[HN Gopher] Who Pays for the Arts?
___________________________________________________________________
Who Pays for the Arts?
Author : Caiero
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-10-03 01:21 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.esquire.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.esquire.com)
| hdivider wrote:
| A classical philosopher once told me that many ultra-wealthy
| people have ancient papyrus scrolls hidden away in their
| collections -- full of ancient Greek and Roman knowledge
| currently unknown to the outside world.
|
| Keep the value up by keeping it secret. Or at least keep your
| bragging rights with fellow ultra-rich apex parasites.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Wouldn't the value be a lot higher if it wasn't secret? Or is
| it the risk confiscation/opprobrium?
| geor9e wrote:
| Example of something valuable with secret contents:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Shaolin
| jessriedel wrote:
| That's importantly different, unless the existence and
| authenticity of the scrolls is public and only the contents
| are secret (which is not what I understood the commenter to
| be suggesting).
| colonelspace wrote:
| Sounds like the kind of thing children tell each other in the
| playground.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| If you're ever in Kyoto, be sure to check out the Miho Museum
| to see what one billionaire family's private collection of
| works from antiquity looks like. I don't recall any papyri,
| but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they have things
| tucked away that aren't ever on display.
|
| https://www.miho.jp/en/
| vundercind wrote:
| I dunno--quite a few things that are true about (at least
| some set of) rich people also have that kind of ring to them.
| I wouldn't be surprised.
| geor9e wrote:
| If I heard someone brag about depriving the public of
| historical documents, I'd see them as nothing more than slime.
| Even the Vatican Secret Archive is finally getting digitized
| https://digi.vatlib.it/
| Eumenes wrote:
| So nation states and colonist regimes are allowed to
| accumulate wealth/booty but a private citizen is "depriving
| the public of historical documents"?
| ghodith wrote:
| Depends on if either put theirs on display.
| shams93 wrote:
| The artists themselves do, in the era of easy creation we are all
| conceptual artists now.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I'm always torn by this.
|
| If you can't attract an audience for your art, does it deserve
| funding? How do we decide that? Can anyone just make a papier-
| mache turd and get funding for it? If not, then who decides what
| is worth funding? On what basis? How do we stop nepotism and
| elitism from being the main factors for arts funding?
|
| But should all art have commercial appeal? Do we force all
| artists to be marketers first and foremost? Are we going to get
| better art because of that?
|
| The age-old question: how do we decide what is "good"? If we
| train a bunch of experts on the entire history of art and let
| them decide, then we seem to get decisions that are based around
| those experts competing amongst themselves for intellectual
| snobbery points. But if we let the masses decide, then we get art
| that appeals to the lowest common denominator.
|
| Letting the rich folks decide isn't any better (or worse) than
| letting civil servants decide.
|
| Maybe we train an LLM to decide what deserves funding for us, and
| move one step closer to The Culture.
| jltsiren wrote:
| This is not an either-or question.
|
| Let the public decide, and you get popular art. Let the rich
| people decide, and you get whatever art the elites value. And
| also have some public funding, and you get the kind of art
| experts and some politicians value.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Let the rich decide by their own preferences. Let the public
| decide by their own preferences. Take money from the public
| and give it to politicians and bureaucrats so they can decide
| for the public. The first two make sense. The last does not.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| But there is an argument that some people are truly experts
| in art, they have studied it and made it their life's work.
| That we should allow them to make the decision for us,
| because they will be able to make better decisions. We do
| this in a lot of other areas, after all.
| HKH2 wrote:
| > We do this in a lot of other areas, after all.
|
| Other areas are not so subjective.
| leocgcd wrote:
| Amount of art knowledge isn't subjective, it's a testable
| and verifiable metric. And the idea that all subjective
| tastes should be equally valued is a relatively recent
| invention from within the last generation or so that
| isn't taken very seriously outside of entry level art
| appreciation groups.
|
| You can have whatever subjective response to art you'd
| like, but whether your response should be considered as
| serious insight and commentary into the structure,
| context, and significance of that art depends on how much
| time you've spent studying the field and honing your
| ability to read artworks.
|
| If the only music someone listens to is top 40, I don't
| think I care very much what they have to say about
| Bartok. If the only paintings someone is familiar with
| are the Mona Lisa and Van Gogh, they're not qualified to
| speak about an Imhof painting. Someone wearing Walmart
| doesn't have anything interesting to say about Demna. You
| get the idea.
|
| I think the common response to this is that it is elitist
| and exclusionary... But we are elitist and exclusionary
| in most other fields too. Nobody would listen to the
| engineering opinions of someone who can't name a
| programming language. Art is more experiential, sure, but
| not all experience or cognition that arise from
| experiences is of equal insight.
| fallingknife wrote:
| And how is that enforced for engineering? The answer is
| it actually isn't. Anybody is free to build their own
| product and sell it. And the public chooses to buy only
| products built by professional engineers because they are
| better. Why can't we do the same with art? If these
| "experts" are as good as they say they are, they should
| be able to win in the free market. We don't need the
| government to take money from the public to support them.
| leocgcd wrote:
| This is some kind of bizarre reflexive libertarian
| outburst to my comment that had little to do with the
| role of government.
|
| Firstly, lots and lots of people use government-engineer
| built apps. I pay for the products of government
| engineering contracts every time I tap my phone to enter
| the subway. Car commuters use it every time their plate
| is scanned to cross a government-built bridge. Often the
| same companies that carry out government, tax-payer
| funded contracts are also taking on contracts in the open
| market.
|
| Governments fund non-profits like art museums because
| these institutions, while existing within the free
| market, provide a public good that most agree ought to be
| as accessible as possible. To that end, the non-profit
| model allows for museums to guide themselves based on an
| ethical mission (usually having to do with providing
| accessible art and culture) rather than a profit-driven
| market strategy. They are still private, so the board has
| autonomy from government oversight, but they have tax
| structures and funding structures that position them as
| utilities rather than business ventures.
|
| Museums, like for-profit ventures, still compete for
| funding, they still compete for relevance and cultural
| capital, and they are still beholden to providing a
| service that people care about. Fantasizing about
| slashing government budgets doesn't really make sense
| here. The government is taking money from people to fund
| museums because if we all pay $100 a year to arts funding
| in our taxes, we get to go see sculptures from 2500 years
| ago in a palatial building attached to a giant park for
| free... Without group buy in, that same experience might
| be stratified to only the very wealthy.
|
| You seem to think it is politicians deciding what art
| people see. In reality, it is arts experts pitching the
| relevance of their expertise to secure funding and
| outputting culturally significant material to justify
| their existence in the same way software engineers make
| themselves appealing for government contracts.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Art preference is entirely subjective. They might be
| experts on describing and knowing about historical art,
| but they have no more lgegitimacy in their preference
| than anyone else.
| jltsiren wrote:
| What do you think about the tax deductibility of charitable
| donations then? To me, it seems to be the worst of both
| worlds. You are still using tax money to fund some
| activity, but instead of having public control with checks
| and balances, you let rich people decide how the tax money
| is used.
|
| It can be argued that tax deductions for donations make
| sense, if the government is already using money for similar
| purposes. You then get a greater effect from the tax money,
| at the expense of losing control over it. But if it's not
| the government's job to support the arts, then all
| donations to the arts should be made with after-tax money.
| bmitc wrote:
| For some reason, it feels like artists always need to somehow
| justify their existence. Meanwhile, tech gets billions of
| dollars of private and public funding. As long as what you're
| doing in tech fits within the current hype cycle and milieu,
| then no one blinks an eye.
|
| I'd much rather "throw money away" at the arts rather than
| waste more money on self-driving cars, fintech, going to Mars,
| or whatever else the Bay Area thinks will make the world a
| better place.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Artists do not need to justify their existence. They do need
| to justify their desire to obtain access to _other people 's
| money_.
|
| By all means, donate to your local artist. Tech gets all of
| this funding because it produces tangible results, tech
| provides what people ask for. Piss Christ, however ... well,
| give money to the artist if it pleases you.
|
| There's a sculpture park not too far away from me. It has
| very large metal polygons, gently rusting. It certainly fits
| my modern art criteria: is it ugly? Is it incomprehensible?
|
| And then comes the question of "What do you _get_ out of this
| particular bit of art? " The standard defense is "anything
| you like." Which sounds great until you realize that only one
| piece of art is ever required, the rest being superfluous.
| That one piece is "anything you like," which is congruent
| with any _other_ piece 's identical "anything you like." No
| need for anything else.
|
| With these sorts of things, modern art is backing itself into
| a corner. It isn't surprising that people aren't eager to
| open their wallets.
| bmitc wrote:
| > Artists do not need to justify their existence. They do
| need to justify their desire to obtain access to other
| people's money.
|
| I reiterate my comment. Scientists and engineers get
| billions of dollars of other peoples' money, both private
| and public.
|
| Regarding the rest of your comment, art is not the arts.
| The arts include theater, music, dance, etc.
| chung8123 wrote:
| Scientist and engineers also need to justify their desire
| for other people's money.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Generally the justification for that is "I'll make you
| more money, either in the short run or in the long run."
|
| Somehow, this is the only justification we can get anyone
| to agree on in the modern world. Should we educate kids?
| "Sure, as long as its STEM so they can be good
| taxpayers."
|
| Come to think of it, this is also often the justification
| for art. Should I buy this piece? "Of course, it will
| gain in value"
| achenet wrote:
| "and why do you want more money?"
|
| "because it'll make me happy"
|
| "why not just buy this lovely [painting/poem/record]
| instead, it'll directly give you joy"
| helboi4 wrote:
| fr nothing pisses me off more than people saying that
| only STEM education is valuable
| bmitc wrote:
| I would actually argue that STEM education is generally
| harmful in that it acts like it's the only thing
| important. Honestly, engineering and technology is mainly
| made difficult by engineers themselves, who have little
| influence from other fields.
| bmitc wrote:
| No one said otherwise. But let's be honest. Do they
| really currently have to justify things to such a degree
| that artists do?
|
| The National Endowment for the Arts' budget is less than
| $200 million. Here's the approximate budgets for
| scientists and engineers:
|
| * NASA: $23 billion
|
| * NSF: $10 billion
|
| * DARPA: $4.3 billion
|
| * DoD: $780 billion (a lot of which goes to defense
| contractors and laboratories)
|
| * The self-driving car industry has spent around $50
| billion. And what have we got out of that industry that
| justifies that spending?
|
| * Cryptocurrency startups are expected to get around $12
| billion in funding in 2024. What have we got out of it
| that justifies that budget?
|
| * Scientists got $5 billion dollars to smash around
| particles and play with statistics.
|
| When it comes to funding, scientists, engineers, and
| tech-related endeavors have it _extremely easy_ , and no
| one places the demands on the tech industry that they do
| on other industries.
| tempodox wrote:
| They don't think it will make the world a better place, only
| that it will make them boatloads of money. And lo and behold,
| an artist whose work holds the same promise won't have to
| justify anything.
|
| But I think that would be comparing apples with oranges. If
| we make art with the same motivations that produce tech, is
| it still art?
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> If you can 't attract an audience for your art, does it
| deserve funding? How do we decide that? Can anyone just make a
| papier-mache turd and get funding for it? If not, then who
| decides what is worth funding? On what basis? How do we stop
| nepotism and elitism from being the main factors for arts
| funding?_
|
| Paper mache turds are gauche. Real artists produce works that
| are extensions of themselves, capturing the very essence of
| their being. The texture should be genuine and the scent
| unmistakably original, challenging conventional aesthetics.
| True art requires a visceral connection formed through a
| process of personal evacuation. It's about creating something
| so authentic viewers can practically taste the artist's
| commitment.
| defrost wrote:
| If it's not visceral, it ain't art: _Kiss My Art_
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBWTcAAtMj4
| gruez wrote:
| I can't tell whether this is serious or satire.
| orwin wrote:
| It's a joke about 'mierda de artista' I think.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I see what you did there.
| slillibri wrote:
| ceci n'est pas une turd
| HKH2 wrote:
| > Letting the rich folks decide isn't any better (or worse)
| than letting civil servants decide.
|
| A lot of the best art in history has been done because of rich
| people's money and influence. No doubt the 'urinals are art'
| crowd would disagree with that though.
| defrost wrote:
| They're largely in 100% agreement, eg: https://www.theguardia
| n.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2...
|
| wouldn't have happened without rich people's money and
| influence.
| janalsncm wrote:
| If you're referring to Fountain, it was more of a statement
| about the art world than something with intrinsic value that
| requires funding to preserve imo. Those kinds of things can
| be done with duct tape and a banana.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| The same argument holds for lots of things: e.g. most pre-
| enlightenment scientific progress was made by priests
| (because they had an education and were able to spend time
| thinking about stuff). This is no longer true because we live
| in more enlightened times.
|
| Just because rich people used to be the only source of arts
| funding doesn't make them the best source of arts funding.
| a-french-anon wrote:
| That's true, but I posit that today's richs aren't the same
| as before. I'll even go further and claim that culturally
| speaking, the middle class doesn't exist anymore; at least in
| Western Europe.
|
| They may have more money, but they're statistically the same
| Spotify/YouTube/TV slop addicted zombies as the class under
| them, perhaps with just a little less sportsball and more
| vapid traveling to "discover ze world and culture and stuff
| <3".
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| In much of the history of the world "rich people" have been
| in fact controllers in one form or another of the public's
| purse strings; nobility, royalty, religious leaders have been
| most of the world's rich people, merchants and industrialists
| are rather new entries into that class.
|
| In other words most of the grand artistic works people point
| to as being funded by "rich people" were funded by public
| wealth controlled by those "rich people".
| Juliate wrote:
| "Best" art in history is a relic of past powerful people's
| taste and ambitions. And of the preservation of it (still
| today, there are fools that willingly destroy/erase remnants
| of art or culture).
|
| The difference is that today, civil servants/"democratic"
| structures/the "free" "market", through intent or fate, are
| also some of the powerful ones.
|
| The point would be to find a structure of power that allows
| each and every one to express themselves fruitfully for/to
| the whole.
| salomonk_mur wrote:
| Thankfully there are 8 billion people on the planet, each with
| different art tastes, and hence a different definition of what
| is good art.
|
| So all of your versions are ok and coexist. There is a market
| for your turd, for people-art and for you elite-driven art and
| for many others.
|
| In other words... No, if you can't attract and audience, there
| is no funding. But there is an audience for many things.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. But that does mean that the primary skill of a
| good artist is finding that audience... y'know, marketing. Is
| that what we want?
| achenet wrote:
| this may be an overly optimistic take, but I'd argue that
| much like with software (indeed, we can consider software
| to be art, especially if we look at video games), the
| really good stuff tends to need very little marketing
| because it resonates with very many people in a powerful
| way, and those people it resonates with tend to share it
| with others. For example - Doom. I don't think during those
| days the primary skill of id software was "marketing". They
| made a really good game, and it kinda sold itself.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Doom and the shareware model are interesting examples in
| this context, especially given that Doom is now open
| source.
| Swizec wrote:
| > If you can't attract an audience for your art, does it
| deserve funding? How do we decide that? Can anyone just make a
| papier-mache turd and get funding for it? If not, then who
| decides what is worth funding? On what basis? How do we stop
| nepotism and elitism from being the main factors for arts
| funding?
|
| Slovenia has I think a pretty good solution to this: If you are
| registered as an independent artist, don't have a full-time
| job, and fulfill some reasonable criteria for being active (art
| exhibitions per year, poems published, etc), then the
| government pays you minimum wage. You are welcome and
| encouraged to freelance (or make royalties) for more.
|
| It's basically UBI for the arts.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| That's a great answer. Is it working? Is Slovenia producing
| more/better art as a result?
| jl6 wrote:
| Is it? If you are referring to the Slovenian status of "self
| employed in culture", it appears to be a way of getting
| social security contributions paid by the government - not a
| wage. It requires "exceptional cultural contribution".
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| "Letting the rich folks decide isn't any better (or worse) than
| letting civil servants decide."
|
| Except that civil servants are making those choices with money
| they took forcibly from people that don't have a
| real/significant say in the matter of the taking or what the
| takings are spent on. In kind it makes it much worse than any
| decision made by "rich folks". Sure some may agree with those
| bureaucratic choices, but others are simply giving their cash
| for no return in value.
| analog31 wrote:
| Sounds like what you're describing is a government funded by
| taxes, except using scary sounding verbiage.
| chowells wrote:
| It's only taken by force from misanthropes. The average
| person understands that collective action is a positive, and
| participates without the threat of force.
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| You can't really believe this. If taxes were optional,
| people would not pay. How much do you really believe people
| gift the government?
|
| https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-
| government.h...
| jampekka wrote:
| At least for now people haven't at large elected
| politicians who would eliminate taxes.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| If you rob Peter to pay Paul. You get Paul's vote.
| jampekka wrote:
| What is robbery is defined in law, and by law taxation is
| not robbery.
| ghodith wrote:
| Probably the least convincing argument you could put
| forward
| cvoss wrote:
| Consider that lots of people regularly and voluntarily
| give a certain percentage of their income to their
| religious institution, without any kind of enforcement
| structure. There is a belief that such practices are
| good, right, and required. And it must be a strong
| belief, because people do love their money.
|
| Second, taxes are not a gift or donation, nor is the
| government just taking them from you. They are payment
| for services. It's true that you are locked into a
| business transaction with the government, but it's meant
| to be a fair exchange. And unless you are incredibly
| wealthy, you have a favorable rate in the sense that the
| services you receive are worth more than what you're
| paying for.
| chii wrote:
| > without any kind of enforcement structure.
|
| it's peer pressure. Just because the force isn't voilence
| doesn't mean there isnt a reinforcement structure.
|
| > They are payment for services.
|
| so back to the art grants - are they services the
| citizens really want?
| int_19h wrote:
| As someone living in US, a significant part of my taxes
| is used to bomb some people overseas for no good reason
| that I can think of. The value of that "service" for me
| is effectively negative (it makes another 9/11 that much
| more likely).
| skyyler wrote:
| People like roads and parks, actually.
| vundercind wrote:
| Of course nobody would pay, because then the government
| would be exposed to the free rider problem just as badly
| as every organization that's not a government is. That's
| not a sign that people don't want to pay taxes if
| _everyone_ is also (having to) pay taxes. It's a
| coordination problem.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| If that were true no one would ever round up to save
| puppies at the grocery store. Yet people do. They throw
| money in the tithe at church and into the musicians
| instrument case and into the panhandlers cup. Not
| everyone does of course but enough people do where these
| things happen every day.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Ah yes, I am truly misanthropic for questioning my 60% tax
| burden mainly to the benefit of parasitic bureaucrats.
| janalsncm wrote:
| That is a fair point. Maybe taxpayers shouldn't be
| subsidizing sports stadiums either, instead of cities
| forcibly imposing culture on us. Of course, public funding
| has an added benefit of being generally accessible to
| everyone unlike private funding.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > Except that civil servants are making those choices with
| money they took forcibly from people that don't have a
| real/significant say in the matter of the taking or what the
| takings are spent on.
|
| Do you have an alternative idea we could easily disabuse you
| of?
| jampekka wrote:
| Those civil servants execute laws that are, at least ideally,
| democratically decided upon. In contrast to private
| concentrations of wealth making arbitrary decisions.
|
| And many of those laws are forcibly denying people from
| access to something when it is declared "private property".
| s_m_t wrote:
| The civil service is legally protected from the influence
| of democracy and the legislature has by and large ceded the
| real implementation of law to the civil servants
| themselves.
| oersted wrote:
| That's plainly not true, at least in EU public education,
| which I am most familiar with. Most official rules and
| protocols for professionals in public universities and
| schools are part of the law and not arbitrary decisions
| from a manager. These laws are chosen democratically and
| are revised relatively often, with major overhauls every
| ~5 years, for better or worse.
|
| These institutions are also constantly dependent on
| grants and budgets that need to be approved by the
| elected government.
|
| The lack of flexibility can be a bit oppressive at times,
| and there can be severe penalties for ignoring rules,
| even on small protocol lapses, since they are the law.
| But it's mostly fine in practice, it's not a significant
| bottleneck to efficiency.
|
| The result is that public education is generally much
| higher quality than private education. Private ones just
| tend to be for students with grades that are not high
| enough to get in a competitive public programme, not that
| they are very competitive, there's plenty of room. The
| qualifications required from professors also tend to be
| much higher in public education than in private, and they
| get more room to breathe to focus on their specialized
| courses and research, whereas private professors are
| overworked and used in areas they are not qualified in.
|
| And the difference between the top and bottom educational
| institutions is so negligible that top-performing
| students can happily stay local and be successful.
| Perhaps there is a difference in the network you might
| acquire, but not in the quality of education.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| In Belgium art grants are basically determined by
| committees of peers organized by largely politically
| independent bureaucrats at the many different levels of
| government we have.
|
| It's all navel gazing, entrenched interests and nepotism.
| Effectively the art sector is given tax money to
| perpetuate their own interests with limited democratic
| control.
| oersted wrote:
| Yes indeed, I was directly answering the parent comment,
| but the post is about "Who pays for the arts?" so you
| have a good point, I've read your other comments as well.
|
| Generally subsidising art properly seems like such a
| fundamentally hard problem. I think a good policy would
| be to balance how much is given to popular art, fringe
| art and academic art, and have very different criteria to
| judge their merit.
|
| I think they all have value, and I cannot see a better
| way of making decisions about "academic" art unless it is
| by their peers, however elitist that is. This can be
| counterbalanced by promoting some popular art, which is
| judged against its, well, broad popularity, a bit more
| democratic, but that has plenty of perverse incentives
| too. And what about "fringe" art? The truly innovative
| stuff. There is really no way to judge the merit of that
| by contemporaries, so perhaps we should prioritize
| helping people that can prove their commitment to an
| artsy lifestyle and have consistent output, whatever it
| is, as long it is not too derivative.
|
| But think about what actually democratic art subsidising
| would be, having elected officials only in charge of it:
| effectively propaganda for the party that is currently in
| power.
|
| There is a similar problem with funding science, which I
| believe is much more dangerous and has an enormous
| impact. You either have peer committees judging
| scientific merit by whatever criteria they feel is valid
| with no accountability, or you focus on performance
| metrics (citations, papers in reputable journals...), or
| again you have unqualified elected officials making
| rather arbitrary decisions based on public perception.
| They are all kind of terrible, it's such a hard problem.
| I guess the solution, again, is counter-balancing the
| terribleness of each option against the others, which is
| kind of what we are doing now. And it is terrible, but it
| kind of consistently works, quite inefficiently. But
| relative to what? Is there something better?
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| A free market of voluntary transactions solves this
| problem
| oersted wrote:
| Sure partially, that is working well too, but there are
| many things in arts and sciences that have long-term
| societal value and don't perform well in markets.
|
| That's the whole reason why subsidies are a thing, and
| they are extremely effective for all kinds of common
| good. Indeed, that's the whole point of governments
| generally, to enforce the common good that falls through
| the cracks of market dynamics (and well, to ensure a fair
| market in the first place).
| ajkjk wrote:
| ideally the economy is nice and efficient and is optimized so
| that everybody can afford to live a decent life while having
| plenty of money to spare, which they can spend however they
| want, and which they will in practice spend on lots of arts and
| culture.
|
| Instead we have an economy that is ruthless about costing as
| much as everybody can afford, and a culture that when there's
| more resources wants more and bigger stuff, leaving little
| surplus for culture, which often has to be funded with ads and
| grift because it is counterintuitive to fund it directly.
|
| at least we've still got government-backed culture like arts
| councils and grants ... without that we'd be even more
| desperate.
|
| but if you want a lot more art, make food, rent, education, and
| healthcare affordable, so that people have time and resources
| left over and don't feel the financial anxiety of capitalism
| breathing down their neck.
| jl6 wrote:
| A great of deal of history's greatest works of art have been
| produced by artists in dire personal circumstances.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I guess a corollary to your question would be at what point
| should we let old forms of art die? New forms of art are being
| constantly created, and if we gave each form equal funding, art
| funding would increase forever. Since it must remain constant
| (or decrease) some forms must lose funding. Perhaps they will
| even go extinct as a result.
| ohthehugemanate wrote:
| Living in a country where the civil servants decide the vast
| majority of art support (Germany), it's not great. It's just an
| incentive to please grant readers, rather than an audience.
| It's just as banal. The difference is that an audience is more
| likely to know and care about the art form, content, and
| context. A grant reader rewards what sounds like a good idea on
| paper.
|
| This is how we get productions like the planet-of-the-apes-
| meets-star-wars Rigoletto, which played to empty seats at one
| of the biggest theaters in Germany for years because it was so
| effective at getting grant money.
|
| Ideally you need both. Attracting and holding an audience is an
| artistic value, and should be a driver for support. Convincing
| a neutral outsider with no context is also a useful measure,
| for art that may not be commercially appealing. Even Nepotism
| and elitism select for certain dimensions of artistic quality.
|
| Going all in on one system or another is a recipe for cultural
| death. It's been clear since the ancient Greeks that there is
| no single definition of "quality", least of all in the arts. A
| plurality of support mechanisms is needed.
| alphazard wrote:
| > how do we decide what is "good"?
|
| _We_ don 't. Individuals do.
|
| Attempts to arrive at an objective notion of good are always
| motivated by a desire to extract rents from the group. Got 'em
| with the ole "greater good" trick.
| sktrdie wrote:
| I'd trust way more that group of experts to make a decision for
| me.
|
| Otherwise we'd get Walmarts all over the place
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Things get easier to grasp when you drop the idea that all
| human action must be profitable. In fact we can and should
| subsidize things that are not profitable but are beneficial
| either on the individual or collective level. No one is getting
| rich off of these subsidies for art, but the subsidy might mean
| they can now devote some of their day to organic thought rather
| than the capitalist rat race we find ourselves in. Maybe on
| aggregate this will lower population stress levels and lead to
| improved population health outcomes.
| 23B1 wrote:
| People in this thread will spend more time deciding if they agree
| or disagree with various aspects of this article, fret over some
| nonsense about the 'economics' of art, or paint with broad
| brushes a world they do not understand... instead of doing what
| they really ought, which is to close the
| spreadsheet/terminal/pitch deck and...
|
| SEE
|
| ART
|
| Loving art is extremely sexy, sophisticated, fun, complex,
| challenging, and indulgent. It also breaks you out of a rut,
| gives you totally bonkers 'out there' fresh ideas, helps you be
| less of a self-centered human.
|
| Anyone can do it.
|
| The more interested and involved you are in up-and-coming artists
| -people who are struggling to make it in that world - the better.
| You can go to a gallery show once a week, or buy every art book
| you can get your hand on, or dedicate your next vacation to
| visiting a world class museum.
|
| You can find this world aligned with your tastes - maybe you like
| abstract expressionism, maybe you like bronze sculptures of
| cowboys, maybe you like slutty polaroids. There are niches nested
| in niches, one you'll be comfortable in and ones you won't be,
| (which is even better, to be uncomfortable).
|
| BTW you can start this journey on the internet but it cannot be
| fully realized from the comfort of a screen. You will have to go
| outside, be near other humans, smell the glue and the wine and
| the turpentine of real art; what better excuse is there? Oh and
| one more thing, since this is HN: stupid AI art isn't art at all,
| for the reasons above and more.
|
| SEE
|
| ART
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| Going to a gallery and smelling glue and wine and turpentine is
| a fine thing to do but it's not like it is The Worthwhile Thing
| To Do. Reading magazine articles and thinking about them is a
| fine thing to do sometimes too.
| 23B1 wrote:
| How pedantic. Obviously it's not the smelling, it's the
| experiencing and the socializing and the development of
| taste, immersed in the qualia of meatspace.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I don't think loving art is easy at all. I still haven't
| completely learnt how to do it
| 23B1 wrote:
| Even better.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I often work with artists. From musicians, to stage and
| theater, illustrators and animators, dancers, choreographers,
| sculptors, craftsmen, and more. I work with galleries and
| museums and on occasion collaborate to build exhibits, but
| most of what I do is with people.
|
| I describe what characterizes an artist as someone who
| pursues virtuosity of the fundamentals. You can't show up
| when you want and slack your way off into it. No one will
| work with you. Often, artists are driven to work harder to
| compensate for stereotypes, because no one sees the work or
| effort it takes to create the possibility to do art. It's why
| I think average people should be asked to perform at the
| Olympics alongside the athletes- our perception is relative,
| otherwise parents wouldn't get into fights over little league
| games.
|
| Loving art can start with finding resonance with people who
| do art, with the things they do or produce, or with the tools
| of art. The more you practice it, the more you will be able
| to appreciate the challenges and rewards of it. Seeing people
| light up in anticipation to see what comes out of the kiln,
| the way their hair stands on end when they hear the roar and
| feel the blast of heat during an iron pour, or discussing a
| hilariously bad stage reading with the cast makes you feel
| connected to humanity in a way that looking at oil paintings
| in a sterile gallery without an art history background and a
| vested interest in museum studies just can't.
|
| People that have a derisively low opinion of artists are
| often uncomfortable with being vulnerable. Sometimes, they're
| too empathetic, and the thought of being up on stage, under
| the pressure to perform, being a perpetual object of
| criticism or ridicule is too much for them. They'd rather
| imagine flighty, spoiled slackers than have to feel through
| the burdens of familiar uncertainty and failure. Because
| following every "Anyone could do that" is the unspoken
| "...but I didn't."
| vundercind wrote:
| I reckon learning how to love art is a lot of what I'm doing
| when I'm engaging with art. Maybe loving the feeling of
| learning to love art... _is_ loving art? It does seem to be
| the case that people who can't at least _tolerate_ , if not
| enjoy, that process, very much do not love art.
|
| Possibly I'm doing it wrong, though.
| aniviacat wrote:
| > what they really ought, which is to close the
| spreadsheet/terminal/pitch deck and... SEE ART
|
| I ought'nt.
|
| People really tend to overvalue "art" (whatever that may be).
| 23B1 wrote:
| small minds do, certainly
| lynx23 wrote:
| > SEE > Anyone can do it.
|
| I am blind. Should I feel offended, or was that an
| unintentionally exclusionary statement?
| 23B1 wrote:
| heh.jpg
| lynx23 wrote:
| Judging from your dismissive reply, I assume it was an
| intentionally exclusionary statement from a person taken
| prisoner by their visual cortex.
| ocular-rockular wrote:
| Giving the benefit of the doubt, art can be enjoyed in many
| forms, not just visual... It's definitely a choice of words
| though. That said, I do agree with the sentiment that people
| should "experience" art. But yeah, they did sound dismissive
| in the reply...
| julianeon wrote:
| I'm reading a book called Culture Crash, which is relevant here.
| I also read Sinykin's Big Fiction a while back, so you could say
| I've been reading abou the culture industry.
|
| Culture Crash makes this interesting point: Did you know there
| used to be widely read, culturally relevant, AND Nobel Prize
| worthy (like actual contenders to win), poets? Unimaginable now
| but true in living memory. They didn't even have to be attached
| to a University, financially speaking. Like your male or female
| co-worker might hear that such an such a poet was coming out with
| a new book, and buy it, and then for a few weeks the cultural
| conversation would be dominated by this - a book of poetry. Which
| people 50 years from now would be reading in lit classes.
|
| The general point of these books (summarizing a lot here) is that
| the cultural infrastructure has been falling away for decades
| now, and there isn't much left. At this point literature has been
| "captured" by the University, but it's for a good reason: you
| can't survive as a fiction writer without it. People complain
| "but they're so insular" but the truth is: they don't have an
| alternative. You can work at a University or you can not be a
| full-time writer: that's your choice.
|
| This is true of other industries too. Music: you used to be able
| to support yourself as a studio musician. You might also be the
| guy who was the resident expert on classical music for the
| neighborhood at the store, who would recommend operas conducted
| by Karajan and the best recordings from Deutsche Grammophone (I
| remember those guys). Art: you could paint signs or design
| posters, back when there was a real demand. Writing: you could
| write for the alternative weeklies (I'd read those) or be a
| regular journalist, writing as little as one story a day. Movies:
| you could be a video clerk (I also remember this). And those
| 'subcultures' were incubators. Quentin Tarantino graduated from
| the video store in a sense. Who can follow him, if there are no
| video stores anymore?
|
| So this crisis in nonprofit funding really is coming at the end
| of a much longer crisis in the arts in general. It should be seen
| in that context.
| chongli wrote:
| What do you mean by cultural infrastructure? I think I agree
| with the general thrust of the argument but I'm fuzzy on the
| particulars.
|
| For example, the video rental store has been replaced by a
| multitude of sources: Netflix et al, torrent sites, YouTube,
| Twitch. It's never been easier to make a film and distribute it
| to a lot of people, yet I can't deny a sense of loss from the
| demise of the video store. What is the difference here?
| nimithryn wrote:
| My hypothesis: Lack of geographically local experts.
|
| We've merged more and more into a megasociety. In a
| geographically distributed society, the power law for quality
| is more forgiving. You can be the best local band and make a
| living.
|
| Now that we have ultra-efficient communications, there's less
| room for "mid-tier" art. Local art gets outcompeted by
| whatever the top stuff is among a much greater national or
| international population.
|
| Because of this, there's also less of a breeding ground for
| maturing artists, or for experimental styles in isolated
| areas (think California surf rock, or NYC Salsa, etc).
| There's no place to go if you're not the best.
| noduerme wrote:
| In one way that's true: An artist has to appeal to a global
| audience. A global audience _does_ have a taste for local
| weirdness, but there 's a lot less economic basis for
| locally weird things to spawn and germinate when every
| video goes online instantly. On the other hand, local weird
| shit blows up all the time on the internet into cross-
| cultural global phenomena. So it's not that it stopped
| existing, just that the economic model has changed.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > more and more into a megasociety.
|
| My dim view is that it's just a rapacious monopolistic
| society. Why are there only three (four-ish) cell phone
| carriers in the US? Why are there only two app stores?
| Three (four-ish) major music platforms? The internet should
| have brought a diversity of choice that has failed to
| materialize because enforcement of monopoly laws in this
| space has been nascent and aggressively fought against.
|
| > Local art gets outcompeted by whatever the top stuff is
| among a much greater national or international population.
|
| It's the lack of access to infrastructure. Look at
| ticketmaster. You have to be this giant internationally
| recognized act to be able to afford the grift they're going
| to apply against you and your fans. The mid teir acts just
| can't access this space without financially or legally
| ruining themselves.
|
| It's similar to the labor market. Monopolies _do_ make for
| more efficient consumer experiences. They completely
| _destroy_ the labor market to do this. Gains don't come
| from nowhere. It's no different for communications. Why are
| there only 6 major consumer ISPs? And look at who we let
| own some of them.
|
| > there's also less of a breeding ground for maturing
| artists
|
| I don't think that's true. There are cities where the venue
| spaces have been bought out and there are few places where
| these artists could draw a paying audience. It's not true
| everywhere though, and in those places, local artistry
| still thrives, but they run into the next problem...
|
| > There's no place to go if you're not the best.
|
| I think back to the 70s to 90s period of music. It was
| _incredibly rare_ that a new artist had a "good first
| album." It was usually barely tolerable, but you could see
| the kernel of something, something worth _investing_ in.
| Bruce Springsteen famously didn't make "good music" until
| his third album. Like anything else it takes time,
| experience, a little assistance, and long tours all across
| everywhere to build up the fan base.
|
| Once the pipeline of Talent Agencies -> Production
| Companies -> Studio Companies -> Venue Ticketing got built
| you didn't need to do any of that anymore. You could
| literally grab 5 guys from a mall and _force_ them to be a
| hit in a few months. Being "the best" simply wasn't a
| factor anymore, they monopolized everything, why would they
| bother? Managing "the best" artists is a legal and
| marketing nightmare. Scumming up pretty girls and boys from
| malls and locking them down in embarrassing contracts is so
| much easier.
|
| Anyways there are viable talent pipelines that still exist,
| but they need real investors, which they can only get if we
| break up the monopolies that prevent them from functioning
| somewhat properly, as they used to.
| vundercind wrote:
| > enforcement of monopoly laws in this space has been
| nascent and aggressively fought against.
|
| Monopoly laws in _every_ space, since the '70s. Chicago
| School judges in the mid and late '70s changed the
| criteria for the government to pursue antitrust
| enforcement, so now it's damn near impossible. The
| results were predictable.
| nimithryn wrote:
| > My dim view is that it's just a rapacious monopolistic
| society. Why are there only three (four-ish) cell phone
| carriers in the US? Why are there only two app stores?
| Three (four-ish) major music platforms? The internet
| should have brought a diversity of choice that has failed
| to materialize because enforcement of monopoly laws in
| this space has been nascent and aggressively fought
| against.
|
| I think some of this aggregation is due to economies of
| scale, though.
|
| > You could literally grab 5 guys from the mall and
| __force__ them to be a hit in a few months.
|
| This is sort of a corollary to my hypothesis. Since we
| have a megasociety, everyone has access to music from
| everywhere, but limited time. There's _too much_ music
| being produced. So we now have a signaling game
| (advertising and marketing) to determine who people
| listen to. Signaling games will naturally be dominated by
| capital.
|
| In terms of breeding grounds for local music, where are
| you thinking? Nashville?
| akira2501 wrote:
| > to determine who people listen to.
|
| You've ignored the fact that discovery is now a new
| service component that really didn't exist before. We can
| tag music and artists and we can automatically discover
| related music and artists very easily. All the major
| services do this. Think of an expanded and federated (all
| the way back to the artist) open source version of this.
|
| There's no reason to think that the previous model
| somehow produced the most efficient way of "determining
| who people listen to." It was almost certainly
| suboptimal. It's no surprise then that this suboptimal
| model was more or less copied onto the internet and all
| new players bought out so no new model could be revealed.
|
| The lack of available artistry and market for it extends
| through multiple levels, and in this case, right into the
| software stack that _should_ exist for artists to self
| publish and for listeners to automatically discover.
| wwweston wrote:
| Definitely an important factor. Industrial scale can wipe
| out diversity and with it subtlety, which in cultural terms
| means impoverishing artistic vocabulary and range.
| ryanchants wrote:
| There was also something about scarcity driving exploration.
| You'd go to the video store for a certain movie, it wouldn't
| be available, so you'd grab something else. Now when you hear
| "X is on netflix" you go there and there are infinite copies,
| so you're never forced to explore. The only time it really
| happens is when your streaming service of choice doesn't have
| the specific thing you're looking for.
|
| I remember the same thing happening in music stores. You'd go
| to buy a tape/CD and it wouldn't be in stock, but you'd be
| primed to buy one, so you just start browsing until you found
| something that looked interesting enough to buy.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| The video store provides all the advantages of a physical
| place. Bookstores were probably more of a popular hangout
| spot than video stores, at least for me, but record stores
| were great for meeting like-minded people with deep knowledge
| of music. Video stores were at least similar in that the
| staff were often pretty happy to talk shop with you. My best
| friend from college worked at a Blockbuster and somewhat
| amazingly met the singer Pink there and got us invited to a
| party. That's the kind of thing that could almost be the plot
| of a movie and it can't happen browsing Netflix.
| noduerme wrote:
| I don't think the bohemians you alluded to were so much funded
| by nonprofits, as by the public at large. 50 years ago we had
| Bob Dylan as the poet laureate, more or less, of his
| generation. Today we've got Taylor Swift. Both got big record
| contracts. No knock against her, but if you want to talk about
| cultural decay, I think it's more of a demand-side problem. The
| market will elevate artists who the public are willing to pay
| for. Yes, a publisher or a producer can "make a market" for
| something, but Francis Ford Coppola can put $100M of his own
| money into an art piece and, evidently, no one currently will
| pay to see it.
|
| The idea that nonprofits should prop up art has always been
| wrong, in a way. Artists since the Italian Renaissance have
| produced most of their greatest / most famous works for wealthy
| patrons, not because governments paid them to do it. (Unless
| you count the Vatican as a government).
|
| What I'm trying to say is that all art arises from pop culture,
| and pop culture can engender the height of artistic excellence,
| if the culture itself has good taste and demands quality. Or,
| pop culture can be a pit of garbage if the culture has
| degraded. This is what is meant about the transition from
| "Ideal" Hellenistic art to art which embodied "Pathos" around
| the 4th Century BC.
|
| We have transitioned in the past 50 years from a culture which
| strives for the ideal, to one which worships pathos. That may
| be the mark of a civilization in decline (based on a relatively
| limited number of historical examples). But the "fix" isn't
| more public funding for art that no one looks at or listens to.
| All great art arose from popular desire for it; you can't force
| it on a population, or keep it alive if there's no audience.
| gizajob wrote:
| Yes but at the same time the music industry exists as a
| capitalistic machine that forms public taste and interest
| through sheer force of marketing - it's easier to have one
| mega artist like Taylor performing one huge show in every
| city to capture all of the disposable income for music in one
| go, rather than have lots of competing artists and dilution
| and effort to create a range of cultural product. Competition
| is a sin remember? The music industry understands this
| nowadays. "The public wants what the public gets" in the
| words of Paul Weller / The Jam. There isn't a free market of
| music and ideas. The market is closed and offers only a small
| number of products, and everyone else has to stand outside of
| the market giving out their art for free.
| achenet wrote:
| The internet exists.
|
| For a while I had a website where I put my music, with a
| Stripe button for donations.
|
| Now, I didn't make as much money as T.Swift, but I chalk
| that up my music being not quite as polished (still working
| on getting access to a multi-million dollar recording
| studio with a $10,000 microphone and $500,000 mixing
| console staffed by a team of world-class music producers,
| sound engineers and hit makers like her), not because some
| capitalist mega-machine is keeping me down.
|
| I guess I'm more of a believer in the 1,000 true fans [0]
| mindset.
|
| [0] https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
|
| PS: oh, and I dig the Jam reference. I'll be Going
| Underground if you need me ;)
| gizajob wrote:
| How many true fans do you have?
| fragmede wrote:
| If you think a $10,000 microphone and a $500,000 mixing
| console and a team of people to.man them is what's
| standing between you and Taylor Swift level polish, I'd
| argue that is _is_ the capitalist mega-machine keeping
| you down. If it weren 't for capitalism, you'd have
| access to those things and be able to give your music
| that kind of polish.
|
| Of course, in this day and age, access to quality gear
| and talent doesn't that quite that much money. Garage
| band isn't just the name of the recording software, but
| also a statement on how accessible technology has made
| being a musical artist.
| lancebeet wrote:
| Is this really a "degradation" in popular taste, or is it a
| change in the demographics that dominate the demand side?
| While there's apparently been some studies on the
| demographics of Swifties, it's much more difficult to produce
| the same for Bob Dylan 50 years ago. My impression though is
| that the initial core demographics (driving the fame) of Bob
| Dylan's music were young adults of both sexes, while the
| initial demographics of Taylor Swift's music were teenagers,
| overwhelmingly female. The demographics have different
| interests, with the interests preferred by Dylan's
| demographics being considered deeper and more intellectual by
| the cultural zeitgeist. It makes sense that target
| demographics of popular music would have been older back in
| the day, since buying records required some sort of record
| player, which was a significant investment. Today, there's
| practically no investment to listen to music via a streaming
| service.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I think you're right. I'd add that it's sound to invest in
| a younger demographic when there are more young people,
| more customers, who are more impressionable, for a longer
| term return. With companies trying to get the most from
| their investment, I'd expect this strategy to drive the
| market towards less complex, and less interesting media.
| filoleg wrote:
| Mostly agreed, but imo Taylor Swift's music trajectory is
| kinda similar to Beatles.
|
| Swift's fanbase has been mostly teenage girls, who now grew
| up, and now her concerts are filled with women in their 20s
| and 30s, as well as plenty of guys (though still a
| minority).
|
| Beatle's fanbase at the time of their rise to fame? Also
| predominantly teenage girls. Take a look at the photos from
| any of their concerts in the prime age. And then there are
| those infamous photos with crowds (that were almost
| entirely teenage girls) pretty much hysterically crying in
| the audience upon seeing their idols.
|
| The more things change, the more they stay the same. It is
| probably a controversial take, but if anything, I would
| consider Taylor Swift's core audience these days being way
| less "culty" and less homogeneous than that of the early
| Beatles (despite, indeed, being one of the most "culty"
| fanbases of the present times). And I am saying this as
| someone who is as far from a Swift fan as one can be. I
| only know a few of her top songs, and they are pretty
| catchy/fun, but I simply don't have much interest in it
| overall. Can't deny that she is doing a great job all
| around though.
|
| Calling it now: a few decades down the road, Taylor Swift
| will exist in the cultural zeitgeist in a similar way to
| how Beatles are revered many decades after their breakup in
| the present times (assuming she stays on her current
| trajectory).
| wwweston wrote:
| Upvoted for being one of the best comments in the discussion
| I've read so far -- I'm sure there's something relevant going
| on that's similar enough to a transition from some sort of
| ideal to pathos.
|
| But the part about nonprofits is possibly orthogonal to the
| issue and may even be wrong in the opposing direction. _Why_
| would pathos overtake everything? Honestly it 's what I'd
| expect to happen in the wake of two simple developments:
|
| 1) most media engagement moves from text, which _requires_
| the engagement of the mind, to video /audio, which can run on
| a much higher volume of feels/vibes alone. I don't think it's
| a coincidence that we had a print culture up through a half
| century ago when there _were_ popular poets (Dylan Thomas,
| Charles Bukowski, maybe even WH Auden) and now we get to your
| comment which, representative of the times, will subtly shift
| to popular performing songwriters as if they 're the same
| thing.
|
| Like one of Patrick Rothfuss' characters said: "Remember
| this, son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a
| musician who can't sing. Words have to find a man's mind
| before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are
| woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no
| matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who
| listens."
|
| 2) And that means when the market becomes _the_ dominant
| social mediator, what finds its way through culture? What
| _sells_. What sells most broadly? What touches people 's
| hearts. What touches people's hearts? Vibes/feels, or
| _pathos_ , as you say. And then we do stupid things with our
| markets like Spotify that magnify the problem by eroding
| marginal success, bifurcating into go-pathos-big or go home
| as the option.
|
| Your own comment is a great illustrator of just how much
| market-as-mediator is readily thought of as _the_ way to
| understand the issue. Do we want other ideals? Then we need
| other cultural institutions that explore, circulate, and
| foster values /ideals beyond the market. And at least some of
| them would necessarily be non-profits. And while they'd need
| to go beyond subsidizing pre-popular work (including perhaps
| some never popular) and into various forms of popular
| education, subsidy would be part of what they'd do. There
| can't be an audience for something that is never produced.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> 50 years ago we had Bob Dylan as the poet laureate, more
| or less, of his generation. Today we've got Taylor Swift.
|
| 50 years ago the top selling single was "The Way We Were" by
| Barbra Streisand and the top selling album was a Carpenters
| singles collection.
| sotix wrote:
| Based on the comment's reference to Bob Dylan, I imagine
| they were more discussing the 60s, so it would be helpful
| to see what were the top selling things 60 years ago in
| 1964.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| The best selling album of 1964 was the soundtrack to the
| musical "Hello, Dolly!". The best selling single was "I
| Want to Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles. Dylan at least
| made it to the top album charts (as he did in 1974 and in
| every decade since) but not the top 100 singles chart.
| Barbara Streisand beat him out in 1964 too with "People"
| at #11.
|
| There's a ton of great music on the top 100 singles chart
| from '64 ("I Get Around by the Beach Boys, "Where Did Our
| Love Go" and "Baby Love" by the Supremes, "Twist and
| Shout" by the Beatles, "The Girl from Ipanema" by Getz
| and Gilberto, "Little Honda" by the Hondells, "Leader of
| the Pack" by the Shangri-Las, "You Really Got Me" by the
| Kinks, "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen, most importantly
| and influentially "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen), but
| not much poet laureate material. I guess the closest
| would be "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals, there
| was a book written on the history of that song.
|
| Most of the best popular music is repetitive, loud,
| stupid and obnoxious (see, for example, "Surfin' Bird").
| Poet laureate type popular music is hard to pull off. Tom
| Waits did it, he would have gotten my nomination for
| United States Poet Laureate in the '80s and '90s. Taylor
| Swift sold more records with "1989" than Tom Waits has
| done in his entire career (14,000,000 for Swift's "1989",
| 4,000,000 for Tom Waits career to date).
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >You can work at a University or you can not be a full-time
| writer: that's your choice.
|
| If you work at a University are you really a full-time writer
| though, you do have classes to teach.
|
| At any rate there is one other choice, which would be crime. If
| you're a good enough criminal you can spend little effort in
| your trade and still have plenty of time for reading and
| writing. And if you're caught and do time you can devote that
| time to literature. Crime also gives you a more interesting
| subject to write about than University life - it was good
| enough for Verlaine and Rimbaud.
|
| This is of course half facetious, as you have to be somewhat
| determined to take that course, and probably also have some
| other problems.
|
| Or there could be an UBI.
| achenet wrote:
| when I was like 21 I read a piece of advice by Anna Wintour
| to aspiring couturiers - get a day job.
|
| I have a day job as a programmer, it's pretty chill, lets me
| make music. And write code for more "artsy" stuff in my spare
| time, which I mentally liken to Renaissance painters painting
| portraits for money.
|
| I'm considering going back to school for a maths PhD at some
| point, that would also be a pretty nice day job.
|
| relevant Derek Sivers post: https://sive.rs/balance
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Interesting. I have insight on this one:
|
| > you used to be able to support yourself as a studio musician.
|
| That is still true and I am not sure if it's any less true,
| than it ever was.
|
| For one, a lot of musicians are playing more instruments (I
| suspect because instrument prices have fallen) so there's less
| need for a dedicated musician.
|
| Also experimentation has gotten a lot cheaper: You can do a lot
| of recording at home. When you don't need to rent a studio at
| high rates, you don't need someone who can deliver in an hour.
|
| Then, of course, there's the digitalization of music: You have
| virtual instruments and you have sample libraries at your
| disposal. Somebody makes and uses those - but usually not the
| studio musician.
|
| What it comes down to is that more musicians can support
| themselves off of making music than ever before. This part is
| not a crises in the arts, not in general, or at all, but a
| shift in how the arts are created, where and who exactly a
| "studio musician" is today.
| ykonstant wrote:
| One day I will write the longest rant about "the academization
| of the arts"; today is not that day, but boy when it comes I
| will make lots and lots of enemies. It's a fight I am looking
| forward to, because I am passionate about the fine arts and I
| have some serious beef with the people that led to the current
| state of affairs.
| thecupisblue wrote:
| Can't wait to read that, I'll gladly take up arms on your
| side.
|
| The "academies" are mostly incubator for future bureaucrats,
| professors and bullshitters. I've seen so much talented
| artists get their spirits broken when they entered the world
| of Academics, where your art is less important than "He was a
| student of Mr. Z who was an apprentice of Mr. X which was a
| semi-relevant local artist".
|
| I've worked with "digital art" teachers (famous academies)
| who didn't understand video formats, image formats,
| compression or had any taste in discerning what's good and
| what's bad.
|
| I've been to art fairs where the most discussed thing is
| "price per square meter of a painting" instead of the actual
| emotional value itself. Fairs where most sought after items
| were "abstract spray of paint #3" style things by Academics
| who have lost all inspiration and are hard to differentiate
| between strip-mall furniture store 4.99$ paintings.
|
| Complaining to these people gets you - "oh but you don't
| understand art". Complaining to actually talented artists
| gets you the same visceral disgust I feel when seeing that
| shit.
|
| Burn the academies, free the art.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >and then for a few weeks the cultural conversation would be
| dominated by this - a book of poetry. Which people 50 years
| from now would be reading in lit classes.
|
| I'm too young to remember this for poetry, but it certainly was
| true for music, TV shows, and movies for long after it was true
| for poetry. People are still talking about The Beatles, Led
| Zeppelin, various highly-successful movies from the 60s-00s
| (Lord of the Rings for instance), TV shows like Game of
| Thrones, etc. However, I'd say it's less true today, but TV for
| instance seems to have lot of this still going on with people
| talking about various high-caliber shows like The Expense,
| Silo, etc. I think poetry simply went the way of theater: other
| art forms surpassed it in popularity, though it still has its
| niche audience: New York's Broadway is still quite popular. And
| people spend lots of money on music concerts.
| tzs wrote:
| Time is a great filter.
|
| Was music in the '60s and '70s better than music today?
| Probably not.
|
| If you were able to time travel back to then and listen at
| some random time to a radio tuned to a pop station you'd hear
| a lot of OK songs, a smaller number of good songs and bad
| songs, and a few great songs. Just like if you listened to
| some stream of a wide selection of recent music.
|
| Is music from the '60s and '70s that you are likely to hear
| today better than most recent music? Probably.
|
| Listen to an oldies stream and it likely is to just include
| those songs from then that were great or good, and it will be
| drawing from several years.
|
| Same thing happens with TV. Old sitcoms like "Frasier" are as
| good as the best being produced today. Same with even older
| shows like "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "I Love Lucy". But
| there were a heck of a lot of other sitcoms from the same
| times that are almost forgotten.
|
| With sitcoms the old sitcoms we might still see are probably
| more likely to be great than the old music we still hear
| today, because old sitcoms have an additional filter to get
| past. You'll probably only see them today if they had enough
| episodes to be worth syndication.
|
| They typically show one episode a day and they want to be
| able to go several months before wrapping around. Even with
| having more episodes per year back then than we typically
| have now (~32 then, ~24 now) the show would have to last at
| least 3 years to get enough episodes for syndication. Many a
| show that was great or near great and would have become great
| in season 2 or 3 has been killed by its network for reasons
| having nothing to do with the quality of the show.
|
| (I no longer watch anything on Fox other than sports and
| reality shows because of that. After "Firefly", "Futurama",
| "Terra Nova", and "Lucifer" I learned my lesson. I don't care
| how great people say a Fox show is now, I will either wait
| until Fox cancels it and watch it on streaming if people tell
| me that it got a proper series finale, or I might consider
| watching entire seasons before that but only if those seasons
| ended at points that would be good stopping points. "Terra
| Nova" and "Lucifer" ended on huge cliff hangers).
| the_gipsy wrote:
| That's a very naive and nostalgic retelling of history. Artists
| have always been very dependant on money, and art has been a
| very hard to access pursuit. I'd say the opposite is true: it
| is now more accessible than ever.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Like your male or female co-worker might hear that such an
| such a poet was coming out with a new book, and buy it, and
| then for a few weeks the cultural conversation would be
| dominated by this - a book of poetry. Which people 50 years
| from now would be reading in lit classes.
|
| I do still occasionally read books based on word of mouth,
| they're just not "high" culture.
|
| E.g., Dungeon Crawler Carl, or the Murderbot series.
|
| I guess that puts me in the same camp as the commoners who were
| supposedly one of Shakespeare's target audiences.
| houseplant wrote:
| art is subjective, you need to really think about it, and
| reflect on it, to engage with it and enjoy it at its greatest
| depths. For some, this exercise is part of the joy of art. It's
| like discovering new things, every time. Discovering and
| considering things in subjective art is almost addictive, and
| it's very fulfilling.
|
| but that's a lot of mental energy. Intellectual laziness would
| prefer things be black and white, correct or incorrect, good or
| bad, and then once things are sorted into one of those
| binaries, lean back and stop thinking about it because it's now
| sorted. Once everyone's decided that the Rothko paintings are
| just big blocks of a single colour, they're easy to make and
| boring to look at, then there's no further thought needed.
|
| I feel like generative AI art is kindof a culmination of this:
| the idea of artists and creative people deserving to live and
| be supported simply by the things they contribute to society in
| the form of art and humanities, because it isn't hard labour or
| a trade, is laughable to the point of genuine hostile
| animosity. It's hard to even describe it until you've
| experienced it. Seeing people get angry at artists or writers
| or creators and thinking them being paid for the art they
| create is unfair: they produce it like a cow makes milk, so why
| the hell should they be paid for what they'd be making anyway?
| And if an artist labours to create their art it's more valuable
| and "better" than someone who piles candy in a corner and
| writes a story about it resembling how their gay partner was
| slowly diminished by AIDS. Anyone can do that!
|
| I wish I knew how better to instill appreciation of art and
| artists in people. Seeing AI generated picture enthusiasts
| laugh and jeer openly at the artists whose pieces comprised its
| dataset in the first place as useless and that they're going to
| starve now has left a bitter taste in my mouth.
| eszed wrote:
| I think you and share all of the same premises about art, and
| I'd love to get a drink and have a conversation... But:
| Please don't use Rothko as a negative example! Have you seen
| any Rothko pieces in person? They are by no means solid
| blocks of color (though some do look it in reproduction), and
| they grab my attention immediately. Like, they dominate any
| room they're in, and pull me back towards them over and over
| again. It's hard to articulate, but there's something both
| stimulating and _restful_ about his canvases. Especially
| after walking through a gallery, or a city, where my visual
| senses can get overloaded, standing in front of a Rothko is
| like an immensely welcome psychic reset. I used to walk
| across the bridge to the Tate Modern specifically to go stand
| in the Rothko room for a while.
|
| I realize that's all subjective taste, but I'm hardly the
| only person who reacts to him that way. You're right that
| lots of people assumed the secret was "hey, it's just large
| blocks of color", but none of his imitators produce anything
| like his effect on me. There's something else going on with
| his work.
| badpun wrote:
| There was never a possibility of making a living of poetry. In
| order to survive as an author, you need to make a bestseller
| list at least once (preferably, multiple times). Barring some
| rare exceptions, I don't think any book of poetry was ever best
| selling. In Eastern Europe, that was the lure of Communism for
| very many poets - the Communism government guaranteed them
| cushy upper-class lifestyle, in exchange for doing what they
| love, i.e. writing poetry (as long as it didn't criticize the
| system of course and, at least once in a while, writing on a
| theme decided by Ministry of Culture). Whereas they remembered
| how, under capitalism, they all needed jobs and poetry was just
| a hobby. That was true 100 years ago and is still true today.
| tzs wrote:
| > There was never a possibility of making a living of poetry.
|
| Yes there was, but it got killed by outsourcing [1].
|
| [1] http://www.watleyreview.com/2003/111103-2.html
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There are plenty of full-time writers outside of universities.
| Most of them are self-published genre writers. There's a solid
| core of six figure writers, and a smaller but non-trivial
| number of seven figure writers. They don't get awards, they
| don't teach (usually), but they earn a decent living.
|
| What's happened over the last century or so is a huge shift
| towards the middle of the bell curve. Culture used to be gate-
| kept and handed down, which meant a much smaller number of
| talents could be become household names, with an income to
| match. Generally there was a concept of quality based on
| exceptional creative imagination and craft. That rubbed off
| onto genre work, so it was still an influence there.
|
| Now it's become corporatised, so the only metric is income,
| which pushes everything away from risk and novelty towards
| lowest common denominator satisfaction for middle-of-the-bell-
| curve readers. Currently that means trope-heavy checkbox
| romance with plenty of explicit sex for women, and militaristic
| scifi for the relatively few men who still read, with a bit of
| overlap for formulaic thrillers and police procedurals.
|
| This is possible in fiction, where the market for sexy romance
| seems insatiable.
|
| But there are similar things happening in music and visual art.
| The audience for those is much smaller, and the barriers to
| entry much lower, so there's a perfect storm of mediocre people
| trying to sell their work on social media to a shrinking
| audience in a global free-for-all, while the scene is being
| eaten alive by generative AI. And a tiny, tiny number of global
| mega-artists get most of the attention, income, and marketing
| budgets.
|
| The only subcultures are online, so they're much more diffuse
| and lack the lynchpin gatekeepers and networkers who curated
| and promoted the most interesting work.
|
| Throwing funding at the arts is a band aid for this. It's a
| structural issue caused by a forced shift in values away from
| shared community towards compulsive individual hustle as a
| value in itself.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Poetry sucks. short form video is a new form of art that is
| popular. I feel like so many of these takes confuse "things
| have changed since i was young" and "art is dead"
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I think you made a good point with "short form video is a new
| form of art", but it's diluted by the "poetry sucks". Your
| very first words are doing what you accuse others of - not
| understanding specific media.
| snapcaster wrote:
| What i meant was to show that this person seems to think
| poetry going away is bad in some objective sense as opposed
| to just something they liked. Both are totally arbitrary
| opinions and have nothing to do with death of art or
| anything like that
| ilamont wrote:
| _the cultural infrastructure has been falling away for decades
| now_
|
| In many areas of the arts, the infrastructure you speak of was
| controlled by oligopolies: local broadcasters with allotted
| bandwidth, record distributors who only worked with certain
| labels, an insular book industry that favored certain types of
| literature and nonfiction and poetry, magazines which promoted
| a "cultural conversation" but overwhelmingly favored artists
| who happened to live in or near New York, Los Angeles, London,
| Paris, and Tokyo.
|
| Some great art came out of that environment, but there was a
| lot of garbage that made its way past the gatekeepers because
| of broken incentives, bias, and outright bribery.
|
| Few artists made a living solely from their art. Almost
| everyone had a day job - Phillip Glass driving a taxi, Cormac
| McCarthy doing odd jobs, Gene Wolfe editing Plant Engineering
| magazine. And those are the ones who eventually hit escape
| velocity.
|
| The interesting stuff was happening at the margins - the
| alternative weeklies you mentioned, the independent presses,
| the music scenes in second and third tier cities, the artists
| in remote locales driven to do what they needed to do and
| hopefully could connect with audiences, albeit small ones.
| lynx23 wrote:
| All I can think of while and after reading this article:
| Socializing Risk. Why exactly should I, as a citizen, pay for
| random art pieces indirectly through taxes? I already do, but I
| question the practice. To simply answer the headlines question:
| "Who Pays for the Arts?" How about the consumers pay for what
| they want to consume?
| keiferski wrote:
| I didn't see any mention of how the actual "rich people" have
| changed from a hundred years ago to today. The industrialists of
| yesteryear tended to care about what high society valued and
| subsequently funded cultural projects. Carnegie Hall (essentially
| the top destination for classical musicians) or the Carnegie
| Library system are prime examples.
|
| Compare that to today, where many of the newly rich are from tech
| or finance. They don't seem to care at all about supporting
| culture or the arts, instead focusing on politics, medicine, or
| their own pet causes.
|
| This has to be a major factor, and also explains why Bezos Hall
| or Gates University of the Arts seem like completely implausible
| things to exist today.
| silvestrov wrote:
| I think it is not the rich people that has changed but the
| artists.
|
| Suppose the reason that rich people bought art in the old days
| was mostly to gain respect and status from other people (and
| personal pleasure secondly).
|
| Art like a Vermeer painting is good at that: everybody can see
| it is a good painting and many people would want such a
| painting in their home.
|
| But modern art (including architecture) is often only
| understandable in narrow artist circles and not by people at
| large. Most people look at modern art and wonders if this is a
| piece of art or some junk that needs to be thrown out.
|
| So modern art fails at making the population give the rich
| person higher social status.
|
| Example: A rich guy in Denmark built a new opera house (https:/
| /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Copenhag...) to
| replace the old one (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/com
| mons/1/18/Royal_Da...). I think the attempt at improving status
| failed with the new building.
|
| This interpretation is the style of Clayton Christensen: The
| Theory of Jobs To Be Done https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/clay-
| christensen-the-theory-of-jo...
|
| So it might be that the rich people has concluded that
| currently is is not possible to create "public works of art"
| that would increase the rich peoples social standing.
| keiferski wrote:
| Well, a few things:
|
| 1. The term here should be contemporary art, not modern art.
| Modern art refers to art from roughly 1890-1960. Typically
| people that don't know much about contemporary art and claim
| it's all stupid make this basic mistake, which highlights
| their ignorance of the subject.
|
| 2. The contemporary art market is absolutely driven and
| perhaps even survives because of rich people. So much so that
| artworks have become financial instruments.
|
| The difference, which is what my comment was trying to get
| at, is that the ultra rich, society-defining wealth tends to
| come from the tech world and generally has little interest in
| arts or culture. For example the entire contemporary art
| market is only about 65 billion, which is orders of magnitude
| lower than tech. https://www.ubs.com/global/en/our-
| firm/art/collecting/art-ma...
|
| 3. Even then, this is only "art" and not "the arts" as a
| whole. So I don't think it's very comprehensive of an answer.
|
| One related conclusion I came to awhile ago, and wrote a
| short post on, is that it's very difficult to invest in
| "public art" vs. "private art." I wrote more about it here:
|
| https://onthearts.com/p/modern-culture-is-too-escapist-part
|
| But the most relevant part for this discussion is this:
|
| _Today, if a wealthy benefactor wanted to emulate a
| Renaissance patron and fund an architect or artist to create
| a new town square or city park, it's unclear how he or she
| would even go about doing so. There don't appear to be any
| financial instruments specifically designed for rewarding
| investors that fund integrated artworks. The design of the
| public space would almost certainly be watered down and
| subject to various governmental councils and community
| groups. Hostile attitudes toward the wealthy would probably
| result in the park being vandalized, if it were actually
| built.
|
| Consequently, it is much easier and more creatively rewarding
| to instead spend a few million on a rare painting or backing
| a film project. Put simply, there are very little incentives
| for the wealthy to fund integrated arts._
|
| Even then, though, this is already a subset of the potential
| wealthy founders of art, a subset that largely excludes most
| of the tech billionaires that don't care about art culture at
| all.
| skrbjc wrote:
| I don't think you have been to a university recently,
| considering it seems like literally everything has some donor's
| name attached to it - including the actual professors
| themselves. This is an actual professor's title: "Kleiner
| Perkins, Mayfield, Sequoia Capital Professor in the School of
| Engineering and Professor, by courtesy, of Electrical
| Engineering"
|
| Also Stanford literally has a building named after Bill Gates:
| https://www.cs.stanford.edu/about/gates-computer-science-bui...
| keiferski wrote:
| None of those things has anything to do with art. They are
| all engineering schools.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| In Belgium, it is relatively easy to get "artist-statute" which
| is a subsidized higher monthly welfare income (Basic Income for
| artists). Belgium runs on the "subsidize-and-conquer" paradigm,
| the tax burden is one of the highest in the world. The government
| keeps lower class happy with welfare, the upperclass with culture
| and mainly business subsidies. The productive middleclass is
| effectively squeezed.
|
| The art sector here is mostly publicly funded. This too has
| advantages for our gov: no artists will criticize the subsidizer
| of their lifestyle, so no real anti-authoritarian culture takes
| hold. Don't bite the hand that feeds.
|
| You'd think Belgium would have some impressive world-class
| artists, since so many can work unbothered by the oppressive
| forces of market trends. Not surprisingly, mediocrity,
| irrelevance and low-output are the norm.
| Yeul wrote:
| The problem with the arts is that nobody really gives a shit.
| The vast majority of the population doesn't visit the opera or
| is interested in modern art. Despite a century of government
| funding the needle hasn't shifted.
|
| The first thing any artist should realize is that they live in
| a bubble. You're not going to change the world. As for market
| forces: our beloved Rembrandt did commission work he had a very
| expensive lifestyle to fund.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Just make art people actually want to pay for like furry art.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| A company already has a world leadership on that. Look into
| Nutaku.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I do this. http://egypt.urnash.com
|
| Commissions and Patreon subscribers welcome.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> vast majority of the population doesn't visit the opera or
| is interested in modern art.
|
| Never in history has this been any different. "High" art has
| always been the domain of a narrow few and, frankly, those
| few want it to remain that way. But that isnt all art. Movies
| are art. Modern music is art. The vast majority of the
| population consumes an immense amount of art, i'd argue more
| than any time in history. It just isnt the high art of
| galleries and opera houses.
| posterman wrote:
| the person you are replying to claims an artist wont
| "change the world". you couldn't ask for a more "hacker-
| brained" take on culture. what, sitting around on our
| computers building dinky little apps does more than movies,
| film and music?
| lubujackson wrote:
| To this day I maintain Obama wouldn't have been electable
| if not for the black president on "24" getting middle
| America used to the idea.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Also Morgan Freeman.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > you couldn't ask for a more "hacker-brained" take on
| culture. what, sitting around on our computers building
| dinky little apps does more than movies, film and music?
|
| Uhhh, yes? Can you imagine a global pandemic of 2020s
| magnitude happening in, say '94? Would the world at large
| have fared as well as we did without the "dinky little
| apps" like click-to-get-food and click-to-stock-
| warehouses and click-to-develop-rna-vaccines and click-
| to-work-remotely and click-to-talk-to-family and click-
| to-watch-anything and click-to-stay-sane? Are you
| seriously arguing that art is doing more for the world at
| large than the IT industry? Come on...
| leocgcd wrote:
| >Are you seriously arguing that art is doing more for the
| world at large than the IT industry? Come on...
|
| Yes? Art has been made for at least 17,000 years, it is a
| fundamental expression of human consciousness. This is
| like asking if symbolic thinking or language is more
| important than IT. Yes. Obviously. The sum of all IT work
| is a blip compared to the sum total of human expression
| across our species's existence.
|
| You're right, if IT hadn't been present during the last
| pandemic, we would have been much worse off. But even if
| we had apocalyptic human collapse and reverted to a pre-
| historic hunter-gatherer existence with primitive
| technologies... people would still be making art.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| You are not arguing what you quoted, then. You list
| things that I agree with - art is important, and it's
| intertwined with our development. It is, like our LLM
| buddies would say, crucial on the tapestry of history
| delving. Or something.
|
| But that is not an argument for art doing more for the
| world, right now, than the IT industry. In fact, it is
| the latter that takes art and makes it accessible on a
| scale that was impossible decades ago. Accessible to the
| masses, understandable to anyone, and so on. Literature
| is art. And we now have every piece of human literature
| at our fingertips. And not just us, I mean almost any
| human being, including the poorest of the poor. You
| should look at the impact technology is having in the
| less fortunate parts of the world - from health care, to
| supplies delivery, clean water, education, access to
| information, and so on.
|
| It's one thing to consider art important. It's another to
| put it ahead in "world impact" than technology.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Virtually every invention in tech was first inspired by
| art. Does anyone seriously believe that the people who
| brought us cellphones were not first hardcore Trekkers?
| nine_k wrote:
| In 19-century Italy, opera was about as popular as pop music
| today.
|
| As an artist, you _certainly_ can change (some of) the world
| if you do art which people care about. If you do refined
| academic portraits, or [adjectives expunged] postmodern art,
| only a bubble is going to care. If you do art like, say,
| Banksy, a lot more is going to care. If you sing in classical
| opera, only a narrow (but usually wealthy) circle of opera
| goers will care. If you sing like Taylor Swift or like
| Whitney Houston (who had a powerful, opera-worthy voice), you
| may have a much wider effect.
| jhbadger wrote:
| And from the 1920s to the 1960s, jazz was pop music. It
| isn't seen quite as highbrow or obscure as opera, but at
| least in the US, you are far more likely to hear jazz (and
| opera) on public radio and not commercial stations. It's
| the standard cycle of popular entertainment from popular
| entertainment to "art". Charles Dickens wasn't writing
| "great literature" in his age, he was writing popular
| literature akin to someone like John Grisham today.
| antupis wrote:
| We kind of see same shift happening in real-time with The
| Beatles at the moment
| lubujackson wrote:
| Even worse, Charles Dickens mostly wrote serialized
| novels that were published weekly in a newspaper.
|
| The closest modern equivalent is a weekly comic book (or
| manga) that gets turned into a graphic novel after its
| run.
| nine_k wrote:
| Speaking of modern terms, I suppose the Iliad's "books"
| would be named "episodes", and the Odyssey would be "the
| next season".
| vundercind wrote:
| It was even a whole literary universe, full of
| intertwining storylines and crossing-over characters!
|
| We've lost most of it, but there were _tons_ of works
| connected to the Iliad. It's just the _last year_ of a
| _ten year_ war. The instigation of the war, events in
| gathering the allies on both sides, the voyage of the
| Greeks to Ilium, and other battles and skirmishes are
| alluded to, but not directly covered in Homer's story.
| Then there's the return of the heroes _other than_
| Odysseus! We have some of this in surviving tragedies,
| but know only titles and maybe topics for a whole bunch
| more.
|
| Then you've got all the national myths that connect to
| it. The Aeneid, the Round Table and broader "Matter of
| Britain", et c.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > It was even a whole literary universe, full of
| intertwining storylines and crossing-over characters!
|
| This is of course true of mythology more generally, not
| just the Trojan War literary cycle. Mythology was the
| "fictional universe(s)" of its day, that most cultured
| people would've been familiar with.
| dsclough wrote:
| Wasn't crime and punishment published periodically in a
| magazine or something like it? What does this have to do
| with the quality?
| TeaBrain wrote:
| The suggestion that serialized/installment novels are
| similar to your analogy, or a reflection of their
| quality, is a misconception. Serialized novels were often
| completed before being released in installments, unlike a
| so-called comic run. It was often simply an alternative
| method of publishing.
|
| Other examples of serialized novels include The Count of
| Monte Cristo, Madame Bovary, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Tolstoy's
| Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov,
| Joyce's Ulysses, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and
| Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. A Farewell to Arms, for
| example, was completed entirely before it was serialized
| in Scribner's. In the heyday of the Atlantic and
| Scribner's magazines, many of the best American writers
| would first publish their novels in installments prior to
| releasing as a single volume. It was considered a mark of
| success to publish in installments in one of the vaunted
| literary magazines.
| kbelder wrote:
| Why did you interpret being compared to a comic or manga
| as an insult to their quality?
| TeaBrain wrote:
| In short, that wasn't my meaning. My line about the
| quality was in response to the first line of the comment
| I replied to, where it was said "Even worse, Charles
| Dickens mostly wrote serialized novels", which makes it
| seem as if that commenter thought serialized novels were
| considered of poorer quality than the alternative of
| publishing in a single volume. My remark about not being
| similar to a comic run is separate, and is due to how
| installment novels were not necessarily continual works
| in progress like a comic.
| dmonitor wrote:
| We should bring back this format. Just like Netflix's
| "dump all at once" strategy stifles the pop impact of
| their series, I think you could get more interest in
| literature by adopting a chapter-by-chapter release
| cycle. You would need to jumpstart it with some big name
| authors to draw interest, but I could see it taking off
| as a format once the ball starts rolling.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > In 19-century Italy, opera was about as popular as pop
| music today.
|
| Is this true? It was very popular with the people whose
| accounts mostly make up primary documents from that period.
| But they were a tiny minority of the population in absolute
| terms. The population was still primarily rural-
| agricultural, did that allow access to opera for most
| people?
|
| There are several extant folk music traditions with
| continuity to 19th century italy, it seems much more likely
| to me that most people's music exposure would have been to
| locally produced folk styles than opera.
| nine_k wrote:
| Consider the fact that, say, at the time when Verdi was
| rabidly popular, late 19th century, there was no iTunes,
| no TV, no CDs, cassettes, or vinyl records, and no music
| radio. Live performances ruled supreme, among all
| classes. It's true that opera was a higher-brow
| entertainment than going to dances, but still a ton of
| people atteneded opera houses, it was normal, even for
| not rich. Very certainly not a tiny minority; it was a
| bit like movies prior to TV.
|
| Speaking of Verdi, he postponed rehearsals of the famous
| "Donna e mobile" aria until the day before premiere, to
| keep it a secret, because he predicted (correctly) that
| it was going to be an instant hit. On release, it
| basically became a pop song, performed all over the place
| (recording did not exist, remember). This may give an
| idea what a hit could look / sound like at the time. BTW
| it has most features of a modern hit song: a clear
| rhythm, a simple but catchy and recognizable melody,
| somehow playful words about the nature of romantic
| relationships.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah I've considered all that but still you were making a
| concrete historical claim about a specific time and place
| and I was wondering if it's true. I still am.
|
| Of course live music was how people accessed music, and
| generally for this time in most parts of europe we have a
| strongly attested art music tradition enjoyed by the
| aristocratic minority and a separate, vastly more popular
| yet barely attested folk music tradition associated with
| the lower class rural majority.
|
| The elite wrote about the things that interested them,
| and their writings make up the vast majority of primary
| documents from the era. We have to be careful not to
| accidentally consume their biases along with their
| information.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Consider the fact that, say, at the time when Verdi was
| rabidly popular, late 19th century, there was no iTunes,
| no TV, no CDs, cassettes, or vinyl records, and no music
| radio.
|
| Notably though, there was sheet music as a mass-market
| form of music, so we can tell what was popular - and
| "opera tunes" definitely made the list, together with
| theme-and-variations sets based on opera tunes, medleys
| of opera tunes, parodies based on the tunes, arrangements
| for countless instruments etc.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > If you sing in classical opera, only a narrow (but
| usually wealthy) circle of opera goers will care. If you
| sing like Taylor Swift or like Whitney Houston (who had a
| powerful, opera-worthy voice), you may have a much wider
| effect.
|
| Isn't that mostly just a change in technology? Taylor Swift
| and Whitney Houston have to sing into microphones that
| amplify their voice electrically, whereas opera singers
| obviously don't; they just sing the way public singing was
| done for much of recorded history. To some extent, the
| point of opera and classical music (which also features
| unamplified instruments) is a kind of historical
| reenactment; of keeping performance practices alive that
| have a very long history of their own.
| welferkj wrote:
| >The problem with the arts is that nobody really gives a
| shit.
|
| It'a almost as if divorcing the artist class from having to
| care about public opinion was a bad idea.
|
| If you want this to change, the solution is painfully
| obvious. End the subsidies, force them back on the open
| market. Remove open disdain for the audience as an option.
| scandox wrote:
| Open disdain for audience is rarely in the mind of the
| artist and often in the mind of someone that doesn't like
| what they created and for some reason interprets this as an
| attack.
|
| Many artists have a small audience in mind and that is
| quite reasonable.
| EarthBlues wrote:
| I'm no expert, but iconoclasm is a pretty common trope in
| western music, and it tends to come with some amount of
| disdain for audiences.
|
| Mid-career, Duke Ellington chafed under the racist and
| unadventurous expectations of his audiences, and charted
| a new musical path, making music that was primarily aimed
| at pleasing other musicians. Many of these compositions
| are now jazz standards.
|
| In modern classical music, 20th Century figures like
| Boulez, and even earlier composers like Wagner thought
| their audiences were hopelessly sentimental and
| complacent, and worked intentionally to disturb them. A
| great many of the household names in modern classical
| music meet this description, and they certainly set the
| direction of classical music to follow.
|
| Now to my point: I think some of these artists made good,
| enduring art. But if we look at the media in which they
| worked -- Jazz and Classical music -- these forms are, I
| regret to say, completely culturally irrelevant. They're
| dead media; the only interaction that classical music has
| with the culture at large is through movies and video
| games, and jazz is publicly perceived as a novelty genre
| at this point. It's hard not to see some truth in the
| above post's sense that the net result of these artists'
| influence was a kind of wish granted by the monkey's paw.
| They set out to destroy the idols of their day and
| succeeded, and the long run outcome was essentially
| suicidal.
|
| I wonder if we need to re-examine the trope of the
| iconoclast, in hopes of finding new artistic pathways
| that are capable of expressing new ideas and asking new
| questions without destroying the traditions that give
| rise to them.
| fullshark wrote:
| Open disdain for the classes lower than the audience's is
| the entire point of art appreciation.
| vixen99 wrote:
| 'Open disdain'? 'Entire point'? Wow, you learn something
| everyday!
| anthonypasq wrote:
| using the market as a benchmark for whether art is worth
| pursuing is absolutely hilarious. this is your brain on
| capitalism folks
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| why bother thinking for yourself what art is enjoyable or
| not when you can let The Invisible Hand do it for you?
| EarthBlues wrote:
| That's one way to interpret the post. Another is that
| there used to be substantial permeability between high
| and low culture, and now there isn't. I don't think it's
| far-fetched to suggest that least part of this divide
| originated in a misguided retreat on the part of high
| culture from the hoi-polloi.
| mikojan wrote:
| What you are referring to is not intended for mass
| consumption. If it were you would be watching a popular music
| video instead.
|
| That does not mean however that it has no effect on popular
| culture.
|
| Popular music scenes transition seamlessly into avant-garde
| music circles where I live and I would assume in most
| metropolitan areas. And youth culture has always been
| experimenting of course.
|
| If you only looked at the most prestigious outlets of modern
| art you may well be missing the connection just like you
| might miss it if you looked only at the dirtiest punk venues.
| But that does not mean that it is not there.
|
| More boldly: Lana Del Ray would have probably not happened
| without Musique Concrete, Ambient, Field recordings happening
| first.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The first thing any artist should realize is that they live
| in a bubble.
|
| It is my experience that everyone lives in bubbles. They form
| the lens that filter our perception of other people's
| existence.
| goostavos wrote:
| Unfortunately, my bubble isnt subsidized.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| You'd be surprised.
| mapt wrote:
| That is if you define "The Arts" as specifically "Archaic
| forms of art too unpopular to survive without subsidies from
| government or the aristocracy". That's a tautology.
|
| Hip hop music isn't getting government subsidies. DeviantArt
| isn't getting government subsidies. Etsy isn't getting
| government subsidies. Youtubers aren't getting government
| subsidies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe isn't getting (many)
| government subsidies.
| jasondigitized wrote:
| This. Modern music. Woodworking. Digital illustration.
| Pottery. All very much thriving.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > Marvel Cinematic Universe
|
| Apparently comedy is thriving as well too.
| pdonis wrote:
| The article under discussion, though, isn't about arts that
| are surviving as for profit businesses--which includes all
| of the ones you mention. IT's about arts that _aren 't_
| doing that. Those are the forms of art that the GP comment
| was about.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >>The Marvel Cinematic Universe isn't getting (many)
| government subsidies.
|
| Maybe not US subsidies, but I'd bet that there are some
| Canadian film and tax credit logos at the end of most
| credit reels. When you film/edit/design/create on an
| international scale, you pick up lots of local tax credits.
| Also probably UK/Scotland credits too. Heck, the 2005
| reboot of DrWho was backed by Canadian government money.
| (Just check the final credits.)
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| If no one gave a shit these venues would close. Instead some
| of them have been lovingly maintained for a century. What
| does that say about your reductionist assessment of the
| world? Are things only valid if they are upheld by the
| overwhelming majority of the population? Is that a realistic
| expectation given the things that do in fact influence a heck
| of a lot more people often have to resort to psychological
| manipulation over standing on its own merits to do so? Take
| your head out of the sand and see what the arguments you are
| making are actually pencilling out to be.
| kredd wrote:
| I generally understand this sentiment as a couple of my best
| friends work in theatre industry, although I have no
| inclination towards anything related to arts. That being
| said, you don't need mass market to get second order effects.
| Especially for tourism industry.
|
| Not everyone who visits NYC goes to a Broadway show, but they
| know of the industry and how it attracts the talent. Not
| everyone who goes to Berlin dances their night out till 6am,
| but they know of it. These subsidies help to create the image
| of the city, and in some sense help the residents to identify
| with their surroundings. I understand it's a bit lame, but I
| don't mind some of my tax dollars going into an industry that
| I never directly benefit from.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > no artists will criticize the subsidizer of their lifestyle
|
| They do. Do they get attention on corporate media so you hear
| about them though?
|
| > You'd think Belgium would have some impressive world-class
| artists
|
| ... It does. Are they given exposure in corporate media?
|
| > so many can work unbothered by the oppressive forces of
| market trends
|
| Being able to afford basic necessities does not, in fact, make
| artists immune to the "oppressive forces" of the market.
|
| > mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm.
|
| Ie, Sturgeon's Law.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Coincidentally, the "corporate" media in Belgium is also
| heavily subsidized (as in a significant amount of their
| revenue is subsidies).
|
| And we also have public media. Yet no credible evidence of
| the effectiveness of endless subsidies.
|
| If we're going to namedrop economic laws like it means
| something: Parkinson's law: the art and media sector have
| become part of the self-perpetuating ineffective bureaucracy.
| sputr wrote:
| Slovenia is similar, but with even more intervention in the
| form of public grants. We also have no tax breaks for
| individuals who may wish to support the arts/humanitarian/ngo
| endeavors. It's all "systemic".
|
| Which is "fine" as long as a certain ideology controls the
| government (not always the same party, just the same
| "network"/ideology).
|
| Now, the quality/quantity of the output is a mater of my
| subjective opinion, which would only muddy the water.
|
| What isn't is what happened when the opposite ideology took
| over the government. Suddenly the much lauded ministry of arts
| became the enemy who chose different artists to subsidize.
| There were many Pikachu faces that day.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Is there some articles about this? I'd love to read more.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The productive middleclass is effectively squeezed.
|
| That's why I left Belgium. Getting squeezed to the bone to pay
| for endless leeches producing absolutely nothing that I enjoy
| or respect: it's not just the arts. Administrations are
| pathetically inefficient and arbitrary in how they treat people
| too.
|
| So I already left and now I'm selling everything I have there:
| a little apartment, one garage, a few items worth a little
| something.
|
| I'm fully planning on acquiring another nationality and then
| I'll just abandon my belgian one.
|
| > Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are
| the norm.
|
| Totally.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Like many I am looking for an exit too, at least fiscally.
| Right now I am -like many here- territorially bound by family
| and real-estate.
|
| But the negative economic death spiral has set in here. More
| people work for the public sector directly and indirectly
| than the private sector, and the tax burden is ever
| increasing while services received are dwindling.
| llm_trw wrote:
| I've often wondered if a colony in some of the unclaimed
| lands of Antarctica could soak up everyone who is fed up
| with the death spiral of productivity in the west.
|
| You'd meet some interesting people if nothing else.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| For an unhealthy length of time (definitely since c. 2009
| and arguably since the 90s) anyone with economically
| interesting skills was better of emigrating to the US, and
| many of these "best and brightest" did. I think the ceiling
| where you're better off in the US (or a few other Western
| states) is getting lower and lower, especially since the
| last few years have starkly shown just how unwilling and
| resistant to change the central european populace truly is.
| Right now you can still leave without huge exit taxes
| (unless you happen to own a company, most don't). I'm
| guessing as the brain drain keeps picking up pace, we'll
| see hefty exit taxes targeting basically everyone starting
| in 5-10 years.... after all, when people leave, they won't
| be able to pay 70% (~50% taxes and mandatory insurance,
| 30-40% rent or a mortgage, whose principal directly went to
| some old dude) of their income into your young-to-old
| wealth transfer system where they don't get anything out.
| So when they wanna leave you, you gotta make them pay
| dearly!
|
| Abusive relationship? Not at all!
| carlosjobim wrote:
| In Europe you have two options: Become a parasite or become a
| host. If neither of those options suit you, you have to get
| the hell out or live outside of the law and long fingers of
| the tax collectors.
| Eumenes wrote:
| > Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are
| the norm.
|
| This is what I'd expect from a country where the EU bureaucracy
| is HQ'd
| Retric wrote:
| Belgium's tax burden is close to California, they just don't
| split it up into a bunch of different categories. However, look
| at how much a self employed single person retains from their
| income when doing to comparison and the situation is more
| clear.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| I am a self-employed freelancer and I have done all fiscal
| optimization possible in BE and my effective tax burden is
| 37%.
|
| From what I find in Google about CA's total optimized tax
| burden for a one-man freelance company it is about 28%. And a
| lot more buying power too probably, but that is hard to
| compare in.
|
| Of course this is personal income from labour via one-man
| companies ("net take-home"). This does not take into account
| VAT, capital gains taxes, etc.
| Retric wrote:
| There's a ton of different ways to do these kinds of
| comparisons, but I'm unsure how you could end up with a
| single number here:
|
| > CA's total optimized tax burden for a one-man freelance
| company it is about 28%
|
| CA's tax burden varies wildly based on a host of factors.
| However the simple calculation for a freelancer filing as a
| single person making 50k = 24.6%, 100k = 32%, 150k = 36.5%,
| 300k = 40% which some people actually pay.
| https://www.upwork.com/tools/freelance-tax-calculator
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| According to that calculator my CA tax burden ratio would
| be 29.7% so seems the websites I read were not far off
| the mark.
| Retric wrote:
| Ahh ok that makes sense. Comparing vs equal income in
| nominal or PPP dollars is reasonable though it's going to
| make CA look better vs income percentile.
|
| Healthcare costs, VAT vs sales tax, and various
| deductions definitely matter in practice but further
| muddle the comparison.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The percentage of amount paid->amount received is not the
| appropriate number as it excludes the (very different!)
| tax rates on various kinds of consumption, however, it is
| reasonably straightforward to end up with a single number
| for the purposes of comparison - metrics like the total
| of all taxes/tarrifs/fees/etc vs total of all
| production(GDP).
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| This is why I don't think that government-run UBI is a good
| idea. We need something to fall back on in case it becomes
| necessary to do away with a problematic government for a while,
| not something that the government can use to negatively
| reinforce the status quo.
|
| Safety nets are for making otherwise dangerous things
| practical.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Pray tell, what enlightened incorruptible entity would
| enforce and organise UBI?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| What enforcement is needed? Either you opt in to accepting
| the UBI currency, or you don't. If there's an enforcer
| involved then you've got government UBI.
|
| As for issuing the tokens, there are a variety of UBI
| systems that handle that without a centralized authority.
| CirclesUBI and Idena come to mind. Admittedly some work is
| needed here, but the technical barriers are not the hard
| part.
|
| The hard part is establishing the collective political will
| to build a culture around accepting them, otherwise it's
| just meaningless numbers.
| int_19h wrote:
| Why would you even need or want "UBI currency" for UBI?
| Just give people money.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| That sets up a problematic power dynamic. Whoever is
| doing the giving has power over whenever is doing the
| receiving.
|
| And you'd want it as an alternative for cases where the
| other money is questionably legitimate. Like if the
| people who control its supply have stopped acting in the
| best interest of the people who use it.
| int_19h wrote:
| If anything, that's an argument in favor of UBI - it
| _reduces_ this power by making the giving unconditional.
| If every citizen is automatically entitled to their equal
| share, what power dynamic is there, exactly?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If some centralized entity is responsible for
| disseminating the income, they can threaten to stop, or
| they can threaten to cut people off.
|
| So I agree, _universal_ solves the problem, but you 're
| not going to get universal from a bureaucracy. You've got
| to bake it into the design, similar to how backed-by-gold
| is baked into the design of the money we're currently
| using. It needs to be legitimate because it's universal,
| rather than being legitimate because you got it from
| somebody who has a lot of guns and has promised to behave
| themselves.
|
| I'm very pro-UBI, I just don't think that saying pretty
| please to the government is the way to get it.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > backed-by-gold is baked into the design of the money
| we're currently
|
| Where do you get that idea from? The Federal reserve
| flatly denies it:
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12770.htm
|
| The US came off the gold standard in 1933. I'm pretty
| sure no country uses it now.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Sure, we took the actual gold out of it--but we've still
| got bankers creating money by issuing loans, bankers who
| are restricted in doing so by notions of scarcity which
| are pretty much arbitrary, and who have no reason to care
| whether they're helping or hurting the rest of us so long
| as they turn a profit and don't break the law. It's the
| same design as we had in 1933.
|
| It's a system that works, more or less, I just think it
| would work better if it had some alternatives to compete
| against. Alternatives would give the powerful a reason to
| care about non-monetary outcomes.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Some people confuse hammocks for safety nets.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| So what? The subsidy exists to support the tiny minority
| who might produce something worthwhile. As it is not
| possible to decide who this might be ahead of time the
| subsidy has to be given to all of them. This is essentially
| the same mechanism used in the provision of universal
| primary education; it would be a lot cheaper for the state
| if there were a trivial method of identifying those who
| would make the most of it so that it could be provided for
| them and just send the rest to sweep chimneys or beg on the
| streets.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > So what?
|
| It's arbitrary and unfair.
|
| > This is essentially the same mechanism used in the
| provision of universal primary education;
|
| I don't know if giving free money to adults who consider
| themselves artists is the same as ensuring children have
| access to vital education services. Educating children
| also ensures there's more a chance they'll contribute
| rather than be a client/dependent of the state.
|
| Why doesn't the state fund everyone's hobby? I play golf
| - they should subsidize some of my greens fees. I might
| end up writing an amazing book that uses my golf
| experience to push a narrative about the different types
| of people you meet on a golf course, but we're all "just
| people" or some nonsense. You never know, it might become
| a cherished cultural artifact.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > Why doesn't the state fund everyone's hobby?
|
| Yes, why not?
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| Except that it nearly work only for people acting, dancing and
| working in << live >> art.
|
| If you're a painter or a sculptor, since you can't provide
| proof of engagement length, you were out. That's getting better
| but still not a UBI by any means. They're poor.
|
| Do we have good contemporary art ? Yes. They're not subsidized
| by the government, have to pay heavy taxes as we are and got to
| have lot of red tape for their enjoyment. So they move out of
| Belgium. With a raised middle finger...
|
| Meanwhile this same system is abused by Uber and other major.
| feoren wrote:
| > You'd think Belgium would have some impressive world-class
| artists, since so many can work unbothered by the oppressive
| forces of market trends. Not surprisingly, mediocrity,
| irrelevance and low-output are the norm.
|
| I don't really know enough to dispute this, but this statement
| is setting off alarm bells as a thought pattern that would be
| easy to fall into but hard to falsify. _Most_ artistic output
| in the world is mediocre and irrelevant. Seeing the same from
| Belgium is not enough to say the policy is not working.
|
| Belgium has about the same population and GDP as Ohio. Genuine
| question: how does the "artistic output", however you want to
| measure it, compare between Belgium and Ohio?
|
| Note that I am _not_ claiming this is any way "worth it",
| especially with your comments on the middle class which seem to
| be echoed by other Belgians. I'm only asking about the actual
| artistic output in isolation.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| You would think policy makers have an obligation to track
| this, but they don't. There are no studies, KPIs or attempts
| at tracking effectiveness of subsidy policy.
|
| The burden of proof should be on the policy maker and
| subsidizer to ensure the purported goals of spending tax many
| are met.
|
| My wife works in public procurement for research, but there
| too suggesting such a thing is taboo.
|
| This is of course by design: subsidies are a political tool
| for passivation of opposition, soft bribery and economic
| channeling of economic and societal outcomes. The less
| oversight and transparency the better.
|
| The Flanders region only got a publicly and centralised
| database of (some) subsidy channels in 2019, after decades of
| liberal and right-leaning people lobbying for transparency.
|
| There is no such initiative for our federal government.
| wpietri wrote:
| That strikes me as likely to do more harm than good, and
| research is a good example. We already have major problems
| with research quality because publication quantity has
| risen as important metric. I can't think of a metric for
| art quality that wouldn't introduce all sorts of terrible
| incentives and disincentives.
| fragmede wrote:
| So the alternative is nothing? If someone's receiving
| funding to create art, asking them to show that they've
| done _something_ with that money and that they 're not
| just buying booze/drugs and throwing parties for them and
| their friends with the money that the government is
| giving them to create art doesn't seem like asking too
| much.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| Given my understanding of the modern state of Art, they
| would simply pivot to making the parties _be_ the
| artform.
| wpietri wrote:
| That seems like a false dichotomy to me. Aren't there
| more ways to run things than a binary "user narrow
| numeric KPIs" vs "people doing absolutely anything"?
| Draiken wrote:
| Why?
|
| What is the harm in letting people live their lives
| producing art without a freaking OKR tracking their output?
|
| I always find it fascinating how people assume that if
| you're not slaving away making someone else richer, it's a
| problem.
|
| The argument is always something in the lines of "I'm
| paying for it". Well, we all know that if the only people
| actually making money out of our society paid their fair
| share, we'd be able to subsidize programs like these and
| much more without a problem.
|
| People contribute to society in ways other than working. We
| simply choose to not value any of it in today's society.
|
| It's not like these people are buying yachts, right? It
| feels so petty to me when we complain about helping out
| people with the bare minimum.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How do you know they are in fact 'producing art' without
| keeping track via some system?
|
| There are too many subsidy receivers for anyone to ever
| visit in their life, even if they spend 40 hours a week
| 50 weeks a year visiting them.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You can pay prizes after the fact for especially
| impressive art. Or even award grants in advance for
| especially impressive art-proposals. Similar to how we
| fund most academic research. That's likely to be a lot
| more effective than generalized subsidies if most art
| turns out to be just mediocre and forgettable.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> You would think policy makers have an obligation to
| track this, but they don 't. There are no studies, KPIs or
| attempts at tracking effectiveness of subsidy policy._
|
| Reminds me of education. Being from the most educated
| jurisdiction in the most educated country, everyone is sure
| we need to fund it, but nobody seems to know what we get
| from it. The usual suspects (stronger economy, more engaged
| society, more progressive socially, etc.) that everyone
| loves to attribute to education lag behind much of the rest
| of the much-less-educated world...
|
| _> The burden of proof should be on the policy maker and
| subsidizer to ensure the purported goals of spending tax
| many are met._
|
| The burden on policy markers is simply to keep the bosses
| (i.e. the general public) happy. The burden of proof rests
| on the public at large to justify their goals to the policy
| makers, perhaps, but is that really necessary? If the
| people want something arbitrary because it makes them feel
| good, why not? The universe doesn't care.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Genuine question: how does the "artistic output", however
| you want to measure it, compare between Belgium and Ohio?
|
| Has any Belgian artist in the past forty years been as
| impactful as Bill Watterson?
| fph wrote:
| If you set the limit to 40 years it's a bit arbitrary, but
| you can still catch some of the late production of Asterix
| and Obelix and the Smurfs. For movies, Jean-Claude Van
| Damme is in, but he made most of his career in the US. I am
| not into electronic music, but I have at least heard the
| name Stromae.
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| 40 years just misses (by 1 year) the last of Herge, the
| creator of TinTin, which is one of the more iconic comics
| of the last 100 years (Asterix and Obelix and the Smurfs
| are also in that group of course).
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Part of Ohio is in Appalachia, intersecting culturally with
| West Virginia. There's a big tradition of folk art - music,
| crafts, etc.
|
| Most folk artists are, by global standards, mediocre and
| irrelevant. But I don't think anybody really cares.
|
| Could the same be true for Belgium?
| s_dev wrote:
| Ireland has this as well but it's still in a pilot programme:
|
| https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemploymen...
|
| 2,000 artists were selected with prior portfolios as well as
| control group for comparison. It will be revised in 2025.
| gpvos wrote:
| _> Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are
| the norm._
|
| Of course. 90% of everything is crap, so you are going to pay
| for a lot of crap art if you want any good stuff. This is the
| same if you have a completely commercial model, because most
| people have no taste.
| goostavos wrote:
| Huh? In the commercial model, why would an individual still
| pay for "a lot of crap art". What you call "no taste" is just
| "taste," right? Nobody who gets to pick is going to pick the
| crap stuff.
|
| I've liked 100% of the art I've ever purchased (that's why I
| purchased it)
| ninalanyon wrote:
| But you didn't purchase 100% of the art that was produced.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are
| the norm._
|
| And always has been: _ninety percent of everything is crap._
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
| odiroot wrote:
| The situation you describe in the first paragraph applies to
| pretty much most of EU. At least the western states.
|
| The powers that be decided, the ambitious middle class has to
| foot the bill for everything.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm.
|
| Surely that is also true of countries where it is not
| subsidized?
| ericmcer wrote:
| Examples like that are really dispiriting because it points to
| us not being able to create talented people through nurture.
|
| American society is pretty focused on success, and many of us
| blame our mediocrity on a lack of effort, bad parenting, the
| government, etc. The cold truth might be that even with a
| perfect work-ethic, upbringing and unlimited resources most of
| us would fail to do anything original or interesting. If you
| are doing an ok job of sleeping/eating/exercising and you are
| relatively disciplined you are probably already performing at
| like ~90% of your potential. Exercising insane discipline to
| try and squeeze those last few %s out probably isn't going to
| turn you into some gifted person.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| Yeah, your national culture and artistic character tends to
| irreversibly putrefy into a clumpy mottled slime of rotting
| viscera when all of your sovereign wealth comes from chopping
| off the hands of child rubber planation slaves rather than any
| kind of domestic industry. Belgians know that their souls are
| forever beyond redemption, but may as well blame it on grr
| public arts funding lol
| taylorius wrote:
| I think the internet and the general ascendancy of computer
| science,and algorithmic thinking has a part to play in this.
| There is a certain notion of efficiency (perhaps also expressable
| as convenience) which has become a well trodden path to success
| in the market. This has been widely beneficial of course, but
| amongst it's side effects are a marginalisation of anything other
| than the most focused, popular artistic offerings. (Think Mr
| Beast, Taylor Swift etc).
| ocular-rockular wrote:
| Algorithmic thinking and optimizing one's life (whether in a
| video game, workplace, or in a hobby) lives rent free in my
| mind. It's prevalence and inertia has made my life only
| miserable, yet it's so hard to escape when almost everything
| your sold on is to optimally squeeze your life.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The powerful and/or rich. Same with the sciences.
|
| EDIT: However individual contributors "fund" the arts and
| sciences by their work; those can of course come from people of
| any social status.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| It makes sense for everyone to fund the sciences though because
| we all benefit from it as we saw very clearly with the mRNA
| vaccines for covid most recently. Other examples include
| semiconductors, the internet etc.
|
| But it's hard to see how I benefit from someone making a messy
| bed because it's 'art'. (That is a real example. A literal
| messy bed. 'My Bed' by Tracy Emin.)
| HPsquared wrote:
| Individual people don't fund the sciences though. As in, they
| don't direct funding to the sciences. That's done by
| representatives of some kind - who fit into the "rich and/or
| powerful" category.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| No one would expect an artist to say anything sensible about
| technology...
| eszed wrote:
| "Sensible" in what sense, or on what scale?
|
| You probably shouldn't ask an artist about a useful formula for
| concrete, or to troubleshoot your jacquard loom, or which js
| framework to use: that's what engineers are for. But the
| products of those tools will be more successful if someone
| other than an engineer has input into the building's
| proportions, or the cloth's colors, or the page's layout.
| That's all art, and imminently sensible - even by the most
| nakedly commercial definition of "sense".
|
| At a larger scale, and just to pick the least controversial and
| most popular on this board: did Ridley Scott and Matt Damon say
| nothing sensible about technology in _The Martian_? Or Neal
| Stephenson in, like, anything?
|
| At a still larger scale, artists have always engaged with the
| ways technology changes society (or, in fact, the way that
| technology changes art) - in celebration and in warning, in
| observation and in speculation, and in all modes between.
| Turner's _The Fighting Temeraire_ is an easily-graspable
| example.
|
| Often artists are _wrong_ , of course, as anyone (including
| technologists and venture capitalists) can be, but that's very
| different than not "sensible".
| mykowebhn wrote:
| I agree with you. Please note the ellipsis at the end of my
| original statement. Sorry it wasn't clear, but it was said
| with irony.
| eszed wrote:
| Ha! Thanks. Irony's so easy to miss on the internet - and
| this topic especially seems to attract "non-sensible"
| responses on this board, so my antennae are a bit too
| finely tuned.
|
| Time to go touch grass. :-)
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Just focusing on movies, my sense is that money isn't the big
| issue, it's the lack of prestige involved in art that's really
| killing it. The necessary conditions for creating great art is an
| elite group (that holds significant societal power), that ranks,
| discusses and promotes all the excellent art being released in a
| year. They give great artists prestige and some money but money
| is the smaller part of the equation. Instead of this what we have
| now is a mass market art where art gets ranked by the millions/
| billions it brings in, and so we are fed with a never ending fill
| of Marvel Slop/ Franchise movies and rarely risky, through
| provoking movies. And when we do have such a movie, we have no
| effective way of showering its creators with prestige. The Oscars
| used to play this role, but now apparently most voters don't even
| watch the Oscar movies and so it's corrupted beyond repair.
|
| Besides the Oscar crowd is filled with actors and the maximum
| prestige an actor can give to another actor is limited greatly.
| Compare it to an Oscar crowd filled with heads of state, industry
| etc like a royal court of the past and that would be an insanely
| strong incentive to produce great art.
| abe94 wrote:
| Whats surprisingly missing from this conversation, and only
| hinted at in the article, is that there a massive new
| infrastructure for funding "the arts" today that did not exist 20
| years ago. Youtube, instagram, and tiktok allow many more people
| to pursue creative pursuits and find audiences for their work
| than before. The people who succeed on these platforms may call
| themselves creators, but a lot of them are artists. IMO the
| people who refuse to use the new tools, or do so unseriously find
| it hard to fund themselves.
| tubignaaso wrote:
| I agree, they certainly are artists. Perhaps artists that are
| good at making content for that particular platform, though. A
| painter who is dedicated to her craft wouldn't be able to
| dedicate as much time getting good at YouTube's algorithm. How
| can we support those people?
| abe94 wrote:
| I see what you are saying and agree to a point, but you don't
| have to become excellent at 10 minute long form youtube
| videos to sustain yourself, for example you can create 2
| minute behind the scenes videos on tiktok instead or simply
| share images of your paintings on instagram. artists can be
| creative about building audiences.
|
| Here are some local NYC artists/groups i follow in order of
| followers:
|
| https://www.instagram.com/secret_riso_club/
| https://www.instagram.com/sahanabanana/?hl=en
| https://www.instagram.com/naomi.basu/?hl=en
| achenet wrote:
| I don't have any firsthand experience in this subject, so I
| could be wrong.
|
| However, from my limited understanding of the YT algorithm,
| it rewards consistency.
|
| If you make at least one new video every week, and each video
| is "well recieved", i.e. most of the people who click on it
| finish it, and ideally like it/subscribe to your channel as
| well, the algorithm will start pushing your stuff on the
| "recommended" list.
| prayze wrote:
| Working on it! Though the concept is new and fledgling. Free
| non-profit arts publications aimed at giving exposure to
| featured emerging artists like your example. Donor funded and
| aimed at not extracting money from the artist themselves.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| How much do Alphabet, Meta & ByteDance pay these folks?
| abe94 wrote:
| They don't need to, they help with distribution you can add a
| link to your work, or patreon.
|
| For a lot of people this is a better alternative than the old
| gatekeepers of yore, small or local magazine editors and
| tastemakers who may for whatever reason hold you back
| dfxm12 wrote:
| This is not a "framework for _funding_ the arts " as you
| mentioned earlier. If you're not getting paid, you're just
| working for free to build the library of those sites. At
| best, one can think of it like buying an ad. But, you're
| also at the mercy of an algorithm which may hold you back
| for whatever reason and also corporate policy that may
| remove your content for whatever reason.
| abe94 wrote:
| With respect to the very literal reading of "funding the
| arts". A number of these platforms do in fact pay you a
| share of revenue. Youtube, and spotify are both platforms
| that artists, and new artists are paid on and can use for
| exposure.
|
| For the other platforms, yes you need to a do a little
| more work to make it a living, but the broader point is
| its much easier today for a much wider range of artists
| to get exposure than it was before, yes there are
| vagaries of the algorithm and yes some content will not
| be favoured, that doesnt mean it isnt a better situation
| today than before
|
| As for "working for free" this is a very reductionist
| view. The relationship can provide value for both
| parties, you may disagree about the split of value and
| who benefits more but there are plenty of artists who
| have become popular without paying for ads.
| plumthreads wrote:
| I recently read Cory Doctorow's "Chokepoint Capitalism"
| and William Deresiewicz's "The Death of the Artist" which
| both decry the sentiment that somehow Big Tech has been a
| boon for artists.
|
| The reality is that anti-competitive practices in these
| companies has made them more of an extractive monopoly
| rather than a market to connect artists and art
| "consumers." To your point on revenue sharing, both
| Youtube and Spotify have laughable revenue shares to the
| point that even well known musicians have to tour nonstop
| to make ends meet. At what point does "exposure" benefit
| the artist more than it benefits the platform for having
| free art?
| abe94 wrote:
| Those books sound interesting, ill have a look!
|
| I am sympathetic to the idea that the revenue share isn't
| great, and I also agree that there are anti-competitive
| practices, and the market would do well with more
| competition. But i do think its the wrong starting point
| to believe views or listens on these platforms should be
| enough to sustain a creative career for most artists.
|
| As you alluded too, even amongst the most well known
| musicians they make a lot of their income from touring,
| my perspective here is that these platforms when well
| used give you exposure, then with a linktree / beacons
| link an artist can develop a relationship with some of
| their audience that provides further opportunities to
| fund themselves.
|
| Its a great question to ask when the "exposure" benefits
| the artists more, and when it benefits the platform more,
| i'd personally love to see some quantitative analysis of
| that. My suspicion is for most small artists with
| audience sizes of less than 100k people (in the west, the
| calculus is probably different in the rest of the world)
| the benefit to the artist is really great. For someone
| like Taylor swift it benefits the platform more, but at
| that point she can negotiate directly
| Tobi_Olabode3 wrote:
| In the UK, throughout the 80s various rock bands were getting
| government subsidies for their music. We call it Rock on the
| Dole. Many people do argue this led to the rise of music from
| that era.
| helboi4 wrote:
| yep, I've heard very good arguments for this.
| every wrote:
| KMFA is a non-profit, listener-supported classical music station
| that has been broadcasting for over half a century. They also
| stream their content for the web:
|
| https://www.kmfa.org/
| motohagiography wrote:
| a problem is the people involved in The Arts are more interested
| in being prescriptive about what people should like instead of
| discovering what we in fact desire.
|
| we make this same mistake in tech all the time, building things
| we think other people should do instead of what they want,
| shopping it around to "get funded," without any customer
| traction, and then ending up on some government services vehicle
| just to get enough money to keep making the same mistake and
| hoping maybe the state will mandate our solution to someone. It's
| every non-US startup ever, and it comes from the same welfare
| state mentality that produces the funded Arts nobody cares about.
|
| the main people who support artists are the market makers who
| connect audiences, dealers, managers, distributors, marketers,
| students, and collectors. trying to replace "aristocrats and
| corporations," with another patron just continues the cycle of
| dependency and paternalism that produces the same token flattery
| nobody wants.
|
| if you want better art, learn what it means to make a market, and
| then grow one.
| abe94 wrote:
| I agree with this, having interacted with a number of artists,
| a lot of what is produced simply isn't that great, different or
| interesting.
|
| Of course if creating things makes you happy go for it, but
| don't expect to be able to live off of that.
| Handprint4469 wrote:
| > a problem is the people involved in The Arts are more
| interested in being prescriptive about what people should like
| instead of discovering what we in fact desire.
|
| The thing that grinds my gears is that they do this by trying
| to redefine language. They don't come out and say "you should
| like X". They say "X is beautiful" (and if you think otherwise,
| you're obtuse/privileged/etc). Nevermind what beauty used to
| mean, since it's just a cultural artifact of a capitalist white
| patriarchy, and you don't want to be associated with that, do
| you?
|
| What one considers beautiful stops being an instinctive felt
| sense coming from within, and becomes just an empty statement
| used for signaling others how sophisticated/class-aware/etc you
| are.
|
| It's pure neurosis, and I'm not surprised such disembodied
| people have trouble actually creating beauty.
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