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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