Posted on 12/17/2010 7:49:03 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Absolutely!
The popular arts will be driven by the market - that's what makes them "popular" - and, to be perfectly honest, what succeeds tends to validate the feeling mentioned above on the part of artists who rightfully consider their work better than schlock but are not rewarded for it. Government funding in particular is a horrible suppressor of artistic quality, a sort of Godwin's Law - politics in these days of rampant democratic socialism is, after all, popular culture by definition. Government art funding is misdirected by the ignorant and incompetent toward the superficially unusual in the futile hope that there will be a diamond in the dung; if not, the dung will be declared diamondiferous by our betters and we'll just have to pretend we believe it. We've paid for it, after all. Meanwhile the real geniuses starve or learn a trade to support their habit as they always have. I can't state with any authority that it's good or bad, but that's where great art appears to come from.
Andrew is optimistic and has some reason for it. However, can we ask if Hollywood will ever be anything but leftist (it was since the 50s with its screen writers), will the universities be anything else but bastions of modish leftist thinking and indoctrination, will the leftist inheritance from the baby boomers die with the baby boomers or will the boomers spawn new generations of followers, are secularism and atheism (two approved “religions” of the left) making new advances, winning new converts with ad campaigns?
Hard to say. Fiscal conservationism is back but will people still be liberal in their thinking and values in regard to abortion, gay marriage, stem cell, etc.? Will television change its liberalization (and vulgarization) of the public or will the pendulum start to swing the other way? In other words, will Ed Sullivan’s Topo Gigio make a comeback or will it be Team America’s sex puppetry taken to even newer levels of perversity?
Personally, I believe the left will push its views because it believes its at the forefront of culture. It conservatism can stop the left it will have to offer something the public wants.
“I’d be happy to see non-politicized arts and film.”
Truth and beauty can still be found, they’re just not as popular as they once were. The left hasn’t burned classical art and literature...yet.
Art reproductions and third world crafts are the same. Can one local artist compete? Too many people are becoming disposable and useless in this culture - bodes badly - won't hold in the long run.
Representational art is returning in popularity too.
No, I wasnt suggesting that the govt fund the arts. Nothing I have ever said or written in my entire life could ever lend itself to that interpretation. Perhaps you didnt realize how dismissive, condescending and, again, philistine your comment about having art as a hobby was. As well as clueless. Your reference to Michaelangelo was ridiculous. That was more than 500 years sgo, in an entirely different society and culture. Much of his work was sponsored by the pope.
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