I don't know, I had mixed feelings about Goldberger's
          article. In practice, much of the government subsidy goes to
          programs that make the arts more accessible. And if that
          continues to be the expanded thrust of government funding,
          that would be very appropriate, in my opinion.
 
          Given a choice between subsidy for a challenging, difficult,
          etc., etc. performance artist, or architect, or musician, or
          collagist, or whatever
          and increased programming in the arts for elementary school
          kids, I can well imagine that the government would be better
          suited to funding the latter.
 
          Having been an ardent consumer of difficult art, and a
          practicing performer of what I called (proudly at the time)
          annoying music, I'm all for challenge and confrontation, and
          extremism in the arts. BUT, I can't imagine the rationale
          for expecting government subsidy for the stuff...
 
          Yikes, I'm a troglodyte. Did anyone else ever see the
          cartoon (reproduced in the New Republic, I think, and a few
          other magazines) in which the first panel shows an artist
          beginning a portrait of a bourgeois gentleman with a bowler
          hat. Underneath the portrait are the words FUCK YOU. The
          second panel shows the artist, hat in hand, going to this
          same gentleman for money, which he is given. The third panel
          shows him finishing the portrait.
 
          Anyway, I seem to have staked out an opinion.
 
          Eric Siegel
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