Comments on: CAPITAL CULTURE: Obama drops cautious arts policy

By: Morgan

Morgan — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:04:48 +0000

Even if some art might make some people want to do target practice on it so to speak because it revolts them, in the end we are not sufficiently competent to judge art. All of life can be art in some form and art does reflect life to some extent. Even if it may be tasteless and/or repulsive to some or to many. Or even if it looks like it was something that looks like it came from a 5 year old’s mind and not “expressing a whole lot of advanced so-called “talent”.

I had to learn years ago from an art teacher and artist who did some beautiful work that some art out on the lawn at the school where I was modeling for his art class at 28 years old that “look like a bunch of metal sticks stuck together” and maybe might look like “junk if on my front lawn” was still art. And to call it junk just because I preferred and still do to some degree very advanced classical style of art of Europe, India,etc would be the point of view of a Phillistine (a disrespecter of artistic endeavor) as he called my youthful and unknowledgeable remark about that metal sculpture.

I have since learned that even though I still much prefer such and such, someone else may have very different ideas. And who I am to condemn or to sneer at art, just because I don’t “always gravitate toward” everything I see in art. Art is not meant to please everyone and is not going to. Just becuase one can always choose what one wants to see and others will see what they want to see and meanwhile just keep try to keep an open mind about how others perceive art.

By: Christopher Lawrence

Christopher Lawrence — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:21:10 +0000

DaveW-
Although we are in agreement on many of your thoughts, your comments reek of eliteism and snobbery. Inclusion of ALL the arts is good. To judge any other perspective on what is art as “less than” is exactly what political conservatives use as fodder to show that we in the arts are too liberal and look down upon others who may have their own feelings about the subject. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Wherever each individual comes to the Arts should be lauded and used as a vehicle to help them learn to appreciate a wider range of artistic endeavors.
And yes, ALL aspects of the Arts should be exalted and shared with our youth.
Slamming an actor/actress for not living up to your standards does NOT promote the Arts, but rather discourages people from expanding their consciousness.

By: DaveW

DaveW — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:41:38 +0000

This is good to see but what I’ve witnessed in the admin’s choices, mirrored by what I see outside the beltway indicates we need to pay attention to ALL the arts.

In my current hometown, an old industrial city in the middle of a cultural resort area, civic leaders are earnestly elbowing each other out in the race to support economic growth via “the arts”. But here we call it culture, not the arts, a good thing because it isn’t.

Back at MIT 20 years ago a friend and I used to go get our “culture points”. We noticed so many Bostonians going to popular performances, musicals, populist art shows (the impressionists were drawing multi block lines at the time) etc and crowing all week about the culture they had absorbed so we made a joke of the entertainment they were seeing, trying to upgrade their social status by being “artsy”.

20 years later it seems we were on to a trend in which anything involving a group of people sitting in seats for a few hours is considered “the arts”.

There is nothing wrong with broadway theater and the ever popular but not very accomplished artistically musicals of course have a valid place in our entertainment spectrum.

But if we want to improve Americans’ appreciation of the arts, if we want our children to benefit developmentally from experiencing the arts and certainly if we want a vibrant and productive arts community for the benefit of this nation, I suggest we start focusing more on the fine arts in addition to the popular/entertainment types of performances that sadly today are seen as stand ins for the real thing.

My town has traveling musicals and silly painted cows downtown as its idea of “culture” and has stripped its museam of the fine Hudson Valley paintings that it was founded to house to make room for toys and posters. If the rest of America thinks sending kids to afternoon sing alongs aka broadway musicals is going to bridge the identified gap, they need to come here and see the empty seats.

And if the president thinks a poplular TV actress or broadway producer is the best appointee to figure this out, it seems we have failed before even starting.