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="Gwreck":3s3g08g5]On a side note, I find internet petitions pointless. Want something done? Get off your ass and mail a real letter from the real post office.
Who remembers the last effective internet petition?[/quote:3s3g08g5]
The one that got Randolph fired?
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Nymr83
Jan 14 2009 08:13 PM
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i'm totally 100% against creating some cabinet position (which of course will come with a salary, a department budget, and lots more wasteful spending) for the arts. the government shouldn't be in the arts business, end of story.
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Benjamin Grimm
Jan 15 2009 05:11 AM
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I think we all seem to agree.
And anyway, given the current economic conditions, this is like the worst time to propose something like that.
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Nymr83
Jan 15 2009 09:55 AM
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How bout Obama in comic books?
[url:4uj9jpat]http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/15/spider-man-comic-starring-obama-sells-record-numbers-nationwide/[/url:4uj9jpat]
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Farmer Ted
Jan 15 2009 10:19 AM
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What is art?
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TheOldMole
Jan 15 2009 12:41 PM
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This, from Italo Calvino, is the best definition I kniow:
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Frayed Knot
Jan 15 2009 01:03 PM
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Did establishing the Dept of Education as a cabinet level department improve the state of education of this country?
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TheOldMole
Jan 15 2009 02:24 PM
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Establishing an FBI didn't abolish crime, either.
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Benjamin Grimm
Jan 15 2009 02:29 PM
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The Department of War worked pretty well, I think.
Oh, wait...
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Frayed Knot
Jan 15 2009 06:06 PM
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="TheOldMole":3936tc98]Establishing an FBI didn't abolish crime, either.[/quote:3936tc98]
Abolish? ... of course not. But I strongly suspect it helps.
On the other hand we were educating children in this country prior to the mid-1970s when it became a cabinet level status and I'm not sure the increased bureaucratic level improved it since then.
As the son of an artist (same specialty as your brother) I'm certainly not anti-art. But I simply don't believe that a layer of gov't control is either necessary or helpful, and terms like 'Minister of Culture' - however well-intentioned - frankly scare the shit out of me.
Quincy Jones's concern about kids not knowing John Coltrane is valid but I bet many of them couldn't tell you who Harry Truman was either or in what century the Civil War took place.
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TheOldMole
Jan 15 2009 11:08 PM
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Scares the shit out of you? What is it about government support for the arts in say, France or Germany, or any other country which gives more support to the arts than we do, which is to say every Western democracy, that's so terrifying? What do they do that scares you so violently?
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Nymr83
Jan 16 2009 06:37 AM
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it doesn't "scare the shit" out of me. but it A) pisses me off as a big waste of tax dollars in an area that i feel the federal government has no business spending money and B) i don't like the idea of some government agency deciding what art/music/etc is worthwhile
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Frayed Knot
Jan 16 2009 07:22 AM
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OK, perhaps a bit over-the-top with the "scares me" part but there's a big-brother-ish aspect to it that keeps me more than a little wary and I just don't think that attempting to steer art & culture is something a central government does real well.
Stuff like this is full of good intentions but, at best, ideas like this have a tendency to turn into a bureaucratic sinkholes of money controlled by insiders for the benefit of themselves or fellow insiders. At worst it becomes virtually impossible to support art without some panel somewhere deciding (dictating?) that this art should be supported over that art at which point becomes as much an exclusionary act as an inclusionary or educational one.
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Edgy DC
Jan 16 2009 07:37 AM
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By "giving support" to the arts, they can officially sanction certain types of expression and certain means of expression over others. Preserving cultural heritage is important for government. Generating culture is another thing, and I think that needs to be organic --- and very often needs to be explicitly threatening to established values.
As much money as we put into our military and as much as we try (and fail) to do good with it, it is through our arts --- privately funded --- that we have spread American values to the world. That's for better or for worse, but for better often enough.
Qunicy Jones is right to lament ignorance of Duke Ellington, but that's an argument with the education system. It's arguable that Duke Ellington wouldn't have thrived as a government-supported artist. He wouldn't have been Duke Ellington, anyhow, if his title was bestowed from on high, instead of earned at the grass roots of DC.
George Will can be a pompous puffball, and he claims a ministry of sport couldn't have created a Tiger Woods, but rather an insane but loving father like Earl Woods was necessary to hone the kid's skills in a nurturing family. (Not that families don't fail prodigiies also. They certainly do.) But there's just something so meaningful that Ellington wasn't plucked from his family and sent away by a well meaning government to boarding schools and camps at a young age to hone his skill --- but rather preferred baseball to piano and experienced a world where Teddy Roosevelt would occasionally stop by the sandlot and watch he and his friends play, where he developed his stage confidence hawking peanuts at Washington Senators games, where he fell over crazy for ragtime players he heard on his family's trips to Philadelphia and New Jersey. Heck, sneaking into poolhalls.
Now, finding young talent and channelling it into instutional development is only part of what ministries of culture do, but there's a case against that. And while jazz has gone for government dollars the last half century to survive as rock has dominated the marketplace, I don't think anybody but a rare bird will argue that its quality has advanced as a government supported art form. Certainly very little jazz recorded after 1960 has moved me like a Sidney Bechet recording from the '30s.
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TheOldMole
Jan 16 2009 08:24 AM
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You guys are creating a bizarre Frankenstein monster that bears little resemblance to actual government support for the arts in Western democracies. Here's the [url=http://www.bundesregierung.de/nn_6562/Content/EN/Artikel/2008/08/2008-08-03-warum-foerdert-der-bund-kultur__en.html]German cultural program[/url], for example. I don't see anything in it that would squelch the development of a Sidney Bechet -- who, incidentally, spent a great deal of his productive live in Paris.
And again -- I am talking about the models of cultural support in democracies, but George Will is wrong. East Germany, a tiny country, produced a hugely disproportionate share of world record holders during the era of its Ministry of Sport.
The last time there was any serious "socialized art" in America was the WPA Artists Project of the 30s, and it made a huge difference in jump-starting the careers of visionaries like deKooning and Guston, certainly no cookie cutter artists. Or photographers like Walker Evans and Ansel Adams.
If you want to hear some post-1960s jazz -- 1990s jazz, in fact -- that would move a coprse, try this:
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Edgy DC
Jan 16 2009 08:37 AM
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Yeah, but Tito was also 110 years old.
Again, I'm all for government preserving the arts. But generating the arts is another story.
As for promoting it, the Kennedy Center looks like a mausoleum, and too often feels like it.
I just think the arts and culture need to butt up against govenrment, and drive development of a better government, not the other way around.
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TheOldMole
Jan 16 2009 08:56 AM
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You'll have to explain to me why one negates the other. Why will a young person who grows up having been exposed to the music of Ellington or Bechet. or having seen performances of Shakespeare or Albee, or having learned to play an instrument in school, or been part of painting a mural, be less likely to butt up against the government? Are you arguing that a culture that values support for the arts, like Germany, can't possibly produce a Fassbinder or a Herzog?
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Edgy DC
Jan 16 2009 09:22 AM
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I think the education system we have now does (and can increasingly, I hope) expose folks to the music of Ellington or Bechet, and the plays of Shakespeare or Albee. It certainly gives millions and millions of children the opportunity to play an instrument in school, and paint a mural.
But too much goverment instutionalization of professional artistic endeavors can allow governement to decide which artists can make a living, which leads to which voices get heard, which I don't particularly like the thought of.
I think the United States is and long has been a cuture that values support for the arts --- and we express it with popular patronage, private patronage, scholastic patronage, corporate patronage, and govenrnment patronage also. The government also does its role, and I think best does its role, by allowing non-commercial artistic institutions to obtain non-profit status.
I'll be honest, though, your Herzog reference has me and my American ignorance perplexed --- Werner Herzog? Emile?
Whitey?
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TheOldMole
Jan 16 2009 10:42 AM
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Werner. I was thinking of German artists in recent years who have hardly toadied to the establishment, and Herzog and Fassbinder came to mind.
I'm all for arts education in the schools -- I don't think cabinet-level attention to promoting the arts would take away from that. It might help, in fact -- art and music education are an endangered species in far too many of our schools.
I would hope that a government initiative in the arts might lead to a few more artists making a living, which wouldn't be a bad thing, but I doubt that it will take a living away from anyone.
There's no history to show that your fears are justified, but then, of course, history is written by the winners. Perhaps if there had been no WPA Artists Project, deKooning and Guston, Shahn and Refregier, Adams and Evans might not have attained prominence, and other, better artists might have. There's no way of knowing. My friend Bob Grumman thinks that any award, grant, or position that favors poets who use words over visual poets is an "enemy of poetry,"so he'd certaiinly agree with you.
But mostly, there's no history, in any field, of increased visibility through government incentives making all those other things you mention disappear. The history is exactly on the opposite side of that fence.
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TheOldMole
Jan 16 2009 10:51 AM
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Listen to Tito's stuff on Concord, and tell me if he sounds 110 years old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7q6DvGeTI0 -- no embed.
And if you want someone younger, how about Muguel Zenon?
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Nb8uETajLto&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Nb8uETajLto&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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Edgy DC
Jan 16 2009 10:54 AM
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I guess I'm one of those free market extremists, but history also suggests that the artistic output of the United States has had global reach of staggering breadth, even as the United States itself grows unpopular, and has been a tremendously successful endeavor, whether in terms of making money or spreading values.
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Edgy DC
Jan 16 2009 11:02 AM
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="TheOldMole":16ag8aqd]Listen to Tito's stuff on Concord, and tell me if he sounds 110 years old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7q6DvGeTI0 -- no embed.
And if you want someone younger, how about Muguel Zenon?
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Nb8uETajLto&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Nb8uETajLto&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/quote:16ag8aqd]
I'm not knocking Tito at all. I just mean he cut his teeth in the pre-rock era when their was a working marketplace for jazz musicians and jazz music.
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TheOldMole
Jan 16 2009 11:29 AM
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So has US trade, but I don't see government initiatives on promoting trade as having hurt that.
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Vic Sage
Jan 16 2009 01:23 PM
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you go, Mole.
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Benjamin Grimm
Jan 16 2009 01:36 PM
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I don't object to it because I fear that government would compromise the artists. I just don't think there's a need to create a Cabinet position and a large Department of Arts.
Sure, if the government was flush with cash it would be nice to see them underwrite the arts. But if the government was flush with cash it would mean that they were collecting too much in taxes.
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Edgy DC
Jan 16 2009 01:54 PM
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Wikipedia tells me about Herzog. Met Klaus Kinski when he was a child, decided he wanted to direct him, and eventually stole a camera, and taught himself film-making from an encyclopedia. He worked night shifts as a welder to finance his early films. He stole the camera from Munich Film School.
He was told to sing in front of his class at 12 and was afraid and refuse, almost leading to expulsion. He was so traumatized that he stopped singing and listening to music outright until the end of his teen years, and would now give 10 years of his life to learn an instrument.
Quincy Jones claims "now, more than ever" we need the arts. I'd like him to expand on that argument. I think we've never had more access to the arts and every fourth teenager I know is applying to UCLA or NYU film school.
His main complaint, ignorance of art history, would seemingly be directed against our public schools, whose failures cross the spectrum.
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TheOldMole
Jan 16 2009 02:16 PM
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Now, more than ever is probably hyperbole. Perhaps not quite as much hyperbole as every fourth reenager applying to film school.
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Edgy DC
Jan 16 2009 02:26 PM
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Well, you hang out in bookstore/coffee shops, and you meet plenty of... well, actually, I guess you've got me there.
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