to close it.
Let the opera house bring in better events, market itself better, etc., to
compete.
That's all. The idea that the government shoulders a responsibility to "the
arts" just because they call themselves "the arts" is not enough to convince me
that funding, to foster appreciation of "the arts" is responsible government.
Best,
Douglas M. Case
>In <alt.true-crime>, Tue, 28 Sep 1999 09:39:37 -0400,
> on "Re: The real art world"
> four...@earthlink.net (Douglas M. Case) wrote:
>
>> Money is frangible. Salaries are paid from an owner's total take. And
>>government subsidies are part of that.
>
>I think you mpsplelt "fungible", but thanks for making my point better
>than I did.
>
No, George, what I did was spell "frangible" correctly while chosing the
wrong word altogether. Money IS fungible. It's my wits that are
frangible.
Luk
AgonyInBlk wrote:
> art not only can be appreciated by
> those with no education or training, but it *is.*
Of course it is.
Nothing is more ludicrous than reading what some
textbook says about a painting.
Luk
Luk
"Douglas M. Case" wrote:
>
> boxes. Pro basketball will move into a new stadium this season, built (by
> you-know-who) after the owners floated rumors they might have to sell the
> team unless they could get luxury boxes. And the minor league baseball
> team plays in a new stadium, built after MLB came to town and said it
> would move the team unless one was built or the old stadium upgraded.
> Guess who paid for it? And the funny thing was, it turned out that 90% of
> minor league ballparks were not up to standard. Where were they going to
> move?
> All this has been accomplished by creating a non-elective board *with
> the power to tax* which funnels public and private monies wherever it sees
> fit. And despite the fact that state law requires an annual public
> accounting, the pro teams have refused to open their books, citing "trade
Aww...
Had me all excited -
Thought you were gonna expound on art there for a minit.
BALLparks ?!
Luk
Luk
Lord Sir wrote:
> And as usual, snipped the points you were unable to address, which has been a
> problem when addressing you since I first tried a couple of years back ; and,
> which is why I generally just don't feel like discussing things with you.
I hadn't noticed.
Luk
Douglas M. Case
<lukn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Nothing is more ludicrous than reading what some
>textbook says about a painting.
A sentence which states your premise and disproves it at the same time.
Now that's Art.
Maggie
>Lord Sir suggested that I might be interested in supporting the closing
>down of
>the Bklyn Museum, et al.
>
>Now, I never suggested that museums, opera houses, etc. should be closed
>down,
>but here's a quick example of the way I equate the situation.
>
>Opera house and movie theater in the same neighborhood. Opera house running
>at
>a defecit, needs to be bailed out by the government. Movie theater starts
>losing money, shuts down. Now, since I see both as businesses, I don't see
>the
>reason that the government has an obligation to help out the opera house.
>I'm
>firmly *not* of the opinion that the Opera House should close just to close
>it.
>Let the opera house bring in better events, market itself better, etc.,
>to
>compete.
>
>That's all. The idea that the government shoulders a responsibility to "the
>arts" just because they call themselves "the arts" is not enough to convince
>me
>that funding, to foster appreciation of "the arts" is responsible government.
***This is the part I've always thought was very ironic. While the government
subsidizes the interest of the elites in art, NPR and PBS, protecting us from
user fees, commercials and the vicissitudes of the comercial marketplace where
radio stations change formats overnight and TV stations cancel shows with wild
abandon, Joe Sixpack has to *pay* for his preferred form of entertainment
(tractor pulls, football games, Holiday on Ice), and sit through endless
commercials for hemorrhoid medications and motor oil while watching and
listening to Rush Limbaugh and Geraldo.
The people who can most afford to pay for their entertainment are the ones
being subsidized, and the people who can least afford it are the ones forced to
pay their own way.
Does that make any sense at all to anybody?
Every9man
From: Luk <lukn...@mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, 28 September 1999 07:39 PM EDT
Message-id: <37F151CA...@mindspring.com>
AgonyInBlk wrote:
> art not only can be appreciated by
> those with no education or training, but it *is.*
Of course it is.
Nothing is more ludicrous than reading what some
textbook says about a painting.
Luk
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Intersting thought Luk. I used to have the same attitude. But do you seriously
believe that no one can teach you anything about painting in general or a
particular painting in the particlar?
what is ludicrous about broadening your knowledge and understanding of the
medium?
Barbara
Luk
>> Nothing is more ludicrous than reading what
>> some textbook says about a painting.
> do you seriously
> believe that no one can teach you anything about painting in general or a
> particular painting in the particlar?
That doesn't remotely resemble what I said.
> what is ludicrous about broadening your knowledge
> and understanding of the medium?
Not a thing.
My comment was about how typical Art History
textbooks gush while managing to say next to nothing.
Luk
Luk
> Luk wrote:
>
> >Nothing is more ludicrous than reading what some
> >textbook says about a painting.
DMC wrote:
> A sentence which states your premise and disproves it at the same time.
> Now that's Art.
You're cute, Dougie.
Luk
Martha
>
> Subject: Re: Art Problem Solved
> From: Luk <lukn...@mindspring.com>
> Date: Tue, 28 September 1999 07:39 PM EDT
> Message-id: <37F151CA...@mindspring.com>
>
> AgonyInBlk wrote:
>
> > art not only can be appreciated by
> > those with no education or training, but it *is.*
>
> Of course it is.
>
> textbook says about a painting.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Intersting thought Luk. I used to have the same attitude. But do you seriously
> believe that no one can teach you anything about painting in general or a
> particular painting in the particlar?
>
> medium?
>
I think Luknh's attitude is a widespread one, and my best bet is that it
has to do with the fact that we *all* make art of one kind or another--
we do it in kindergarten; we color in coloring books as toddlers. We
inculcate certain ideals into our own pictures, beginning in childhood--
it's important to stay in the lines. The best pictures, we are taught
as children, are pictures that look like what they are supposed to be.
We sneer at scribbling as babyish--anyone could make a Jackson Pollock!
Neat and recognizable is good, messy and abstract is bad--and using
"forbidden" media like urine and feces to create Art--are you kidding?
You know what happens to first-graders who smear poop!
I think it's a real contradiction that the form of fine art that we are
most exposed to as babies, practically, the thing we work hard at making
by ourselves as children, i.e., pictures, is one of the least-understood
adult forms of art there are. We *do* need to be taught how to look at
pictures, even representational pictures, especially if we are going to
go around making fun of pictures we don't like--or understand.
In re: this particular picture. The elephant dung, from my cursory
reading of the posts in this thread, appears to be the big sticking
point for many who object to the painting. Animal dung is an important
resource for most of the third world--it is used to make dwellings,
coatings for baking food, salves--there is no Western "civilized" stigma
of filth attached to it. Given the primitive nature of the
representation of BVM, I think the use of dung, especially the dung of
an indigenous African animal, utterly appropriate.
What do the blue-noses think about all those buttockses and vulvas
pasted on the picture?
Martha
Martha
>
> Luk wrote:
> >> Nothing is more ludicrous than reading what
> >> some textbook says about a painting.
>
> > believe that no one can teach you anything about painting in general or a
> > particular painting in the particlar?
>
>
> > and understanding of the medium?
>
> My comment was about how typical Art History
> textbooks gush while managing to say next to nothing.
>
> Luk
Art history books *gush*? I'd say you've been consulting some pretty
strange art history books.
Martha
Douglas M. Case
maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie) wrote:
>***This is the part I've always thought was very ironic. While the government
>subsidizes the interest of the elites in art, NPR and PBS, protecting us from
>user fees, commercials and the vicissitudes of the comercial marketplace where
>radio stations change formats overnight and TV stations cancel shows with wild
>abandon, Joe Sixpack has to *pay* for his preferred form of entertainment
>(tractor pulls, football games, Holiday on Ice), and sit through endless
>commercials for hemorrhoid medications and motor oil while watching and
>listening to Rush Limbaugh and Geraldo.
>
>The people who can most afford to pay for their entertainment are the ones
>being subsidized, and the people who can least afford it are the ones forced to
>pay their own way.
>
>Does that make any sense at all to anybody?
>
It does, in the same way it makes sense that whatever the size of your
portfolio you may dispense your cosmogony or your metaphysical beliefs
tax-free, provided they are officially recognized. Or in the same way we
deny consciencious objector status unless it is linked to some recognized
moral code. We find some means of codifying what is otherwise a chaos of
individual beliefs. And so we value Art as something more than mere
diversion, and the weight of established opinion over mere personal taste.
Art is not elitist, though not all Art is accessible or acceptable to
everyone. Neither is every trail in the National Park system accessible
to everyone. Lack of universal acclaim is not a reason to withhold
funding; we fund hospitals despite the existence of Christian Scientists,
and we build aircraft carriers regardless of Quaker beliefs.
Every9man
Message-id: <37F19E95...@mindspring.com>
Luk wrote:
>> Nothing is more ludicrous than reading what
>> some textbook says about a painting.
> do you seriously
> believe that no one can teach you anything about painting in general or a
> particular painting in the particlar?
That doesn't remotely resemble what I said.
> what is ludicrous about broadening your knowledge
> and understanding of the medium?
Not a thing.
My comment was about how typical Art History
textbooks gush while managing to say next to nothing.
Luk
Any particular book Luk? Mine are pretty boring and none of them gush:)
Barbara
Maggie
***I think these last few weeks have shown us pretty clearly that one man's art
is another's birdcage liner. IMO, government established "art" is in the same
category as government established religion.
Maggie
>The reason the government supports "the arts" is because the arts CAN, if
>we give them a chance, not only thrill us, like a good football game can
>(for some folks), but also uplift us. In this they are unique. They are
>capable, for a moment or an hour, of making us feel we are above our
>everyday world of worries and fears--"above" in the sense of understanding
>it better, or seeing more clearly the best things in it, etc. The arts can
>do this not only for the rich, who can afford to pay for them, but the
>poor, who can't.
>
>The best thing I can do is give a personal example. I grew up in Tyler,
>Texas in the '50s and '60s. No art anywhere. No FM radio with NPR playing
>classical music. No plays, no paintings (Wait. Once every two weeks "the
>picture lady" would bring a reproduction of, say, a Van Gogh to school.)
>I
>was a poor redneck boy. I didn't miss it because I didn't know any better.
>They I got in highscool and read some good literature--fascinating! Then
>I
>happened to go to an unusual local production of the 18th century play
>called "The School for Scandal."
>
>I'll remember that day as long as I live. Here were people being
>clever--yes, witty, on a level of complexity so far beyond that of my only
>other experience of drama--tv-- that it was as if they were speaking
>another language. I was exhilharated. I wanted to be part of such a world
>more than anything. I vowed to study harder and go to college.
>
>I did. I went to New York City and studied literature. I saw foreign movies
>that were again far beyond the drivel our movie INDUSTRY, which is
>motivated purely by greed, gives us. It was a rich, thrilling, new world.
>I
>saw paintings and didn't understand them. Years later I did.
>
>My life was changed, and it was all through art. I pity myself if I had
>never learned there was something beyond American popular culture,
>something deeper that I could turn to for, occasionally, an almost
>spiritual experience. That's what the government gives certain people when
>it spends money on the arts. The people whom it benefits are not the rich,
>who would see the arts anyway, but the poor, who never would. Why in the
>world would anyone want to deprive those people of that very real
>imaginative enrichment just to save a few government dollars?
>
>By the way, I'm poor again. I rely on my local NPR station for my classical
>music. Thank God it's there. I feel rich.
***I find travel extremely thrilling, uplifting, fascinating and exciting. But
I would never expect the government to subsidize travel so that everyone might
have that experience.
So far, I haven't read of anyone here *opposing* the arts--only government
funding of artists and museums. This whole argument reminds me very much of
the reason the government is prohibited from establishing a religion--one man's
religion is another's witchcraft. I think the same thing pretty much applies
here.
It would really surprise me if private individuals and industry weren't more
than willing to pick up the slack if the government ceased making these
contributions.
Luk
> My comment was about how typical Art History
> textbooks gush while managing to say next to nothing.
>
> Luk
>
> Any particular book Luk? Mine are pretty boring and none of them gush:)
>
> Barbara
Jansen has been used a lot. It's full of with meaningless
pointless worshiping repetitive commentary useless to students.
Not only boring, but boring on a subject that ought to be
completely fascinating.
Luk
Luk
> It does, in the same way it makes sense that whatever the size of your
> portfolio you may dispense your cosmogony or your metaphysical beliefs
> tax-free, provided they are officially recognized. Or in the same way we
> deny consciencious objector status unless it is linked to some recognized
> moral code. We find some means of codifying what is otherwise a chaos of
> individual beliefs. And so we value Art as something more than mere
> diversion, and the weight of established opinion over mere personal taste.
>
Know what ya mean, Dougie.
Nobody listens to my cosmogony.
Luk
Luk
> education, or at least she doesn't want to pay for it.
Oh I don't know, LS. I've covered some ground.
Paid for it myself, too. Weren't we talking about
my paying for *your* art education and having
no say about the quality?
> I'm beginning to think she's just another typical Republican
> freeloader who thinks artists are here only to make art she likes,
No I think artists should make whatever art *they* like.
And the open market should decide whether to pay for it.
Ever hear about the open market, LS?
> and that her art education should be free,
> or at least fully subsidized by artists themselves.
How so?
> Certainly
> she doesn't think they deserve to make a living.
Anyone deserves to making a living as long as what they
produce is legal and someone is willing to pay for it. It isn't
my responsibility to see that someone who offers a product
nobody wants succeeds in making a living.
> I think she looks pretty hard - for free handouts from artists.
Where would I find that?
> PS: I'll even consider lowering my fees.
If your art isn't selling, you might give it some thought.
Luk
(~:
Luk
Lord Sir wrote:
> In article <37F399F...@mindspring.com>, Luk says...
> I meant my fees for educating you by taking time out to answer your silly
> questions.
I know you did. (;
Luk
http://luknhard.home.mindspring.com/
Col Klink
> in essence it's treated very seriously as a living "art" by those involved with
> it. In addition to the fact that even the poorest people throughout the ages
> have been able to create this type of art, I also got onto the subject of rock
> gardens, also a form of art, and also a format for creativity that throughout
> the ages, even the poorest of the poor could be involved with. Just two
> examples, showing that economics aside, art not only can be appreciated by
> those with no education or training, but it *is.*, Art can also be understood
> without anybody needing to subsidize a possible patron's "education."
Good points.
All this discussion about "art" is actually a discussion about
"marketing". I could see that clearly once I read your post. Thanks for
expanding my mind and seeing things more clearly.
Col Klink
--
*************************************************************************
** "It is a capital error to theorize before one has all the facts..."
**
** Arthur Conan Doyle
**
*************************************************************************
Douglas M. Case
maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie) wrote:
>***I find travel extremely thrilling, uplifting, fascinating and exciting. But
>I would never expect the government to subsidize travel so that everyone might
>have that experience.
But of course it does-there's government assistance available for travel
for educational or business purposes. No, you can't just send the
government your expense ledger and an SASE, but neither do musuems. The
government attempts to mold behavior in all sorts of ways.
>So far, I haven't read of anyone here *opposing* the arts--only government
>funding of artists and museums. This whole argument reminds me very much of
>the reason the government is prohibited from establishing a religion--one man's
>religion is another's witchcraft. I think the same thing pretty much applies
>here.
Government can, and does, support religion. What it cannot do is
respect an establishment of religion. The analogous situation would be
that the government could not establish a national art, and within
accepted norms it could not dictate to a museum what it may or may not
believe.
We don't proceed by analogy to the Establishment clause in any other
area of public life. We don't say the government should not fund the
national defense because there are pacifists, or that the government
should not build interstates because the Amish don't like the internal
combustion engine. The Framers singled out religion for well-known
reasons.
Supposing we could restrict the application to just the Arts. What
would we have? No literature, music, painting, or art history in public
libraries? No art or music education in public schools? No historic
preservation? And no new public works, because one man's neo-Classicism
is another man's architecture manqué?
dmc
------------------
Thank God that's settled.
-Richard Brinsley Sheridan, handing an IOU to a creditor
Maggie
>
>
>>***I find travel extremely thrilling, uplifting, fascinating and exciting.
> But
>>I would never expect the government to subsidize travel so that everyone
>might
>>have that experience.
>
> But of course it does-there's government assistance available for travel
>for educational or business purposes. No, you can't just send the
>government your expense ledger and an SASE, but neither do musuems. The
>government attempts to mold behavior in all sorts of ways.
***If you can find anyone objecting to tax exempt status for museums, your
point is well made. If not, it's apples and oranges.
>
>
maggie said:
>>So far, I haven't read of anyone here *opposing* the arts--only government
>>funding of artists and museums. This whole argument reminds me very much
>of
>>the reason the government is prohibited from establishing a religion--one
>man's
>>religion is another's witchcraft. I think the same thing pretty much applies
>>here.
>
>
dmc said:
> Government can, and does, support religion. What it cannot do is
>respect an establishment of religion.
***Isn't that what I said?
dmc said:
The analogous situation would be
>that the government could not establish a national art, and within
>accepted norms it could not dictate to a museum what it may or may not
>believe.
***Well, yes, that would be wrong.
dmc said:
> We don't proceed by analogy to the Establishment clause in any other
>area of public life. We don't say the government should not fund the
>national defense because there are pacifists, or that the government
>should not build interstates because the Amish don't like the internal
>combustion engine. The Framers singled out religion for well-known
>reasons.
>
> Supposing we could restrict the application to just the Arts. What
>would we have? No literature, music, painting, or art history in public
>libraries? No art or music education in public schools? No historic
>preservation? And no new public works, because one man's neo-Classicism
>is another man's architecture manqué?
***Some good points here, but I think you're scare-mongering. No one's going
to remove art from public buildings, but it should be obvious to anyone that
art that offends or degrades a person, a religion, an ethnic group, et al, has
no place in a public institution.
And most art and music instruction at the pre-college level is in technique,
not appreciation. So far I've heard no one object to the incredibly innocuous
"appreciation" classes that are offered in high schools and intro-level college
classes.
Luk
> All this discussion about "art" is actually a discussion about
> "marketing". I could see that clearly once I read your post.
It's becoming clearer and clearer that marketing is what the
Brooklyn Museum exhibit is about. And Eric says I'm
playing right into their hands. It's true.
Luk
http://luknhard.home.mindspring.com/
Douglas M. Case
maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie) wrote:
>dmc said:
>> Government can, and does, support religion. What it cannot do is
>>respect an establishment of religion.
>
>***Isn't that what I said?
It wasn't intended as a rebuttal.
>> Supposing we could restrict the application to just the Arts. What
>>would we have? No literature, music, painting, or art history in public
>>libraries? No art or music education in public schools? No historic
>>preservation? And no new public works, because one man's neo-Classicism
>>is another man's architecture manqué?
>
>***Some good points here, but I think you're scare-mongering. No one's going
>to remove art from public buildings,
It's simply the logical extension of your argument, Maggie. How can the
government "not respect an establishment of art" but still display art?
> but it should be obvious to anyone that
>art that offends or degrades a person, a religion, an ethnic group, et al, has
>no place in a public institution.
No. What should be obvious is that nothing which *merely* offends is in
fact art at all. But no canon proscribes offense in art; offense is
probably as old as the concept of individual authorship. To demand of art
that it not offend the prudish, puncture the self-important, or ridicule
the status quo is to demand that it not be art at all.
"Degas is repulsive."
-New York Times, April 10, 1886
"This is...a shameful open sore not worth exhibiting..."
-Louis Etienne on Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863
"No intelligence can accept such aberrations."
-Albert Wolff on Pissarro, 1876
"Certainly no man or woman of normal mental health would be attracted by
the sadistic, obscene deformations of Cézanne, Modigliani, Matisse,
Gauguin and the other Fauves."
-John Hemming Fry, The Revolt Against Beauty, 1934
"So-called modern or contemporary art in our modern beloved country
contains all the isms of depravity, decadence and destruction. Cubism
aims to destroy by designed disorder. Futurism aims to destroy by a
machine myth. Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule. Expressionism aims to
destroy by aping the primitive and insane...Abstractionism, or
non-objectivity in so-called modern art, was spawned as a simon-pure,
Russian communist product...Who has brought down this curse upon us; who
has let into our homeland this horde of germ-carrying art vermin?"
-U.S. Rep. George A. Dondero (R-Mich), speech to Congress, August 19, 1949
Every9man
From: maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie)
>maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie) wrote:
>
>
>>***I find travel extremely thrilling, uplifting, fascinating and exciting.
> But
>>I would never expect the government to subsidize travel so that everyone
>might
>>have that experience.
>
dmc said:
> But of course it does-there's government assistance available for travel
>for educational or business purposes. No, you can't just send the
>government your expense ledger and an SASE, but neither do musuems. The
>government attempts to mold behavior in all sorts of ways.
Maggie writes:
/***If you can find anyone objecting to tax exempt status for museums, your
/point is well made. If not, it's apples and oranges.
My server has been acting up and losing many posts so forgive please if I have
missed something.
People here are objecting to their tax dollars supporting the museum, no?
If the museum has a tax exempt status, who has to make up the deficit caused by
the tax exemption, but the other tax payers. How is it different?
>
>
maggie said:
>>So far, I haven't read of anyone here *opposing* the arts--only government
>>funding of artists and museums. This whole argument reminds me very much
>of
>>the reason the government is prohibited from establishing a religion--one
>man's
>>religion is another's witchcraft. I think the same thing pretty much applies
>>here.
>
>
dmc said:
> Government can, and does, support religion. What it cannot do is
>respect an establishment of religion.
/***Isn't that what I said?
dmc said:
The analogous situation would be
>that the government could not establish a national art, and within
>accepted norms it could not dictate to a museum what it may or may not
>believe.
/***Well, yes, that would be wrong.
dmc said:
> We don't proceed by analogy to the Establishment clause in any other
>area of public life. We don't say the government should not fund the
>national defense because there are pacifists, or that the government
>should not build interstates because the Amish don't like the internal
>combustion engine. The Framers singled out religion for well-known
>reasons.
>
> Supposing we could restrict the application to just the Arts. What
>would we have? No literature, music, painting, or art history in public
>libraries? No art or music education in public schools? No historic
>preservation? And no new public works, because one man's neo-Classicism
>is another man's architecture manqué?
/***Some good points here, but I think you're scare-mongering. No one's going
t/o remove art from public buildings, but it should be obvious to anyone that
/art that offends or degrades a person, a religion, an ethnic group, et al, has
/no place in a public institution.
Maggie, I've given examples of many works of art which offend, Picasso's
crucifixes, Guernica, Hieronymous Bosch, Rodin, much of Dali; the list is too
long to print here.
Lady Chatterly's Lover resides in the Public Library.
How can you say a particular piece of art doesnt belong but others do?
/And most art and music instruction at the pre-college level is in technique,
/not appreciation. So far I've heard no one object to the incredibly innocuous
/"appreciation" classes that are offered in high schools and intro-level
college
/classes.
I do, at least in my day, they were boring, dry, and in the most part useless
except to familiarize one with names and dates. I dont know how much better
they are now. I think it depends on the teacher and the school.
Barbara
Maggie
>/***If you can find anyone objecting to tax exempt status for museums, your
>/point is well made. If not, it's apples and oranges.
>
>My server has been acting up and losing many posts so forgive please if
>I have
>missed something.
>People here are objecting to their tax dollars supporting the museum, no?
>
>If the museum has a tax exempt status, who has to make up the deficit caused
>by
>the tax exemption, but the other tax payers. How is it different?
***In theory it's not very different. In practice, very different, mainly
because of the tax exempt nature of churches and schools. Our tax dollars
support, in this way, all kinds of things that would normally be considered
pretty objectionable, but pretty much no one objects. But just try to get a
bill through Congress authorizing grants to the Southern Baptists or the
Buddhists. You'll see the difference.
maggie said:
No one's
>going
>t/o remove art from public buildings, but it should be obvious to anyone
>that
>/art that offends or degrades a person, a religion, an ethnic group, et
>al, has
>/no place in a public institution.
>
barbara said:
>Maggie, I've given examples of many works of art which offend, Picasso's
>crucifixes, Guernica, Hieronymous Bosch, Rodin, much of Dali; the list
>is too
>long to print here.
>Lady Chatterly's Lover resides in the Public Library.
>
>How can you say a particular piece of art doesnt belong but others do?
***How can you imply that everything belongs? Necessarily lots and lots of
things are rejected. Surely you know that even the Brooklyn Museum has some
standards.
Luk
"Douglas M. Case" wrote:
> Government can, and does, support religion.
Don't you think that's a stretch, Doug?
A better way of putting it is that government doesn't loot
the churches as badly as it loots the rest of us.
> Supposing we could restrict the application to just the Arts. What
> would we have? No literature, music, painting, or art history in public
> libraries? No art or music education in public schools? No historic
> preservation? And no new public works, because one man's neo-Classicism
> is another man's architecture manqué?
Aren't you overlooking the fact that literature, music, and painting
have been produced over the ages without government handouts?
Luk
Luk
> that it not offend the prudish, puncture the self-important, or ridicule
> the status quo is to demand that it not be art at all.
Art isn't art if it doesn't offend, puncture, or ridicule? Who says?
Offending the prudish is not a necessary component in the
definition of art. Though the prudish do at times get offended.
> "So-called modern or contemporary art in our modern beloved country
> contains all the isms of depravity, decadence and destruction. Cubism
> aims to destroy by designed disorder.
The aim of cubism was not to destroy. It was to innovate.
> Futurism aims to destroy by a
> machine myth. Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule.
Which explains why it's so stupid-looking.
> Expressionism aims to
> destroy by aping the primitive and insane...
That's absurd.
> ------------------
> Thank God that's settled.
I like the sig.
Luk
Lucy A. Afar
Douglas quoted what contemporary critics had to say about several great
- NOWADAYS - artists:
"Degas is repulsive."
-New York Times, April 10, 1886
"This is...a shameful open sore not worth exhibiting..."
-Louis Etienne on Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863
"No intelligence can accept such aberrations."
-Albert Wolff on Pissarro, 1876
"Certainly no man or woman of normal mental health would be attracted
by the sadistic, obscene deformations of Cézanne, Modigliani, Matisse,
Gauguin and the other Fauves."
-John Hemming Fry, The Revolt Against Beauty, 1934
"So-called modern or contemporary art in our modern beloved country
contains all the isms of depravity, decadence and destruction. Cubism
aims to destroy by designed disorder. Futurism aims to destroy by a
machine myth. Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule. Expressionism aims
to destroy by aping the primitive and insane...Abstractionism, or
non-objectivity in so-called modern art, was spawned as a simon-pure,
Russian communist product...Who has brought down this curse upon us;
who has let into our homeland this horde of germ-carrying art vermin?"
-U.S. Rep. George A. Dondero (R-Mich), speech to Congress, August 19,
1949
<end of quotation>
What you did, Luk, with your "creative" snipping that completely
distorted the meaning of Douglas's post reminds me a lot of Kitty - and
this is NOT meant to be a compliment to you!
Lucy (outraged and disappointed)
--
"Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines
everywhere."
Shakespeare
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Every9man
From: maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie)
>Maggie writes:
>/***If you can find anyone objecting to tax exempt status for museums, your
>/point is well made. If not, it's apples and oranges.
>
barbara said:
>My server has been acting up and losing many posts so forgive please if
>I have
>missed something.
>People here are objecting to their tax dollars supporting the museum, no?
>
>If the museum has a tax exempt status, who has to make up the deficit caused
>by
>the tax exemption, but the other tax payers. How is it different?
/***In theory it's not very different. In practice, very different, mainly
because of the tax exempt nature of churches and schools. Our tax dollars
/support, in this way, all kinds of things that would normally be considered
/pretty objectionable, but pretty much no one objects. But just try to get a
/bill through Congress authorizing grants to the Southern Baptists or the
/Buddhists. You'll see the difference.
Of course there's difference. But my point remains that in effect we do support
churches with tax dollars. It was in answer to Luk's apparent ignorance of the
fact .
maggie said:
No one's
>going
>t/o remove art from public buildings, but it should be obvious to anyone
>that
>/art that offends or degrades a person, a religion, an ethnic group, et
>al, has
>/no place in a public institution.
>
barbara said:
>Maggie, I've given examples of many works of art which offend, Picasso's
>crucifixes, Guernica, Hieronymous Bosch, Rodin, much of Dali; the list
>is too
>long to print here.
>Lady Chatterly's Lover resides in the Public Library.
>
>How can you say a particular piece of art doesnt belong but others do?
/***How can you imply that everything belongs?
I dont. Not at all. I object to the standard of and the source of the selection
process.
/ Necessarily lots and lots of
things are rejected. Surely you know that even the Brooklyn Museum has /some
/standards.
Of course they do and that's my point. They should be the ones making the
selection process not the Mayor.
Barbara
Luk
> >Which explains why it's so stupid-looking.
Lord Sir pontificated:
> Do you even know anything about all of the works considered Dada ?
I was WAY too broad.
You're right to get huffy.
(this time)
> Not at all, if you know your art history and are familiar with the stated
> intentions of the artists themselves.
I'm not sure the stated intention of the artists
should cut much ice.
Gotta go.
Luk
Luk
Lord Sir wrote:
> You seem to be interested only in scapegoating the arts.
You know better than that if you've read any of my posts.
Don't you think it would be somewhat inconsistent of me
to say that the purpose of government is only to provide
necessary services that can't be provided by other means,
and THEN try to make an exception of the things I enjoy.
Luk
Luk
> >Don't you think it would be somewhat inconsistent of me
> >to say that the purpose of government is only to provide
> >necessary services that can't be provided by other means,
> >and THEN try to make an exception of the things I enjoy.
> >
> >Luk
> >
>
I simply try to make provisions for things I enjoy.
Luk
Luk
LS wrote:
> Why should our tax dollars go to
> rebuild hurricane damaged vacation homes or second or third homes of the wealthy.
I don't remember saying it should.
What I do remember saying is that the purpose of
government is to provide necessities that can't be
provided any other way except by government.
Luk
PHyatt1962
up to see and interpret the art.
Toleration, toleration,
unless you disagree with them.
Freedom of speech, but not freedom to disagree with these perverts.
PH
Douglas M. Case
<lukn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Don't you think it would be somewhat inconsistent of me
>to say that the purpose of government is only to provide
>necessary services that can't be provided by other means,
>and THEN try to make an exception of the things I enjoy.
Well, then, is it inconsistent for you to have suggested that "the media
ought to clean up its act before it becomes necessary for the government
to step in"? Is it inconsistent to support government interference in the
arts when they are funded entirely by private capital?
What I think is curious, Luk, is that the government springs into action
when there's elephant dung on a museum wall, but not when there are rodent
droppings on a restaurant kitchen floor.
dmc
------------------
Thank God that's settled.
-Richard Brinsley Sheridan, handing an IOU to a creditor
Luk
> >Don't you think it would be somewhat inconsistent of me
> >to say that the purpose of government is only to provide
> >necessary services that can't be provided by other means,
> >and THEN try to make an exception of the things I enjoy.
Doug wrote:
> Well, then, is it inconsistent for you to have suggested that "the media
> ought to clean up its act before it becomes necessary for the government
> to step in"?
What I said was that the media had better clean up its act or
government may well step in. Why is that inconsistent? I've
made no comments as to whether the government "ought
to" step in.
> Is it inconsistent to support government interference in the
> arts when they are funded entirely by private capital?
Communities have the right to set a standard of decency.
Local communities do it all the time.
I believe the first amendment refers to the freedom
to protest against an oppressive government.
> What I think is curious, Luk, is that the government springs into action
> when there's elephant dung on a museum wall, but not when there are rodent
> droppings on a restaurant kitchen floor.
Restaurants? Local governments do that all the time.
Luk
Every9man
> when there's elephant dung on a museum wall, but not when there are rodent
> droppings on a restaurant kitchen floor.
/Restaurants? Local governments do that all the time.
/Luk
Not in this city they dont Luk. There are barely enough funds allocated to the
Board of Health to make inspections of the thousands of restaurants more than
once a year.
You could paint the walls with roach droppings.
Barbara
Maggie
****Sounds to me like we've found a worthy use of the Brooklyn Museum's $12
million.
Douglas M. Case
<lukn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>"Douglas M. Case" wrote:
>> Supposing we could restrict the application to just the Arts. What
>> would we have? No literature, music, painting, or art history in public
>> libraries? No art or music education in public schools? No historic
>> preservation? And no new public works, because one man's neo-Classicism
>> is another man's architecture manqué?
>
>Aren't you overlooking the fact that literature, music, and painting
>have been produced over the ages without government handouts?
I'm not sure what you think that has to do with what I said, which was
an extrapolation of Maggie's suggestion that the Establishment clause
ought to apply to art as well as religion.
But lemme answer you anyway. The entire history of Western Art is a
history of what you term "handouts". The vast majority of art created
before the 19th Century owed its existence to patronage-from kings, the
Church, or wealthy individuals. The modern era has by far the greatest
number of self-sustaining artists.
What government assistance there is is but a pittance. And frankly it
is of nominal importance, though I would say that the people have a
legitimate interest in promoting the arts, equal to their interest in
promoting small business or protecting the environment. What is
considerably more important is government support in bringing art to its
citizens, in supporting museums, libraries, concert halls, the work of
musicologists and symphonies. I don't agree with every word to be found
in my local library. I'd as soon forgo Tchaikovsky or Copeland. I don't
conclude that that money is wasted, but if I did I wouldn't hide my
censorious little heart behind grandiose notions of what government ought
to be.
Curiously, these little periodic blowups always seem to revolve around
some supposed sacrilege, because self-serving politicians (who *without
question* live off government handouts, and frequently, if not generally,
do much less for the tax-paying public than the artists they impugn) see
it as a way to gather in campaign contributions. Yet much of the canon of
Western art is anti-religious. I'll believe the hand-wringers are sincere
when they call for Shakespeare and Chaucer to be removed from public
libraries.
Every9man
From: maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie)
Date: Mon, 04 October 1999 01:28 AM EDT
Message-id: <19991004012839...@ng-da1.aol.com>
>dmc posted:
>> What I think is curious, Luk, is that the government springs into action
>> when there's elephant dung on a museum wall, but not when there are rodent
>> droppings on a restaurant kitchen floor.
>
>/Restaurants? Local governments do that all the time.
>
>/Luk
>
>
>Not in this city they dont Luk. There are barely enough funds allocated
>to the
>Board of Health to make inspections of the thousands of restaurants more
>than
>once a year.
>
>You could paint the walls with roach droppings.
>Barbara
/****Sounds to me like we've found a worthy use of the Brooklyn /Museum's $12
/million.
/Maggie
There's an enourmous budget surplus this year Maggie. Dont you think that if
they gave a shit about cleaning up the shit they would have done it already?
Barbara
George Byrd
on "Re: The real art world"
Luk <lukn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Communities have the right to set a standard of decency.
Only peripherally, and then only in the rarified atmosphere of FCC
dockets or court appeals on alleged violations of 18 USC 1464.
"Decency" or "indecency" are only at issue in radio or television
broadcasts made from 6 a.m. to midnight, lo cal time. In every other
venue of expression, "decency" is neither a legal standard, nor at
issue.
>Local communities do it all the time.
If "all the time" means the sparse number of incidents in 20+ years
since FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation.
>I believe the first amendment refers to the freedom
>to protest against an oppressive government.
Among many other things.
--
Opinions above are NOT those of APAN, Inc., and are NOT legal advice.
"... some parents may actually find Mr. Carlin's unabashed attitude
towards the seven 'dirty words' healthy..."
<< Brennan & Marshall dissent in _FCC_v._Pacifica_F'd'n_, 438 U.S. 726 >>
George Byrd
on "Re: The real art world"
> I'll believe the hand-wringers are sincere
>when they call for Shakespeare and Chaucer to be removed from public
>libraries.
I would say "Shhhh, you'll give them ideas." However, it has
happened, and likely will continue to happen periodically. Maybe it
correlates to full moons or something.
GB
--
Opinions above are NOT those of APAN, Inc.and are NOT legal advice.
"In a Los Angeles courthouse corridor he had worn a jacket bearing
the plainly visible words 'Fuck the Draft.' Women and children were present ..."
<< Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 >>
Josey
ARTS MONEY FOR ARTS INSIDERS
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, July 25, 1995
Testifying before Congress in February, a few months before his tragic riding
accident, Christopher Reeve told members of a Senate committee that their
obligation to the National Endowment for the Arts is to hand over the cash and
ask no questions.
``When you give an artist money to go and create,'' the actor said in answer to
a query from Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), ``you do not have the expectation or
the right to expect certain results. It is a statement of trust.''
Gorton was amazed. You mean to say, he asked, that the government should
provide a subsidy for artists without inquiring into how it is being spent?
Reeve: ``Yes, I think the money should be given to artists who are deemed
worthy of support; but I also think that the system . . . must have a very
strict mandate of accountability to the highest standards.''
Gorton: ``Excuse me. Who is going to set those standards?''
Reeve: ``I think that the chairman and the Endowment itself must work with a
definition of art. . . .''
Gorton: ``But who makes this definition -- the . . . Endowment, or this
Congress?''
Reeve: ``There has to be trust reposed in an artist of the caliber, say, of
Jane Alexander'' -- the NEA chairwoman -- ``and the people at that Endowment.''
Gorton: ``So it is up to us to give the money, but not to set the standards?''
Reeve: ``It is up to you to give the money and -- yes, as a matter of fact, if
you come right down to it -- ''
At which point, clearly antagonized, the senator got up and left. Reeve
continued. ``Artists decide about art,'' he said. ``Artists should be making
decisions about what art gets money -- not politicians.''
Reeve couldn't have turned in a more arrogant performance if he'd rehearsed for
six months. But who needed to rehearse? What he said is exactly what he and the
NEA's arts claque fervently believe: Not only are they are entitled to
taxpayers' money, but they -- and only they -- are entitled to decide how to
spend it. Their judgment, they so modestly like to point out, is the best. For
an artist to get an NEA subsidy, or have his grant application approved by one
of the endowment's peer-review panels, is to be officially certified ``Grade
A'' by the highest authority of all: themselves.
``The peer panel review system,'' declaimed the Boston Ballet's artistic
director, Bruce Marks, in a recent TV debate, ``is a marvel of fairness, a
marvel of self-examination. . . . These are people deeply, deeply concerned
about the arts.'' The great thing about NEA grants, said Marks, who has
received several, is that ``you can take them out there in public and say: 'My
peers believe in me; my government agency has funded me.' ''
What critics of the NEA don't realize, laments Barbara Grossman, a member of
the National Council on the Arts (the endowment's key decision-making body), is
how darn superb the NEA arts commissars are. These are ``people who are arts
professionals, arts activists, practicing artists, arts lovers,'' she says.
Arts insiders, in other words. Members of the Club. And who better to judge
which art deserves government funding, who better to brandish the national seal
of approval, than the Beautiful People themselves? ``The value of a federal
arts agency,'' New York Times columnist Frank Rich has written, ``is to set a
national standard for excellence.''
On the contrary. Rarely does the arts establishment recognize the great art of
its time. In 1863, the French Academy -- the NEA of that era -- refused to let
a group of artists who didn't meet its ``national standard for excellence''
display their paintings at its annual exhibition, the Salon. The upstarts -- a
group of fellows named Cezanne, Manet, Pissarro, Whistler and Sisley -- mounted
a separate exhibition of the rejected works (a Salon des Refuses). Today their
paintings, masterpieces of European art, are among the world's most beloved.
Time and again, the elites of the ``arts community'' have been oblivious to the
great artistic revolutions taking place around them. ``In the visual arts, they
denounced lithography and barred museum doors to photographers,'' notes scholar
Alice Goldfarb Marquis in her lively new book ``Art Lessons.'' ``In music they
bedeviled Wagner and Mahler while attempting to lock the concert hall on
Gershwin and Ellington. In drama they defended theater against film; when film
survived, they deemed silents more artistic than talkies. . . . These pundits
habitually dismissed whatever attracted mass audiences or achieved commercial
success until it had passed into history. . . .''
The NEA's notion of itself as the keeper of America's artistic flame, the
guarantor of our cultural vitality, is sanctimonious blather. No federal agency
sustains the creative spirit; none ever will. Tens of thousands of artists
lining up, palms outstretched, while government-picked panels render verdicts
on their poetry, painting or drama -- the whole spectacle makes a mockery of
the very idea of great art.
The NEA was a mistake from the outset. Ralph Waldo Emerson was right. ``Beauty
will not come at the call of the legislature,'' he wrote. ``It will come, as
always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.''
_______________
And this by the same writer:
But American art won't wither if the NEA disappears in 1998, just as it wasn't
gasping for breath before 1965. The mainstay of American art is not the NEA. It
is the tens of thousands of private Americans who voluntarily give $10 billion
a year to the arts, a tidal wave of generosity unparalleled anywhere.
And it doesn't end with philanthropy. Add to that $10 billion the vast sums
Americans spend on theater subscriptions and concert-music recordings, on
ballet tickets and nights at the opera, on literary magazines and jazz
festivals -- and then add to that the millions of man-hours donated by
volunteer ushers and ticket-takers and docents and fundraisers. The total is
staggering -- and it makes the NEA about as relevant to America's artistic
splendor as a falling apple is to the law of gravity.
Could the arts survive without government funding? What a question! The
government doesn't fund the Van Cliburn competition or the National Book Awards
or the MacArthur grants. The government doesn't organize poetry slams or
produce festivals of one-act plays or commission new string quartets. The
government doesn't keep art galleries afloat or make the Tony Awards so
popular. To adapt an old bumper sticker, arts need the NEA like a fish needs a
bicycle.
The NEA is an experiment that failed. In 1965, Congress might have thought that
a federal agency could improve or enliven American art. Now it knows better.
More novel-reading will take place this year because of Oprah Winfrey than
because of anything the NEA has done in its 32 years. If the endowment faded
away, who would care? America's tens of millions of art-lovers, swept up in the
richest, most democratic arts scene the human race has known, would hardly
notice it was gone.
_______________
Just another victim of the in-house drive-by,
Josey
"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning
of the people, by the people, for the people." --Oscar Wilde
esa...@mindspring.com
maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie) wrote:
> ***I find travel extremely thrilling, uplifting, fascinating and
> exciting. But I would never expect the government to subsidize
> travel so that everyone might have that experience.
For the artist, making art is often mistaken as a compulsive mental
illness, where it's actually some wayward chromosome that makes us do
what we do. It's not so much the fame or money (haha), it's just
looking at/listening to the damn thing and saying, "Well, check *that*
out." These guys with the dung and the religious figures are
suspicious, IMO... I think they're in it for the notoriety. Either
that or they're certifiably nuts. Probably both. The message itself
is pretty tepid, too.
e-bay
Douglas M. Case
<lukn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Doug wrote:
>
>> Well, then, is it inconsistent for you to have suggested that "the media
>> ought to clean up its act before it becomes necessary for the government
>> to step in"?
>
>What I said was that the media had better clean up its act or
>government may well step in. Why is that inconsistent? I've
>made no comments as to whether the government "ought
>to" step in.
A pretty distinction, to match your notions about Art, I guess. You
complain about media Immorality, raise the threat of government action,
then say you weren't urging action. Okay, not inconsistent, but that's
why I was asking. IYO, does government have any business censoring any
work which is clearly not obscene, or pressuring any transmitter of such
works with legal roadblocks and financial penalties, when the acts in
question involve no government monies? Yes or no.
>> Is it inconsistent to support government interference in the
>> arts when they are funded entirely by private capital?
>
>Communities have the right to set a standard of decency.
>Local communities do it all the time.
>I believe the first amendment refers to the freedom
>to protest against an oppressive government.
Do you ever tire of the militiaspeak, Luk? Do you have macros for this
stuff? Hit F4 for "oppressive government" and F8 for "picking the
taxpayer's pocket"?
>
>> What I think is curious, Luk, is that the government springs into action
>> when there's elephant dung on a museum wall, but not when there are rodent
>> droppings on a restaurant kitchen floor.
>
>Restaurants? Local governments do that all the time.
Routinely underfunded, notoriously cozy with the businesses they are
supposed to regulate, where they are not altogether corrupt. When was the
last time your mayor finagled his way in front of the cameras to denounce
an unclean eating establishment or food processing plant?
Luk
> Not only are they are entitled to
> taxpayers' money, but they -- and only they -- are entitled to decide how to
> spend it. Their judgment, they so modestly like to point out, is the best. For
> an artist to get an NEA subsidy, or have his grant application approved by one
> of the endowment's peer-review panels, is to be officially certified ``Grade
> A'' by the highest authority of all: themselves.
> Rarely does the arts establishment recognize the great art of
> its time. In 1863, the French Academy -- the NEA of that era -- refused to let
> a group of artists who didn't meet its ``national standard for excellence''
> display their paintings at its annual exhibition, the Salon. The upstarts -- a
> group of fellows named Cezanne, Manet, Pissarro, Whistler and Sisley -- mounted
> a separate exhibition of the rejected works (a Salon des Refuses). Today their
> paintings, masterpieces of European art, are among the world's most beloved.
> Time and again, the elites of the ``arts community'' have been oblivious to the
> great artistic revolutions taking place around them. ``In the visual arts, they
> denounced lithography and barred museum doors to photographers,'' notes scholar
> Alice Goldfarb Marquis in her lively new book ``Art Lessons.'' ``In music they
> bedeviled Wagner and Mahler while attempting to lock the concert hall on
> Gershwin and Ellington. In drama they defended theater against film; when film
> survived, they deemed silents more artistic than talkies. . . . These pundits
> habitually dismissed whatever attracted mass audiences or achieved commercial
> success until it had passed into history. . . .'
>Could the arts survive without government funding? What a question! The
>government doesn't fund the Van Cliburn competition or the National Book Awards
>or the MacArthur grants. The government doesn't organize poetry slams or
>produce festivals of one-act plays or commission new string quartets. The
>government doesn't keep art galleries afloat or make the Tony Awards so
>popular. To adapt an old bumper sticker, arts need the NEA like a fish needs a
>bicycle."
Thank you, Josey. *Great* articles !
Luk
Luk
> Doug wrote:
>
> The entire history of Western Art is a
> history of what you term "handouts". The vast majority of art created
> before the 19th Century owed its existence to patronage-from kings, the
> Church, or wealthy individuals. The modern era has by far the greatest
> number of self-sustaining artists.
Hear hear! But I take issue with your use of the word "handouts".
When voluntary contributions support the arts, the money is not
extracted by force from taxpayers. When the US government
puts the NEA in it's annual budget, that money *is* taken from
taxpayers.
> What government assistance there is is but a pittance.
No argument there. But when the influence of the NEA furthers
the kind of art currently hanging in the Brooklyn Museum, the
taxpayers have every reason to oppose it. Clearly many of them
are opposing it.
> What is
> considerably more important is government support in bringing art to its
> citizens, in supporting museums, libraries, concert halls, the work of
> musicologists and symphonies. I don't agree with every word to be found
> in my local library.
I wouldn't oppose the kind of support you refer to if the taxes paid
by middle class families were closer to 5 percent than 50 percent.
Perhaps the liberals should give some thought to prioritizing. Isn't
there a limit?
> I'd as soon forgo Tchaikovsky or Copeland. I don't
> conclude that that money is wasted, but if I did I wouldn't hide my
> censorious little heart behind grandiose notions of what government ought
> to be.
But you would condone taxpayer money spent on exhibits
like "Sensation".
> much of the canon of
> Western art is anti-religious. I'll believe the hand-wringers are sincere
> when they call for Shakespeare and Chaucer to be removed from public
> libraries.
Keep in mind that the current hand-wringing came about because
of the *nature* of the Brooklyn Museum exhibit. That it's sacrilegious
is only one of its problems. I personally think the Madonna painting
is tame, compared to others there. If the NEA hopes to hang onto
government funding, why does it not speak out against such an
exhibit? Why does it defend filth? The artists want to be free to
decide what is art, but look at the level of excellence they're now
standing up for.
If you haven't seen the exhibit, go to http://www.davidbowie.com/
and click on "Sensation".
Luk
kkramer
community shall define decency. It's not a national issue: it's local.
Quote your legal hogwash elsewhere. You really should go to law school if
you want to be able to use case law properly. I encourage you to do so.
Kramer
George Byrd <geo...@apan.org> wrote in message
news:37f85a1d$0$2...@nntp1.ba.best.com...
> In <alt.true-crime>, Mon, 04 Oct 1999 01:21:22 -0400,
> on "Re: The real art world"
> Luk <lukn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >Communities have the right to set a standard of decency.
>
> Only peripherally, and then only in the rarified atmosphere of FCC
> dockets or court appeals on alleged violations of 18 USC 1464.
> "Decency" or "indecency" are only at issue in radio or television
> broadcasts made from 6 a.m. to midnight, lo cal time. In every other
> venue of expression, "decency" is neither a legal standard, nor at
> issue.
>
> >Local communities do it all the time.
>
> If "all the time" means the sparse number of incidents in 20+ years
> since FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation.
>
> >I believe the first amendment refers to the freedom
> >to protest against an oppressive government.
>
> Among many other things.
>
>
> --
Luk
"Douglas M. Case" wrote:
> IYO, does government have any business censoring any
> work which is clearly not obscene, or pressuring any transmitter of such
> works with legal roadblocks and financial penalties, when the acts in
> question involve no government monies? Yes or no.
(Government includes local government.) You added "which is
clearly not obscene". If you hadn't added that wouldn't even
have to think about it. The answer would be yes. Beyond that
I'd have to give some thought to situations that might come up.
What would *your* answer be? Certainly a great deal of book
banning has gone on in the interest of combating discrimination.
I can imagine situations where such an action might be justified,
though I do feel libraries and schools have gone too far and
have banned classics that have merit.
> >I believe the first amendment refers to the freedom
> >to protest against an oppressive government.
>
> Do you ever tire of the militiaspeak, Luk? Do you have macros for this
> stuff? Hit F4 for "oppressive government" and F8 for "picking the
> taxpayer's pocket"?
Now Doug, that's the ultimate in calling the kettle black.
> When was the
> last time your mayor finagled his way in front of the cameras to denounce
> an unclean eating establishment or food processing plant?
I'm puzzled that you're raising that issue, since local governments
have legal recourse when a restaurant is found by inspectors to
be unsafe. Legal action can be taken, and it is. Even swimming pools
now have laws that require temporary closing down while chlorine
cleans up after a kiddie pooper. We've had a lot of publicity here
about that. But it's normally a county problem rather than a problem
for the mayor.
Luk
Luk
Michael wrote:
> Doug, throughout this thread, you have raised many thought provoking points.
> Do you think turning the funding over to the individual states would
> diminish funding ? I'm sure some of the poorer states would get hosed on
> such a proposition but aren't they already ?
May I also comment that way too little credit is given to individuals
and businesses who are enormously philanthropic in this country.
There's an editorial today in the WSJ about Bill Gates. Underneath
the adjoining cartoon It says, "Philanthropist 99: Giving away $17 billion
- and counting - isn't easy".
Here's another quote: "Earlier in this century, philanthropy often
flowed from the wills of dead industrialists. In recent decades, it's as
likely to have come from a very alive business leader, entertainer,
or sports star"....
Luk
Luk
> I looked at the URL. I was not impressed.
Somebody around here commented that too much had
been said about the Madonna and that there were
other beautiful works of art in the exhibit - which
had been ignored.
Name just one!
Luk
Luk
esa...@mindspring.com wrote:
> In article <19990930115506...@ng-fc1.aol.com>,
> maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie) wrote:
> > ***I find travel extremely thrilling, uplifting, fascinating and
> > exciting. But I would never expect the government to subsidize
> > travel so that everyone might have that experience.
>
> For the artist, making art is often mistaken as a compulsive mental
> illness, where it's actually some wayward chromosome that makes us do
> what we do. It's not so much the fame or money (haha), it's just
> looking at/listening to the damn thing and saying, "Well, check *that*
> out."
amen
But there's also a little urge to make something that
stimulates an emotion in other people that someone's
work has had on the artist. Which is a bit altruistic,
I think.
I don't see that urge in the "Sensation" art online at
http://www.davidbowie.com/
I just see a bunch of freaks who revel in drawing
attention to themselves with no added interest
in giving pleasure. I do notice that feminine equality
is alive and well, however.
Luk
Luk
Luk wrote:
> > There's an editorial today in the WSJ about Bill Gates. Underneath
> > the adjoining cartoon It says, "Philanthropist 99: Giving away $17 billion
> > - and counting - isn't easy".
> >
> > Here's another quote: "Earlier in this century, philanthropy often
> > flowed from the wills of dead industrialists. In recent decades, it's as
> > likely to have come from a very alive business leader, entertainer,
> > or sports star"....
>
> So what is your point here Luk ? Philanthropy will support art in the US ?
Has supported. All over the world.
Through the ages.
> As soon as Gates stock runs down to $10 a share we'll see no philanthropy.
Hey - Gates can read a balance sheet.
That's more than the Federal Government can do.
> Do you really believe this ?
What's to "believe"?
It's been going on for thousands of years.
Aren't you people also arguing that the NEA budget
is small.
Luk
Maggie
>> So what is your point here Luk ? Philanthropy will support art in the
>US ?
>
>Has supported. All over the world.
>Through the ages.
>
>> As soon as Gates stock runs down to $10 a share we'll see no philanthropy.
>
>Hey - Gates can read a balance sheet.
>That's more than the Federal Government can do.
>
>> Do you really believe this ?
>
>What's to "believe"?
>It's been going on for thousands of years.
>Aren't you people also arguing that the NEA budget
>is small.
***I think that's the really important thing that's come out of the articles
Josey posted--how incredibly small the NEA budget is compared to the money
coming from private sources. I'd say that the NEA is largely symbolic in this
whole equation (admittedly not so to those artists it has funded). Seems to me
we're all just arguing about a principle here--there'd really be little
practical effect if the NEA folded tomorrow.
Martha
>
> In <alt.true-crime>, Mon, 04 Oct 1999 00:28:39 -0400,
> on "Re: The real art world"
> >when they call for Shakespeare and Chaucer to be removed from public
> >libraries.
>
> happened, and likely will continue to happen periodically. Maybe it
> correlates to full moons or something.
>
I wonder why I never read about people objecting to their money being
spent to bring Tchaikowsky (a dislike for me, too) to the masses; why
funding for the Norman Rockwell museum doesn't bring out the pickets--do
the people who object to this Dung Madonna or whatever it's called
imagine that those of us who believe it's okay--I think it's even
salubrious--for such a "controversial" work to be shown in a
publicly-funded venue (although of course the painting belongs in a
very, very exclusive private collection belonging to a man whose
politics are I am sure closer to Luknh's than to mine)--do they imagine
that we, too, do not object to our tax money being spent to support and
disseminate pictures that we (or at least *I*) consider disgusting
trash?
I think anyone, visiting any museum in the world, could find *something*
s/he would prefer not to look at, maybe even something s/he believes *no
one* should look at (have you been to the "peephole" part of the big
Duchamp exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum? <wow>), but we tolerate
the idea that each person has his/her own "buttons," and we simply don't
look at that of which we don't approve. Just like adults.
Martha, run-on sentences a specialty; ask for quotes
Debby
the ones who are supposed to decide what is right and wrong. Well, who is to
define who the "right" people are??? Your ideas are not in the majority, so I
guess you are not one of the "right" people ...... right??? The other thing
that does seem to decide things is money and since Bill Gates gave 3.5 Billion
dollars to the NEA and the NEA will fund the Brooklyn College in spite of
Congress, you still aren't one of the "right" people..... Debby
S.<sarg...@injersey.com>
Luk wrote:
> > Luk wrote:
>
> > >Don't you think it would be somewhat inconsistent of me
> > >to say that the purpose of government is only to provide
> > >necessary services that can't be provided by other means,
> > >and THEN try to make an exception of the things I enjoy.
>
> Doug wrote:
>
> > Well, then, is it inconsistent for you to have suggested that "the media
> > ought to clean up its act before it becomes necessary for the government
> > to step in"?
>
> What I said was that the media had better clean up its act or
> government may well step in. Why is that inconsistent? I've
> made no comments as to whether the government "ought
> to" step in.
>
> > Is it inconsistent to support government interference in the
> > arts when they are funded entirely by private capital?
>
> Communities have the right to set a standard of decency.
> Local communities do it all the time.
> I believe the first amendment refers to the freedom
> to protest against an oppressive government.
>
> > What I think is curious, Luk, is that the government springs into action
> > when there's elephant dung on a museum wall, but not when there are rodent
> > droppings on a restaurant kitchen floor.
>
> Restaurants? Local governments do that all the time.
>
> Luk
Debby
oxymoron.....:) Debby S.<sarg...@injersey.com> I'd better not find any at
the Plaza, however......
Every9man wrote:
> dmc posted:
> > What I think is curious, Luk, is that the government springs into action
> > when there's elephant dung on a museum wall, but not when there are rodent
> > droppings on a restaurant kitchen floor.
>
Luk
Martha wrote:
> I think anyone, visiting any museum in the world, could find *something*
> s/he would prefer not to look at, maybe even something s/he believes *no
> one* should look at (have you been to the "peephole" part of the big
> Duchamp exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum? <wow>), but we tolerate
> the idea that each person has his/her own "buttons," and we simply don't
> look at that of which we don't approve. Just like adults.
Why is it not "adult" to express objections about specifically
what public money is spent on? Doesn't the money come out
of our pay checks? Or is it, rather, given to us by some kind of
Government-God?
Luk
George Byrd
on "Re: The real art world"
>Give me a break. The US Supreme Court held that local standards of the
>community shall define decency. It's not a national issue: it's local.
>Quote your legal hogwash elsewhere. You really should go to law school if
>you want to be able to use case law properly. I encourage you to do so.
Indecency is not the same standard as obscenity.
Obscenity is not constitutionally protected.
Patent offense to community standards is one element of three in the
Miller test for obscenity. The "community" is the state in which the
obscenity prosecution occurs.
Indecency is constitutionally protected in most speech venues, except
broadcast where it is protected only during safe harbor hours.
Federal statutes (and federal regs) preempt states on broadcast
matters.
That the speech broadcast in _Pacifica_ was vulgar, offensive and
shocking was not even disputed. Whether it was obscene was not at
issue. It was not obscene, nor alleged to have been.
If you know of cases where a state has prosecuted public speech for
indecency, not obscenity, please cite them.
GB
--
Opinions above are NOT those of APAN, Inc. & are NOT legal advice.
"Every body perseveres in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line,
except in so far as it is compelled to change that state by impressed forces."
<< Isaac Newton, _Principia_ >>
Debby
about the exibit. Debby S.<sarg...@injersey.com>
Luk wrote:
> > Western art is anti-religious. I'll believe the hand-wringers are sincere
> > when they call for Shakespeare and Chaucer to be removed from public
> > libraries.
>
Every9man
From: maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie)
Date: Mon, 04 October 1999 12:30 PM EDT
Message-id: <19991004123034...@ng-cr1.aol.com>
Maggie
That was my point when I talked about Giuliani not criticizing the Serrano show
at the Whitney when the Whitney gets $6000 in public fundsw. It wasnt the
amount of the money, it was the principle.
Of course now we find out that the Chairman of the Board of the Whitney
contributes a large amount to Giuliani's campain fund.
Hmmmmmmm
Barbara
Debby
S.<sarg...@injersey.com>
Luk wrote:
> Michael wrote:
>
> > Doug, throughout this thread, you have raised many thought provoking points.
> > Do you think turning the funding over to the individual states would
> > diminish funding ? I'm sure some of the poorer states would get hosed on
> > such a proposition but aren't they already ?
>
> May I also comment that way too little credit is given to individuals
> and businesses who are enormously philanthropic in this country.
> There's an editorial today in the WSJ about Bill Gates. Underneath
> the adjoining cartoon It says, "Philanthropist 99: Giving away $17 billion
> - and counting - isn't easy".
>
> Here's another quote: "Earlier in this century, philanthropy often
> flowed from the wills of dead industrialists. In recent decades, it's as
> likely to have come from a very alive business leader, entertainer,
> or sports star"....
>
> Luk
Debby
Debby
taste:) Debby S.<sarg...@injersey.com>
Dog3 wrote:
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> Luk <lukn...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:37F8CCDC...@mindspring.com...
> > Michael wrote:
> >
> > > I looked at the URL. I was not impressed.
> >
> > Somebody around here commented that too much had
> > been said about the Madonna and that there were
> > other beautiful works of art in the exhibit - which
> > had been ignored.
> >
> > Name just one!
> >
> > Luk
> >
>
> Again, I was not impressed. I did like the photo of Gillian Wearing's of
> the small person by the tub. Still trying to figure out why he looks so
> evil.
>
> Michael
Debby
this. Maybe I will go down to Philly too on my vacation.... Debby
S.<sarg...@injersey.com>
Martha wrote:
> George Byrd wrote:
> >
> > In <alt.true-crime>, Mon, 04 Oct 1999 00:28:39 -0400,
> > on "Re: The real art world"
> > four...@earthlink.net (Douglas M. Case) wrote:
> >
> > > I'll believe the hand-wringers are sincere
> > >when they call for Shakespeare and Chaucer to be removed from public
> > >libraries.
> >
> > I would say "Shhhh, you'll give them ideas." However, it has
> > happened, and likely will continue to happen periodically. Maybe it
> > correlates to full moons or something.
> >
>
> I wonder why I never read about people objecting to their money being
> spent to bring Tchaikowsky (a dislike for me, too) to the masses; why
> funding for the Norman Rockwell museum doesn't bring out the pickets--do
> the people who object to this Dung Madonna or whatever it's called
> imagine that those of us who believe it's okay--I think it's even
> salubrious--for such a "controversial" work to be shown in a
> publicly-funded venue (although of course the painting belongs in a
> very, very exclusive private collection belonging to a man whose
> politics are I am sure closer to Luknh's than to mine)--do they imagine
> that we, too, do not object to our tax money being spent to support and
> disseminate pictures that we (or at least *I*) consider disgusting
> trash?
>
> I think anyone, visiting any museum in the world, could find *something*
> s/he would prefer not to look at, maybe even something s/he believes *no
> one* should look at (have you been to the "peephole" part of the big
> Duchamp exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum? <wow>), but we tolerate
> the idea that each person has his/her own "buttons," and we simply don't
> look at that of which we don't approve. Just like adults.
>
Debby
paycheck. I would rather spend it on art instead of some other things like
open space which just goes right into the politicians pocket. Debby
S.<sarg...@injersey.com>
Luk wrote:
> Martha wrote:
>
> > I think anyone, visiting any museum in the world, could find *something*
> > s/he would prefer not to look at, maybe even something s/he believes *no
> > one* should look at (have you been to the "peephole" part of the big
> > Duchamp exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum? <wow>), but we tolerate
> > the idea that each person has his/her own "buttons," and we simply don't
> > look at that of which we don't approve. Just like adults.
>
Martha
Luknh's objection is not to the artwork itself, but to the minuscule
amount of public funding that supports the museum showing it? Would she
close all museums? One Labor Day I found myself in Henry Frick's old
house (irony *is* my life), and all I could think of was the backs of
the workers on which all those paintings and entire *rooms* were
carried. It seems to me only fair that unique objects, such as pieces
of original art, should not be locked away for the delectation of only
those wealthy enough to afford to buy them--but Luknh disagrees?
I'd like to know what sort of (if any) tax benefits acrue to (is it
Charles) Saatchi for allowing this portion of his famous art collection
to be shown? I mean, besides the obvious show-off factor (not
inconsiderable)--what's in it for him?
And does Luknh have a low opinion of the wealthy collectors who
encourage this sort of artwork?
Martha?
Luk
> > > Why is it not "adult" to express objections about specifically
> > > what public money is spent on? Doesn't the money come out
> > > of our pay checks? Or is it, rather, given to us by some kind of
> > > Government-God?
> > >
> > > Luk
Martha? wrote:
> Luknh's objection is not to the artwork itself, but to the minuscule
> amount of public funding that supports the museum showing it?
Luknh objects to a publicly funded museum lending its
space to a collector who stuffs it with worthless sick
garbage produced by a demented hodgepodge of
pseudo-artists.
> Would she
> close all museums?
She would not close all museums.
> One Labor Day I found myself in Henry Frick's old
> house (irony *is* my life), and all I could think of was the backs of
> the workers on which all those paintings and entire *rooms* were
> carried. It seems to me only fair that unique objects, such as pieces
> of original art, should not be locked away for the delectation of only
> those wealthy enough to afford to buy them--but Luknh disagrees?
Luknh believes it is a good thing for worthy pieces of
original art to be shared with the public. Luknh knows that
many philanthropists are proud to share their art with the
public. But Luknh also believes that if an individual owns a
valuable piece of art it is entirely his choice whether or not to
lend it out thereby allowing it to be shown to the public.
> I'd like to know what sort of (if any) tax benefits acrue to (is it
> Charles) Saatchi for allowing this portion of his famous art collection
> to be shown? I mean, besides the obvious show-off factor (not
> inconsiderable)--what's in it for him?
Saatchi is English, so tax benefits would not be a factor. He is
also an adman turned art dealer who has every reason to want
his art seen and promoted. The more he succeeds in that effort,
the greater the prices he will get for pieces by those same artists.
Luknh has no beef with Mr. Saatchi, though Luknh believes
Mr. Saatchi to be quite obviously in the business of catering to
people of demented taste.
> And does Luknh have a low opinion of the wealthy collectors who
> encourage this sort of artwork?
Luknh does have a low opinion of dealers who encourage this
sort of artwork, but Luknh recognizes that what Mr. Saatchi
does for a living is legal. Luknh has a lower opinion of the
museum managers who elected (for whatever reason be it
ethical or not) to lend museum space to Mr. Saatchi.
Luknh
Douglas M. Case
In article <37F8B382...@mindspring.com>, Luk
<lukn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>From Josey: Articles re: the NEA
>
>> Not only are they are entitled to
>> taxpayers' money, but they -- and only they -- are entitled to decide how to
>> spend it. Their judgment, they so modestly like to point out, is the best.
And experts build our highways, manage our water, control our money
supply. What exactly is the frickin' point here? Either tear down the
museums, or acknowledge that there is such a thing as expertise in the
arts which surmounts unlettered public tastes.
>> Rarely does the arts establishment recognize the great art of
>> its time.
Rarely? Rubbish. Unerringly? Of course not-that demands something of
aesthetics which it does not set out to do. As well say history is bunk
because historians make mistakes.
>>In 1863, the French Academy -- the NEA of that era --
Demagogy.
>>refused to let
>> a group of artists who didn't meet its ``national standard for excellence''
>> display their paintings at its annual exhibition, the Salon. The
upstarts -- >>a
>> group of fellows named Cezanne, Manet, Pissarro, Whistler and Sisley --
>>mounted
>> a separate exhibition of the rejected works (a Salon des Refuses).
Today their
>> paintings, masterpieces of European art, are among the world's most beloved.
So Modernism arose at a time when establishment views of art (and not
merely those of the arts establishment) were stagnant and reactionary.
News flash. And we are to conclude from this that the arts establishment
never knows its ass from a post hole?
>
>> Time and again, the elites of the ``arts community'' have been
oblivious to the
>> great artistic revolutions taking place around them. ``In the visual
arts, >>they
>> denounced lithography and barred museum doors to photographers,'' notes
>>scholar
>> Alice Goldfarb Marquis in her lively new book ``Art Lessons.'' ``In
music >>they
>> bedeviled Wagner and Mahler while attempting to lock the concert hall on
>> Gershwin and Ellington. In drama they defended theater against film;
when >>film
>> survived, they deemed silents more artistic than talkies. . . . These pundits
>> habitually dismissed whatever attracted mass audiences or achieved commercial
>> success until it had passed into history. . . .'
Well, they were right about Mahler. But this is the worst sort of
bashing the past with the standards of the present. Arguments over the
aesthetics of photography, or film, were not simple-minded, reactionary
diatribes. There were vital arguments from intelligent commentators on
all sides. They are not rendered idiotic by the decisions of posterity.
This reminds me of the smug semi-literacy which calls Lamarck "that guy
who thought giraffes's necks grew because they stretched them," while
remaining completely ignorant of his considerable contributions to
science. Reducing everything to monochrome just so you can provide
black-and-white answers is not an achievement.
>
>>Could the arts survive without government funding? What a question! The
>>government doesn't fund the Van Cliburn competition or the National Book
>>Awards
>>or the MacArthur grants. The government doesn't organize poetry slams or
>>produce festivals of one-act plays or commission new string quartets. The
>>government doesn't keep art galleries afloat or make the Tony Awards so
>>popular. To adapt an old bumper sticker, arts need the NEA like a fish needs a
>>bicycle."
Does the NEA imagine the arts would die without it? Bosh. If I give
you your forty cents back will you stay home and listen to Garth Brooks?
Josey
Sorry you did, too. You talk to me throughout this post as though I wrote the
words.
>>> Not only are they are entitled to
>>> taxpayers' money, but they -- and only they -- are entitled to decide how
>to
>>> spend it. Their judgment, they so modestly like to point out, is the best.
>
> And experts build our highways, manage our water, control our money
>supply. What exactly is the frickin' point here? Either tear down the
>museums, or acknowledge that there is such a thing as expertise in the
>arts which surmounts unlettered public tastes.
I think his 'frickin' point' is that if the highways built were made
shoddily, if the water were managed badly, and the Fed were to repeat its
performance of 1929, then the public who pays has a right to be 'frickin'
pissed'.
There is a huge difference between the science (word emphasized) that goes
into road-building and water management and the judgement that goes into
calling a piece of art 'good'. While people who've studied art, who've become
'experts' in art history, technique, etc., can inform on those topics, the
question of what piece of art pleases or not, offends or not, is nothing but
personal. Even if your 'experts in taste' got a hearty slap on the back from
God Himself for their good aesthetic judgement, it doesn't justify their
rallying politicians to force the 'unlettered' taxpayers to pay for it,
especially when the poor ignorants are, by your own intimation, too vulgar to
enjoy the show.
>>> Rarely does the arts establishment recognize the great art of
>>> its time.
>
> Rarely? Rubbish. Unerringly? Of course not-that demands something of
>aesthetics which it does not set out to do. As well say history is bunk
>because historians make mistakes.
Examples of those 'rare' occasions when the 'experts' just plain fucked up, at
least in judging what their own successors would deem 'good', can be found
below.
>>>In 1863, the French Academy -- the NEA of that era --
>
>
> Demagogy.
The Academies were most often state institutions, like the NEA. They were
snobby little cliques who, like the NEA, did everything in their power to
disassociate themselves from 'those lowly people', in their case the mere
'artisans'. The French Academy went so far as to not even teach painting
because those 'unlettered' guild members painted. The only difference between
the snobby NEA and the snobby Academies is not a fundamental one at all: their
taste du jour.
>>>refused to let
>>> a group of artists who didn't meet its ``national standard for
>excellence''
>>> display their paintings at its annual exhibition, the Salon. The
>upstarts -- >>a
>>> group of fellows named Cezanne, Manet, Pissarro, Whistler and Sisley --
>>>mounted
>>> a separate exhibition of the rejected works (a Salon des Refuses).
>Today their
>>> paintings, masterpieces of European art, are among the world's most
>beloved.
>
>
> So Modernism arose at a time when establishment views of art (and not
>merely those of the arts establishment) were stagnant and reactionary.
>News flash. And we are to conclude from this that the arts establishment
>never knows its ass from a post hole?
Frankly, I don't care what you conclude from it because it's irrelevant to the
real point. Whether the 'experts' knows their collective ass (or would know a
decent representation of it if it were hanging on a museum wall) still doesn't
answer the questions: why should taxpayers fund art? What compelling state
interest is there in forcing them to do so? Where in the Constitution, aside
from any mention of copyright laws, does it even mention art in any form?
>>> Time and again, the elites of the ``arts community'' have been
>oblivious to the
>>> great artistic revolutions taking place around them. ``In the visual
>arts, >>they
>>> denounced lithography and barred museum doors to photographers,'' notes
>>>scholar
>>> Alice Goldfarb Marquis in her lively new book ``Art Lessons.'' ``In
>music >>they
>>> bedeviled Wagner and Mahler while attempting to lock the concert hall on
>>> Gershwin and Ellington. In drama they defended theater against film;
>when >>film
>>> survived, they deemed silents more artistic than talkies. . . . These
>pundits
>>> habitually dismissed whatever attracted mass audiences or achieved
>commercial
>>> success until it had passed into history. . . .'
> Well, they were right about Mahler.
In your opinion.
>But this is the worst sort of
>bashing the past with the standards of the present.
I think it's just the opposite.
>Arguments over the
>aesthetics of photography, or film, were not simple-minded, reactionary
>diatribes. There were vital arguments from intelligent commentators on
>all sides. They are not rendered idiotic by the decisions of posterity.
Totally irrelevant. And what matter of taste can be proved to be 'idiotic'? I
can have an opinion on what constitutes an idiotic aesthetic (and I do), but
beauty's in the eye of the beholder, ultimately, and my opinions won't affect
whether or not someone else's eye beholds beauty when looking at a Caravaggio
or a Mapplethorpe or a plastic dashboard Jesus. What is 'smug' is intimating
nothing but banality in the person who finds aesthetic pleasure in what the
'expert' elites mock. What is outright criminal is anyone's forcing that same
person to support the elites' mockery of him.
> This reminds me of the smug semi-literacy
The irony is killing me.
which calls Lamarck "that guy
>who thought giraffes's necks grew because they stretched them," while
>remaining completely ignorant of his considerable contributions to
>science. Reducing everything to monochrome just so you can provide
>black-and-white answers is not an achievement.
Neither is muddying the waters of Freedom. Anyway, I doubt if the writer of the
article was denying any contributions to the arts those 'intelligent
commentators' made.
>>>Could the arts survive without government funding? What a question! The
>>>government doesn't fund the Van Cliburn competition or the National Book
>>>Awards
>>>or the MacArthur grants. The government doesn't organize poetry slams or
>>>produce festivals of one-act plays or commission new string quartets. The
>>>government doesn't keep art galleries afloat or make the Tony Awards so
>>>popular. To adapt an old bumper sticker, arts need the NEA like a fish
>needs a
>>>bicycle."
>
>
> Does the NEA imagine the arts would die without it? Bosh.
I dunno. They act as if cutting off the funds would be the death of the First
Amendment. They whine about the future of this exhibit or that.
> If I give
>you your forty cents back will you stay home and listen to Garth Brooks?
If I HAVE to listen to Country music, I'd rather to listen to Hank Senior. But
thanks for the attempted putdown; it's good to know how I'm perceived when
trying to talk to someone.
As to the forty cents, yeah, thanks, pal. I'll take that and all the rest of
the money the federal govt. has taken from me to support its unconstitutional
activities. Wanna pay up? It adds up after a while. One dime, two dimes, three
dimes, 12 bucks, 80 bucks, half a paycheck... What other unconstitutional
govt. programs do you love that you're willing to reimburse me for?
>dmc
Just another victim of the in-house drive-by,
Josey
What has always made the state a hell on earth has
been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.
--- Friedrick Holderlin ---
kkramer
between concepts. Therefore, welcome to my killfile. I am not spending
hours educating you. I encourage you to attend night law school if at all
possible.
Kramer
George Byrd <geo...@apan.org> wrote in message
news:37f8f48d$0$2...@nntp1.ba.best.com...
> In <alt.true-crime>, Mon, 04 Oct 1999 14:54:12 GMT,
> on "Re: The real art world"
Douglas M. Case
witha...@aol.comTakeThis (Josey) wrote:
>> Sorry, but I missed the original.
>
>Sorry you did, too. You talk to me throughout this post as though I wrote the
>words.
The title made it plain you did not. I thought it was also plain I was
responding to the author's words. I apologize for any confusion.
(dmc):
>> And experts build our highways, manage our water, control our money
>>supply. What exactly is the frickin' point here? Either tear down the
>>museums, or acknowledge that there is such a thing as expertise in the
>>arts which surmounts unlettered public tastes.
>
> I think his 'frickin' point' is that if the highways built were made
>shoddily, if the water were managed badly, and the Fed were to repeat its
>performance of 1929, then the public who pays has a right to be 'frickin'
>pissed'.
No argument. But the equivalent would be that the Sensations show was
wholly without precident, that the Brooklyn Museum invented inflammatory
art. It did not. The works are entirely within the framework of
contemporary art, like it or not.
> There is a huge difference between the science (word emphasized) that goes
>into road-building and water management and the judgement that goes into
>calling a piece of art 'good'. While people who've studied art, who've become
>'experts' in art history, technique, etc., can inform on those topics, the
>question of what piece of art pleases or not, offends or not, is nothing but
>personal. Even if your 'experts in taste' got a hearty slap on the back from
>God Himself for their good aesthetic judgement, it doesn't justify their
>rallying politicians to force the 'unlettered' taxpayers to pay for it,
>especially when the poor ignorants are, by your own intimation, too vulgar to
>enjoy the show.
Well, the first point (which was not lost on me as I chose my examples)
was that science does not occupy the only chair on the stage. Would you
say that road building or land management are exempt from controversy for
being "scientific"? No. They are subject to exactly the same collision
of world views. Forty years ago science believed nuclear energy and DDT
were cure-alls. Today we recognize the world is more of a
scissors-rock-paper game.
If as a society we decide to fund the arts, then we of necessity will
fund things that someone somewhere doesn't like. It's not the duty of Art
to be superficially pleasing. Las Menias engages more than just the optic
nerves.
This is why I have said if the issue is taxpayer funding of the arts
then outrage has nothing to do with it; Damien Hirst and Edward Hopper are
equally objectionable. But if the issue is taxpayer funding of
"objectionable" art, then the proponents have the obligation to spell out,
in detail, what constitutes outrage. And having done so, they must
further defend taxpayer funding of censored art, since other taxpayers
will object to that.
>
>>>> Rarely does the arts establishment recognize the great art of
>>>> its time.
>>
>> Rarely? Rubbish. Unerringly? Of course not-that demands something of
>>aesthetics which it does not set out to do. As well say history is bunk
>>because historians make mistakes.
>
>Examples of those 'rare' occasions when the 'experts' just plain fucked up, at
>least in judging what their own successors would deem 'good', can be found
>below.
It's a propos of nothing. Anthropology did not cease to be a science
because Teilhard de Chardin was fooled by Piltdown man. Moby Dick was
panned for half a century. Shakespeare was recognized in his day, but
tumbled badly in the 19th Century. Mozart found a pauper's grave, Rossini
found the lap of luxury. And several other laps. No museum curator is
ignorant of the fact.
>>>>In 1863, the French Academy -- the NEA of that era --
>>
>>
>> Demagogy.
>
>The Academies were most often state institutions, like the NEA. They were
>snobby little cliques who, like the NEA, did everything in their power to
>disassociate themselves from 'those lowly people', in their case the mere
>'artisans'. The French Academy went so far as to not even teach painting
>because those 'unlettered' guild members painted. The only difference between
>the snobby NEA and the snobby Academies is not a fundamental one at all: their
>taste du jour.
Accusations of snobbery hardly make the NEA a state institution equal to
the Academy. It's demagogy, and it points out the imprecision of the
whole piece.
>
>Frankly, I don't care what you conclude from it because it's irrelevant to the
>real point.
Actually, that it's irrelevant to the real point was one of the things I
concluded.
> Whether the 'experts' knows their collective ass (or would know a
>decent representation of it if it were hanging on a museum wall) still doesn't
>answer the questions: why should taxpayers fund art? What compelling state
>interest is there in forcing them to do so? Where in the Constitution, aside
>from any mention of copyright laws, does it even mention art in any form?
I don't think copyright laws are in the Constitution, actually, but not
to quibble. What I'm saying is this: let us remove the anecdotal from
the argument if it is simply about public expenditures, and let us then
elevate the statute that taxpayers should not fund anything they object
to. Even if we restrict that to the arts (and there's no grounds to do so
philosophically), then we eliminate libraries, museums, and concert
halls. If that's what you wish to trumpet, trumpet that.
>
>> Well, they were right about Mahler.
>
>In your opinion.
In my one-liner, yes. It's absurd to imagine that because I consider
Sisley underrated and Seurat overrated there should be no public funding
of the arts.
>
>>But this is the worst sort of
>>bashing the past with the standards of the present.
>
>I think it's just the opposite.
Well, I can't speak for Ms Marquis, being unfamiliar with her work, but
for the piece's author, it takes no talent whatever to proclaim as great
art what everyone else proclaims as great art.
>
>>Arguments over the
>>aesthetics of photography, or film, were not simple-minded, reactionary
>>diatribes. There were vital arguments from intelligent commentators on
>>all sides. They are not rendered idiotic by the decisions of posterity.
>
>Totally irrelevant. And what matter of taste can be proved to be 'idiotic'?
Your writer identified several.
>I
>can have an opinion on what constitutes an idiotic aesthetic (and I do), but
>beauty's in the eye of the beholder, ultimately, and my opinions won't affect
>whether or not someone else's eye beholds beauty when looking at a Caravaggio
>or a Mapplethorpe or a plastic dashboard Jesus. What is 'smug' is intimating
>nothing but banality in the person who finds aesthetic pleasure in what the
>'expert' elites mock.
That's a canard. Aesthetics recognize what elevates Art from the
mundane. It does not proceed by stomping the mundane in the mud.
Snobbery is a disease of the thought process.
>What is outright criminal is anyone's forcing that same
>person to support the elites' mockery of him.
We support other's right to mock us when we support free speech. I paid
for the dumbing-down of the Enola Gay exhibit. I pay for the Statehouse
steps the Klan gathers on. I do so gladly, because I demand the same
rights.
>
>Anyway, I doubt if the writer of the
>article was denying any contributions to the arts those 'intelligent
>commentators' made.
Right. Complex truth omitted for the sake of making the simple sound
truthful.
>
>> If I give
>>you your forty cents back will you stay home and listen to Garth Brooks?
>
>If I HAVE to listen to Country music, I'd rather to listen to Hank Senior. But
>thanks for the attempted putdown; it's good to know how I'm perceived when
>trying to talk to someone.
As we began, I was replying to the author; but there's guaranteed
confusion if you're later going to claim the words as your own. And the
sainted Hank is in the Smithsonian. Funded by taxpayers.
> As to the forty cents, yeah, thanks, pal. I'll take that and all the rest of
>the money the federal govt. has taken from me to support its unconstitutional
>activities. Wanna pay up? It adds up after a while. One dime, two dimes, three
>dimes, 12 bucks, 80 bucks, half a paycheck... What other unconstitutional
>govt. programs do you love that you're willing to reimburse me for?
The flummery of the basic argument. Your objections count, no one
else's do?
dmc
------------------
The stars are all right, but there's too many of them.
-James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Josey
DMC:
>>> Sorry, but I missed the original.
JOSEY:
>>Sorry you did, too. You talk to me throughout this post >>as though I wrote
the words.
DMC:
> The title made it plain you did not. I thought it was also >plain I was
responding to the author's words. I apologize >for any confusion.
JOSEY:
S'ok. Same here.
>(dmc):
>>> And experts build our highways, manage our water, >>>control our money
supply. What exactly is the frickin' >>>point here? Either tear down the
museums, or >>>acknowledge that there is such a thing as expertise in >>>the
arts which surmounts unlettered public tastes.
>> I think his 'frickin' point' is that if the highways built were >>made
shoddily, if the water were managed badly, and >>the Fed were to repeat its
performance of 1929, then >>the public who pays has a right to be 'frickin'
pissed'.
> No argument. But the equivalent would be that the >Sensations show was
wholly without precident, that the >Brooklyn Museum invented inflammatory art.
It did not. >The works are entirely within the framework of >contemporary art,
like it or not.
If art were free from the State (and if people were, too), it wouldn't matter
politically at all whether the Brooklyn Museum did or didn't invent
inflammatory art or what framework the art fell into.
>> There is a huge difference between the science (word >>emphasized) that
goes into road-building and water >>mnagement and the judgement that goes into
calling a >>piece of art 'good'. While people who've studied art, >>who've
become 'experts' in art history, technique, etc., >>can inform on those topics,
the question of what piece >>of art pleases or not, offends or not, is nothing
but >>personal. Even if your 'experts in taste' got a hearty slap >>on the back
from God Himself for their good aesthetic >>judgement, it doesn't justify their
rallying politicians to >>force the 'unlettered' taxpayers to pay for it,
especially >>when the poor ignorants are, by your own intimation, >>too vulgar
to enjoy the show.
> Well, the first point (which was not lost on me as I chose >my examples) was
that science does not occupy the only >chair on the stage. Would you say that
road building or >land management are exempt from controversy for being
>"scientific"? No. They are subject to exactly the same >collision of world
views. Forty years ago science >believed nuclear energy and DDT were
cure-alls. Today >we recognize the world is more of a scissors-rock-paper
>game.
Which is precisely why what the Founding Fathers had in mind is a good
political deal.
> If as a society we decide to fund the arts, then we of >necessity will fund
things that someone somewhere >doesn't like.
Exactly.
> It's not the duty of Art to be superficially pleasing. Las >Menias engages
more than just the optic nerves. This is >why I have said if the issue is
taxpayer funding of the arts
>then outrage has nothing to do with it; Damien Hirst and >Edward Hopper are
equally objectionable.
Which is the same thing I say below. I agree that the 'outrage' itself has
nothing to do with the principle involved, but it's so that if being illegally
taxed sucks, then being illegally taxed and watching your money being spent on
things that outrage you doubly sucks.
> But if the issue is taxpayer funding of "objectionable" art, >then the
proponents have the obligation to spell out,
>in detail, what constitutes outrage. And having done so, >they must >further
defend taxpayer funding of censored >art, since other taxpayers will object to
that.
>>>>> Rarely does the arts establishment recognize the >>>>>great art of its
time.
>>> Rarely? Rubbish. Unerringly? Of course not-that >>>demands something of
aesthetics which it does not >>>set out to do. As well say history is bunk
because >>>historians make mistakes.
>>Examples of those 'rare' occasions when the 'experts' just plain fucked up,
at least in judging what their own successors would deem 'good', can be found
below.
> It's a propos of nothing. Anthropology did not cease to >be a science
because Teilhard de Chardin was fooled >by Piltdown man. Moby Dick was panned
for half a >century. Shakespeare was recognized in his day, but >tumbled badly
in the 19th Century. Mozart found a >pauper's grave, Rossini found the lap of
luxury. And >several other laps. No museum curator is ignorant of the >fact.
Science is based on the scientific method. Art isn't, as your examples show.
That the bones of one thing are mistaken for those of another thing can be
demonstrated; what is 'beautiful' can't. You still can't prove that Mozart's
music is aesthetically pleasing, but you can prove the ideal gas law.
Even if someday scientists can hook up a few wires, push a few buttons, and
prove that when a person who says they are being asthetically pleased by
something is showing some proof of this in an area of his brain associated with
pleasure, all this is still irrelevant to the politcal point.
>>>>>In 1863, the French Academy -- the NEA of that era --
>>> Demagogy.
>>The Academies were most often state institutions, like >>the NEA. They were
snobby little cliques who, like the >>NEA, did everything in their power to
disassociate >>themselves from 'those lowly people', in their case the >>mere
'artisans'. The French Academy went so far as to >>not even teach painting
because those 'unlettered' guild >>members painted. The only difference
between the >>snobby NEA and the snobby Academies is not a >>fundamental one at
all: their taste du jour.
> Accusations of snobbery hardly make the NEA a state >institution equal to
the Academy.
Of course not. That would be faulty logic.
> It's demagogy, and it points out the imprecision of the >whole piece.
Making real comparisons between the NEA (state funding of the arts) and the
Academies (state funding of the arts) is not demagoguery.
>>Frankly, I don't care what you conclude from it because it's irrelevant to
the real point.
> Actually, that it's irrelevant to the real point was one of >the things I
concluded.
At least we agree on something.
>> Whether the 'experts' knows their collective ass (or >>would know a decent
representation of it if it were >>hanging on a museum wall) still doesn't
answer the >>questions: why should taxpayers fund art? What >>compelling state
interest is there in forcing them to do >>so? Where in the Constitution, aside
from any mention >>of copyright laws, does it even mention art in any form?
> I don't think copyright laws are in the Constitution, >actually, but not to
quibble.
Article one, section 8.
> What I'm saying is this: let us remove the anecdotal >from the argument if
it is simply about public >expenditures, and let us then elevate the statute
that >taxpayers should not fund anything they object to. Even if >we restrict
that to the arts (and there's no grounds to do >so philosophically), then we
eliminate libraries, >museums, and concert halls. If that's what you wish to
>trumpet, trumpet that.
Don't know where that statute is located, but my point is that we live in
America and America's Constitution doesn't provide for federal funding of the
arts (or much of anything else, really).
As to museums and librarires and concert halls being 'eliminated' if the
federal government were to mind its own business and keep itself within
Constitutional limits, THAT is demagoguery at its finest.
>>> Well, they were right about Mahler.
>>In your opinion.
> In my one-liner, yes. It's absurd to imagine that because >I consider
Sisley underrated and Seurat overrated there >should be no public funding of
the arts.
What's absurd is the flippant disregard Freedom. Again, your opinion or mine
wouldn't matter politically at all if art were free from the state, which is
the real issue.
>>>But this is the worst sort of bashing the past with the >>>standards of the
present.
>>I think it's just the opposite.
> Well, I can't speak for Ms Marquis, being unfamiliar with >her work, but for
the piece's author, it takes no talent >whatever to proclaim as great art what
everyone else >proclaims as great art.
And it takes no talent to look at Manzoni's literal cans of shit and call it
art.
>>>Arguments over the aesthetics of photography, or film, >>>were not
simple-minded, reactionary diatribes. There >>>were vital arguments from
intelligent commentators on >>>all sides. They are not rendered idiotic by the
>>>decisions of posterity.
>>Totally irrelevant. And what matter of taste can be >>proved to be 'idiotic'?
> Your writer identified several.
The writer gave his opinion on several (and for the most part I agree with
him). It doesn't prove, however, that someone who likes to pay $67, 000 for a
can of the artist's shit doesn't get find some beauty in it. I find it
disgusting, myself, and think the gushings of 'art lovers' over those cans of
shit are more an expression of kinkiness or elitism than any sincere aesthetic
pleasure. Just a guess... And I imagine most Americans would agree. (which is
STILL beside the political point). If a curator wants to open up a Museum of
Artists' Shit, gallery after gallery of literal crap, fine by me. I would still
find it repulsive and say so. Freedom is cool that way. But if liberal elites
expect us idiot, clueless taxpayers to pay for those cans of shit, most
Americans will scream about it, and rightfully so.
>>I can have an opinion on what constitutes an idiotic >>aesthetic (and I do),
but beauty's in the eye of the >>beholder, ultimately, and my opinions won't
affect
>>whether or not someone else's eye beholds beauty >>when looking at a
Caravaggio or a Mapplethorpe or a >>plastic dashboard Jesus. What is 'smug' is
intimating >>nothing but banality in the person who finds aesthetic >>pleasure
in what the 'expert' elites mock.
> That's a canard. Aesthetics recognize what elevates >Art from the mundane.
It does not proceed by stomping >the mundane in the mud. Snobbery is a disease
of the >thought process.
I think there is a lot of 'art' in the mundane. A gold leaf floating on blue
water, a bead of sweat on my Dad's face. But, once more, where I find art
should be of no political consequence. And I still maintain that the disease of
the mind we're discussing is very prevalent in those people who consider
everyday people as stupid or simply 'unlettered' for not loving or wanting to
support with their money, cans of shit. It's very let-them-eat-cake
(and-buy-me-some-lobster), if you ask me.
>>What is outright criminal is anyone's forcing that same
>>person to support the elites' mockery of him.
> We support other's right to mock us when we support >free speech. I paid
for the dumbing-down of the Enola >Gay exhibit. I pay for the Statehouse steps
the Klan >gathers on. I do so gladly, because I demand the same >rights.
No speech is free if people are forced to open their wallets to pay for it.
It's the antithesis of Freedom. And having a Statehouse is part of the
legitimate function of government; running art galleries isn't.
>>Anyway, I doubt if the writer of the article was denying >>any contributions
to the arts those 'intelligent >>commentators' made.
> Right. Complex truth omitted for the sake of making the >simple sound
truthful.
I think he was just focusing on what was relevant to his points.
>>> If I give you your forty cents back will you stay home >>>and listen to
Garth Brooks?
>>If I HAVE to listen to Country music, I'd rather to listen to >>Hank Senior.
But thanks for the attempted putdown; it's >>good to know how I'm perceived
when trying to talk to >>someone.
> As we began, I was replying to the author; but there's >guaranteed confusion
if you're later going to claim the >words as your own. And the sainted Hank is
in the >Smithsonian. Funded by taxpayers.
Sorry. Didn't know you thought the Boston Globe guy read ATC. Hey, is Saint
Hank stuffed like Trigger? LOL For real, though, Saint Hank is also enshrined
in a gazillion cassettes, albums and CDs across America. And there's no law
against opening a Saint Hank museum any ole time you want (the fewer
regulations there are, the easier this will be, too).
>> As to the forty cents, yeah, thanks, pal. I'll take that and >>all the rest
of the money the federal govt. has taken from >>me to support its
unconstitutional activities. Wanna pay >>up? It adds up after a while. One
dime, two dimes, three
>>dimes, 12 bucks, 80 bucks, half a paycheck... What >>other unconstitutional
govt. programs do you love that >>you're willing to reimburse me for?
> The flummery of the basic argument. Your objections >count, no one else's
do?
The Constitution is what should count in America. My sovereignty as an American
isn't a matter of someone else's opinion and theirs isn't a matter of mine. Or
shouldn't be.
Luk
> > Saatchi is English, so tax benefits would not be a factor. He is
> > also an adman turned art dealer who has every reason to want
> > his art seen and promoted. The more he succeeds in that effort,
> > the greater the prices he will get for pieces by those same artists.
> > Luknh has no beef with Mr. Saatchi, though Luknh believes
> > Mr. Saatchi to be quite obviously in the business of catering to
> > people of demented taste.
>
> Mayor provided more than enough exposure to the artist and the Mayor
> himself.
There's always a price to be paid for standing up for one's
convictions. The price in this instance was obviously that
Saatchi got the attention he wanted. The very least
Giuliani achieved is that he brought this issue up for
debate, and I believe it was well worth it.
> Saatchi's exhibit is certainly not my taste. You are stating
> personal opinion again regarding other people's taste in art. You found the
> exhibit objectionable. So be it. Some people may like it. That does not
> necessarily mean they have "demented taste".
If you told me you liked Jenny Saville's work, I would have to
label your taste demented.
Forcing the public to contribute to work so lacking in
merit is a curious way of convincing the public it
should continue to financially support the arts.
Luk
Luk
> This will get you no where in the polls. The
> general populace (I include myself here) doesn't give a shit about the
> miniscule 98 mil devoted to the arts.
You should. There are many minuscule amounts the
government spends. They add up to a great deal of money.
Half your paycheck.
> There have to be many, many other areas the Feds are wasting
> our tax $ including the military which you seem to support. Why is this
> issue so strong with you ? Personal taste ?
I've said many times that the purpose of government is to provide
necessary services that can't be provided any other way. That
means there are many things government does that I don't like.
I also agree with Giuliani that the people of New York shouldn't
have to financially support an exhibit that not only offends its
Catholic citizens, but that degrades art itself. I love good art
and am highly offended by any pretense that the garbage now at
the Brooklyn Museum is worthy of being placed in a publicly
supported museum.
Luk
Debby
or wrong, left or right. Thank God not one of us only has the right to make those
decisions. I am upset because Gullianni wants to take away that right. I haven't
really seen the Sacchi collection. Don't forget, even wealthy collectors have
taste up their ass:) Just look at all the suckers that bought Andy Warhols piss
collection. Debby S.<sarg...@injersey.com>
Martha wrote:
> Debby wrote:
> >
> > Dear Luk: I wasn't aware that you worked:) I don't mind it comming out of my
> > paycheck. I would rather spend it on art instead of some other things like
> > open space which just goes right into the politicians pocket. Debby
> > S.<sarg...@injersey.com>
> >
> > Luk wrote:
> >
> > > Martha wrote:
> > >
> > > > I think anyone, visiting any museum in the world, could find *something*
> > > > s/he would prefer not to look at, maybe even something s/he believes *no
> > > > one* should look at (have you been to the "peephole" part of the big
> > > > Duchamp exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum? <wow>), but we tolerate
> > > > the idea that each person has his/her own "buttons," and we simply don't
> > > > look at that of which we don't approve. Just like adults.
> > >
> > > Why is it not "adult" to express objections about specifically
> > > what public money is spent on? Doesn't the money come out
> > > of our pay checks? Or is it, rather, given to us by some kind of
> > > Government-God?
> > >
> > > Luk
>
> Luknh's objection is not to the artwork itself, but to the minuscule
> amount of public funding that supports the museum showing it? Would she
> close all museums? One Labor Day I found myself in Henry Frick's old
> house (irony *is* my life), and all I could think of was the backs of
> the workers on which all those paintings and entire *rooms* were
> carried. It seems to me only fair that unique objects, such as pieces
> of original art, should not be locked away for the delectation of only
> those wealthy enough to afford to buy them--but Luknh disagrees?
>
> I'd like to know what sort of (if any) tax benefits acrue to (is it
> Charles) Saatchi for allowing this portion of his famous art collection
> to be shown? I mean, besides the obvious show-off factor (not
> inconsiderable)--what's in it for him?
>
> And does Luknh have a low opinion of the wealthy collectors who
> encourage this sort of artwork?
>
> Martha?
Luk
> > You should. There are many minuscule amounts the
> > government spends. They add up to a great deal of money.
> > Half your paycheck.
>
> of my paycheck. Perhaps I'm underpaid.
You're not underpaid, just unaware.
You pay taxes in many many ways.
> Ok, so NOW the exhibit offends the Catholic citizens ? What is your REAL
> issue here Luk ?
Of course it offends Catholics.
If you're asking whether I'm Catholic, the answer is no.
Luk