Sunday, February 28, 2010

Art’s good for you, so pony up, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer

With tiresome regularity, another artiste has spoken out in favor of increasing public funding for his profession. David Thompson demurs (H/T: Tim Blair).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against tax money being used to promote art, within reason; for example, I really like the Korean War Memorial. But it’s a bit much for artists who make careers out of insulting the middle class to whine that that same middle class should be forced to fund their output. Surely there are enough well-heeled liberal elitists out there who either despise their western cultural heritage, or put a premium on bizarreness for the sake of bizarreness (or both), to make the kind of art I’m talking about a paying proposition on a (gasp!) capitalist basis.

9 comments:

JeffS said...

Alternatively, those same "artists" who can't seem to sell their "art" without a taxpayer funded subsidy could stop whining, admit that they are NOT artists, and go get a job. ANY job. And stop sucking on the public teat.

mojo said...

I love the gasps of horror when it's suggested they find a private benefactor. I expect an outbreak of "the vapors" at any moment.

Hey, having a patron was good enough for Michelangelo and Leonardo, smart guy...

Anonymous said...

While Body Works isn't my kind of "art", I suppose that it provides more usefulness than some of the installations that have been promoted as "art. Body Works seems meld science and art. He hasn't just used donated human bodies either. There have been animals such as horses. It's far better than the so-called Gateway to No Ho (North Hollywood, CA). Talk about a waste of the taxpayers money. The poser is definitely well-connected. If you do a search of hideous I'm sure it will come up.

Deborah Leigh

Fitzroy said...

There is a real logical fallacy in the notion that subsidies will help artists speak truth to power. Subsidies permit the government to speak power to art and help to drown out any unsubsidized truth telling.

richard mcenroe said...

Aside from his terrific book, 'The Painted Word,' Tom Wolfe has an excellent essay on this topic in his collection 'Hooking Up.'

RebeccaH said...

I guess you haven't heard about "Bodies - The Exhibition" that's been touring the United States. It's the same deal, preserved cadavers with muscles and organs exposed, and it is fascinating (showed at Union Station in Cincinnati not long ago), but I hadn't heard that it was touted as "art".

That said, I don't believe art should be funded by taxpayers. If it can't stand on its own merits, or attract the willing attention of a rich patron, then it's probably crap anyway.

Paco said...

Actually, I meant this guy, and his dissected animals in formaldehyde. Although, according to his Wiki entry, he's considered to be the richest "artist" in the world, his stuff going at Sotheby's for millions of pounds, so he's probably a bad example.

SwampWoman said...

I go along with the folks that think that no art should be publicly supported but that the merits should be determined in the marketplace.

Of course, the markets at the time were not enamored with Van Gogh.

mojo said...

Which means some lucky folks got some good deals on really fine art, yes?