I love how you weave seemingly disparate things together as you do here! (Frederick & Sun Ra!)
I see a similar thing happening in the visual arts where I live. Beauty is no longer enough for acceptance. Art has been thoroughly replaced by Artivism (= Art + Activism). Unless one's art is a pointed sword to discomfit the comfortable, it is rejected. And the edge of that art-sword had better be pointed in the politically correct direction!
There are art exhibitions which used to accept my work, but no longer do, because my paintings do not make a political point.
It can be funny sometimes, though. One piece that was accepted a few years back was a portrait of President Bush (41), who had a legendary dislike for broccoli. So the artist started with a yellow canvas, 6 feet by 6 feet, and then painted a decent likeness of Bush with broccoli swirling all around his head. I can't remember which of my paintings got rejected the year that one was accepted.
I think this phenomenon has a good deal to do with the globalization of capitalism. Wealth becoming disconnected from locale-- that is, when the ownership of local business can be anywhere rather than probably someone who lives in the same fishpond and will have a care for its ecology-- is a considerable part of it. If we saw a movement away from that-- for example, to undo the Supreme Court decision that eviscerated state usury laws and made every credit card company move to the state(s) with the laxest ones-- power would be spread more evenly and taken out of the hands of the uber-wealthy whose values, disconnected from real-world considerations by that wealth, are, I would argue, what are driving this autoflagellistic culture. Don't get me wrong; I'm no communist. But you don't have to be to see the cultural distortions produced by the current supreme influence of Wall Street and its priorities.
I'm slightly amused that mice are the species of choice for the parable at the beginning, given how filthy they are usually seen to be. I read, "The mouse society is able to take heart from the invocation of the memory of beauty, and we know that, nourished by beauty, they will survive to see the spring." Then I thought, "And then they return to eating one another's feces". :-)
Leo Lionni used mice in many of his classic children's books. :)
You may be right about the localization of production, but that alone doesn't address the ignorance of the classical arts. A case needs to be made that they're important for everybody.
I love how you weave seemingly disparate things together as you do here! (Frederick & Sun Ra!)
I see a similar thing happening in the visual arts where I live. Beauty is no longer enough for acceptance. Art has been thoroughly replaced by Artivism (= Art + Activism). Unless one's art is a pointed sword to discomfit the comfortable, it is rejected. And the edge of that art-sword had better be pointed in the politically correct direction!
There are art exhibitions which used to accept my work, but no longer do, because my paintings do not make a political point.
I'm sorry to hear that. And so much political art is aesthetically wanting.
It can be funny sometimes, though. One piece that was accepted a few years back was a portrait of President Bush (41), who had a legendary dislike for broccoli. So the artist started with a yellow canvas, 6 feet by 6 feet, and then painted a decent likeness of Bush with broccoli swirling all around his head. I can't remember which of my paintings got rejected the year that one was accepted.
I think this phenomenon has a good deal to do with the globalization of capitalism. Wealth becoming disconnected from locale-- that is, when the ownership of local business can be anywhere rather than probably someone who lives in the same fishpond and will have a care for its ecology-- is a considerable part of it. If we saw a movement away from that-- for example, to undo the Supreme Court decision that eviscerated state usury laws and made every credit card company move to the state(s) with the laxest ones-- power would be spread more evenly and taken out of the hands of the uber-wealthy whose values, disconnected from real-world considerations by that wealth, are, I would argue, what are driving this autoflagellistic culture. Don't get me wrong; I'm no communist. But you don't have to be to see the cultural distortions produced by the current supreme influence of Wall Street and its priorities.
I'm slightly amused that mice are the species of choice for the parable at the beginning, given how filthy they are usually seen to be. I read, "The mouse society is able to take heart from the invocation of the memory of beauty, and we know that, nourished by beauty, they will survive to see the spring." Then I thought, "And then they return to eating one another's feces". :-)
Leo Lionni used mice in many of his classic children's books. :)
You may be right about the localization of production, but that alone doesn't address the ignorance of the classical arts. A case needs to be made that they're important for everybody.