Abolish Arts Council and its ‘Left-wing, woke agenda’ say critics
Leading art commentators argue funding body’s priorities are ‘political, not artistic’ and ‘hostile’ to majority ‘taste and values’
Only the first three words matter. The why is irrelevant, it’s this that matters:
Abolish Arts Council
Amen!
‘hostile’ to majority ‘taste and values’
Well duh. That’s why these arists need subsidising, because no one in the real world will pay for them.
As some one in the industry put it to me , grant funded art is either still so expensive you can’t go and see it or so bad you don’t want to. Pretty much by definition there’s no need to fund art people want and can afford.
I can see the need for public funding of some arts. Such as galleries and museums. But not the creation of art. None of the great works of art in galleries and museums was created with public money. So why now?
And privatise art galleries and musea and close down zoos, particularly the one in Westminster.
It has always been thus…
The classic artists made things that suited the taste of their patrons. And made a living that way. The ones that didn’t were piss-poor, if they lived.
With the Coucil of Arts, the patron has changed. The necessity to produce stuff they like to see hasn’t.
There’s plenty of art made in the classic way, but that stuff isn’t public. And quite often a hella lot cheaper than anything commisioned by Committee.
Peeps make stuff, put it online/show it at markets, and sell it. Because people like what they see and are willing to pony up the money the artist asks for it.
Even a poor bastard-on-benefits like me owns a couple of paintings and other art. Because I like what they are, and they were ..affordable.. at the time. A couple of those artists now sell internationally, so may have been a good “bet” on their early work.
But I just like them paintings.
Many many years ago a local jewellers was closing down. I happened to be standing outside at the bus stop and noticed they had a (reproduction) of one of my great-great-great-great-uncle’s works. I scraped together all of that week’s dole and bought it off them.
Abolish— and replace with a few rich pseuds such as Saatchi as arbiters of taste.
The ones that didn’t were piss-poor, if they lived.
Grikath has given me an idea. Why not divert Arts Council grants into building garretts so that artists can die in peace of consumption or laudanum overdoses ?
I regret to say “abolish” is probably right. There might be a few niches where I could make a rather lame case for continuing but it would be far more sensible just to abolish the lot. Anyway, it’s all just another huge subsidy to London of the sort that, I assume, is always carefully excluded from the official calculations of which parts of the country subsidise which.
Keep art galleries, I say, but scatter the best works around the country. Where I grew up the only way to see good paintings involved a long drive over the hills, which in winter could be a bugger. And it’s winter when you fancy visiting a gallery – in summer you should be out of doors anyway.
Happily there was good sculpture available not too far away, on the hither side of the hills, because a wealthy local landowner had plonked some lovely statues out on a bit of lowish moorland for anyone to go and enjoy. Bless him. Alas, the general decline of civility since my boyhood meant that some ratbags stole one work and so all but two of the rest had to be removed and locked up for safety.
Sculpture really is stuff you want not just to look at but to touch. Bastard tinks! (If it was tinks who stole it.)
Maybe a replacement for the Arts Council could involve itself only with meeting the insurance and security costs of encouraging individuals and institutions to make their stuff available for the enjoyment of the masses. The beauty of that idea is that it would ne dead easy to try a small scale experiment first.
What, I hear you say, a cultured chap like dearieme doesn’t want classical concerts – for instance – subsidised. Yup. Listen to a recording! For Beethoven I recommend the recordings of Herbie von Carryon and his Berlin Rhythm Kings.
In my doubtless biased view the only music that gains from live performance is opera and jazz. I don’t know that anyone subsidises jazz on any scale and I don’t really see a good enough reason to subsidise opera – which will almost always, I repeat, mean opera in London anyhow. I think the overture to the Marriage of Figaro is one of the most uplifting things I know – but you can get it free off the internet. We wouldn’t dream of paying some chap to paint copies of Rembrandt and Turner so why pay singers and orchestras to produce a simulacrum of the music of Old Vienna?
And after you leave behind Beethoven and Mozart, Bach and Haydn, and the rest of the boys, you are left with subsidies to the dire, talentless crap passed off as “art” these days. The hell with it.
Why does one need a council to create art, of all things? It doesn’t make sense that the government robs taxpayers to allow one artist to build a giant knob statue, while denying another artist his permit to build a giant knob statue.
I take it you are a stranger to the joys of the mosh pit dearieme…
Wot’s a mosh pit, oh wise one?
A mosh pit is the area directly in front of the stage where the more lively members of the audience show their appreciation for the amplified live music they are enjoying through the medium of interpretive dance. Although it does rather look like a playground fight.