Cartoon of the Day
CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Sunday, July 27, 2008
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
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13 Comments:
There should be at least one more person holding up the sign for the group.
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Oh, come now. Missing from this are (not necessarily an inclusive list):
A government official visibly commending himself on his support for the Arts.
A photographer group, along with reporters and TV camerapeople, attending the above.
At least two supervisors, making sure that the Correct Music is being played.
An OSHA representative, to verify that all safety rules are followed.
A NOW picketline, complaining about the lack of female representation in this trio.
An NAACP picketline, complaining about the lack of "people of color" in this trio.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, also playing to the reporters mentioned above.
Also, there should be at least five different artists, each using different media to capture the work for posterity -- one of them will be using brightly colored machine tools in a large porcelain bathtub... (no one is sure what he's planning on doing with the giraffe). They are each recieving several thousand dollars in support of their artistic efforts.
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So clearly, this picture has been thoroughly cropped.
:oP
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Gotta have a conductor, someone holding the music stand, a couple of guys holding the chairs in place so they don't move, a person holding a spare bow, a health worker standing by with a defibrillator and bandages for the guy doing the picking, a foreman watching the clock to tell the players to go home at the end of the shift regardless of whether the piece is done. And don't forget the PR flack pretending to be a music critic saying how great the performance is.
ROFLMAO!...
Great comments!
You guys forgot one thing! The crowd of raging conservatives playing up stereotypes to make themselves feel better.
feel better? Or still bitter?
also, obloodyhell, I'm sorry that you can't appreciate art. While I haven't seen much artwork done with bathtubs and giraffes (outside of an abstract art joke), I can at least respect the right of the artist to try to and attempt to make something out of it, much as I don't like Norwegian black death cannibal metal or christian "rock" but my disagreement can't go much farther than not listening to their music.
Anyways, you guys must not be big Reagan fans because even he was a big proponent of the arts; I used a quote by him in my college essay. something along the lines of "a civilization is not so much remembered/recognized for the wars it waged or the might of its economy but rather for its cultural achievements."
Also, studies have shown that the bigger an arts scene a city has, the better its economy.
Shouldn't a private contractor actually be doing the playing?
I am a big proponent of the arts, that is why I want the government to stay THE HELL AWAY.
Great artists don't need, or want government help. It is the crappy artists, just like just about everything else, that needs government help.
Oh boy!
Another whine from the nickle bleechers of the PBS zone...
BTW how's that 'universal health care' nonsense coming along mark s?...ROFLMAO!
Marko, I don't think you know much about the arts then.
great artists don't need or want government help?
enlighten me on what and who counts as a great artist, then.
> also, obloodyhell, I'm sorry that you can't appreciate art.
Just like a liberal to have NO SENSE OF HUMOR about the whole thing.
I'm sorry, if you have to get the government to pay you to do it, your work isn't art, it's masturbation.
Art needs to appeal to people and, while it does not have to appeal to everyone, it does need to appeal to SOMEONE. Generally, it needs to appeal to enough people to support you in that work.
And perhaps, it is your lot in life to be one of art's unsung geniuses who are not discovered in their lifetimes.
What kind of ART is it, further, if you don't want to suffer for it? If you are not willing to be uncomfortable to be an artist?
Oooh! Oooh! I liiiiive for my art... but, no, I don't want to have to actually worry about the temperature in my flat. Or not have enough money to eat at Spago's...
Yeesh. Pansy-ass, empty-headed animal food-trough wipers.
:oP
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> Marko, I don't think you know much about the arts then.
and
> enlighten me on what and who counts as a great artist, then.
Oh, my. The mind just boggles at all the possible wise-ass responses. How to choose, how to choose....
Matt, there was plenty of Great Art created before governments themselves got involved, and there will be plenty of Great Art created without any help of any kind from the government.
That's not so say that artists should not have Patrons.
Patrons spend their own money to support an artist, and as such have both the right to do exactly that but also rein in some of the more ridiculous excesses possible when an artist is given carte-blanche: Consider the French Fries From Hell a wonderful piece of "art" which cost the State of Florida $200k, IIRC -- certainly more than $100k. Yeah, must've taken that "artist" at least a dozen minutes with pickup sticks and a hot glue gun to devise such a remarkable work of imagination, inspiration and artistic geeeeenyus.
But the government isn't spending its own money.
It's spending mine.
Money taken by force.
At gun point.
So, sorry -- I don't really see that as an appropriate use of governmental force.
And if you do, well, I have two words for you -- one starts with "f", the other with "o", and they might be followed with "... and die!". Also: don't be surprised if the exclamation point on that involves an appropriate use of non-governmental force.
Capisce?
S:-/
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> Also, studies have shown that the bigger an arts scene a city has, the better its economy.
Yes, let's completely reverse cause and effect, because it's the arts which make the economy so good, not the money from the economy which allows for the kind of taxation which is required to blow lots of bogus money on creating an "arts scene".
I don't even halfway mind such things, I was basically making fun of the lack of restraint in such funding, which often involves throwing money at people and letting them do any ridiculous thing they want and calling it "art".
But, like most liberals, you were abysmally unable to grasp the joke at all.
If you weren't so sad, Matt, it would be... funny.
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As far as "modern art" goes, I'll mention two things:
1) For the movie Pollock, Ed Harris got together the works Jackson Pollock created and displayed at his first major show. And he layed them out as much as possible as they were in that show, then panned the camera across the scene, giving you a view of someone at the show. And, artist that Harris was, you could see, I think, what people saw in Pollack's efforts... which was more than mere "splatter painting". So the problem with modern art is not just the lack of representationalism. There are plenty of good works and good artists who aren't doing what a photographer can do.
2) Sometime, IIRC, in the early 1990s, Discover magazine did a piece on "animal artists" -- they took these works of supposed art, created by "artistic" elephants, chimpanzees, and other animals, to "modern art critics", and asked for their opinions on the "art" thus created, without giving them any info about the artists.
...
The critics pretty much uniformly praised the works (dunno what happened to the responses of critics who panned them... LOL). Discover used this to promote the central idea of the piece -- that animals could create art, just as humans could.
...
What struck me was that it never, ever seemed to occur to them what this might say, instead, about "modern art".
Take from those two observations what you will. I have a low opinion of modern art, not because there is no value in any of it, but because, in my opinion, it's usually the artist who defines it as "art", not the viewers.
And therein lies the problem of "government support for the arts" -- *I*, who have admittedly very limited artistic talent can, if I find the right bureacrat to support me, get paid to be an "artist" -- no matter my lack of talent, no matter my lack of ability, no matter my lack of appeal. I can get paid solely because I either imagine myself to be good (i.e., worthy of support in my efforts), or because I'm a thief willing to steal from the government and fools like you who think good artists need to be supported.
A good artist is defined by their appeal. If you cannot appeal, then the message you imagine you are sending isn't getting sent. Sure, some people might miss it -- but if no one is seeing it? That's the artist, not the public.
Don't take that as a sop to pure populism -- but, yeah, if it's art, it's going to appeal to someone willing to pay for it themselves, out of their own pockets.
It's not impossible for a good, even a great, artist to create art with government support. But I don't believe it's all that common or that likely.
And by "government support", I certainly don't mean that an established artist can't produce artistic works for a government project. There are plenty of those since 1900. I'm talking about the vast majority of such stuff, much of it created in the last 50 years, from people you've never heard of, nor ever will, because, let's face it -- it ain't art.
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