[rollei_list] Re: OT Artistic Voices (was Re: OT Mapplethorpe)
- From: Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 19:31:45 -0500
Marc, no man is in a position to sit in judgment of anyone's patriotism. And
you are dead wrong about Jacoby; the right happily embraces him:
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5669/jeff-jacoby-has-it-wrong-on-newspaper-bias
And you have not read what I have written, as I expressly said that the
question of public versus private funding of the arts was an open one for
me. And, as you now realized, you have mischaracterized the process by which
NEA grants are given.
As for your other opinions, let's just say I'm grateful that patriots such
as us believe in majority rule, and that your views are about as minority as
they come. But if you expressed them in an artistic and interesting way, I'd
sure support your right to put them out there and have them exhibited...
Eric Goldstein
--
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> At 04:25 PM 3/8/2010, Eric Goldstein wrote:
>
>> Your thoughts remind me of the recent protestations of a great American
>> Tea Partier, "get your government hands off my Medicare." It seems you have
>> no hesitation about being the arbiter of what is worthwhile and what is not.
>> OTOH I enjoy seeing our money being spent in ways which you and I find
>> loathsome via our American Democracy in action. You see I am a patriot.
>>
>> As for the lefty leanings of Jeff Jacoby, that's alternative universe
>> stuff. Jacoby came from the untra Righty Boston Herald before the Glode made
>> him their Conservative in Residence, and his right of Attila The Hon rants
>> over the decades are legendary...
>>
>
>
> Eric, you certainly appear to be no patriot. You simply seem to me to be
> yet another person intent on taking MY money to advance your own private
> agenda. Not very nice, old boy, not very nice at all.
>
> No one on the right seems to regard Jacoby as anything but a Leftie-Loonie,
> Eric. The Boston Herald was quite left of center and could only be regarded
> as being right-wing when compared to the Bolshevik Globe. Calling yourself
> a Conservative does not make you one, nor does being endorsed as such by an
> organ of the Comintern such as the Globe. And no one out here in Flyover
> Land has ever heard of Jacoby.
>
> As a side note, if it were up to me, I would eliminate Medicare, Social
> Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, and a
> lot of other agencies. I would sell off the National Parks and the National
> Forests. I would restrict the Federal government to its four mandated
> roles, that of providing for a common foreign policy, a common defence, a
> common currency, and protecting the individual rights of the citizens.
> Beyond that, the States may do as they wish: if Massachusetts wishes to
> pay for an Art Museum, more power to them. Just don't hope to steal MY
> money to pay for YOUR museum!
>
> Art is intensely personal and there just is nothing universal about it.
> For starters, I doubt that 5% of the USian polity really care much about
> Art beyond velvet posters of Elvis, paintings of dogs playing cards, and
> Super Bowl and NASCAR art. And of the 5% who do claim an appreciation of
> art, I suspect that 4% are just sucking up to their betters. So, why tax
> 100% of the folks for the benefit of 1%? Hardly sounds like a proper goal
> for a popular government, does it, Patriot Eric?
>
> At the least, Medicare is a universal program involving every US citizen
> and resident alien. Public funding of art is NOT a universal program: it
> is a program which forces the entirety to pay for the benefit of the very
> few.
>
> Nevil Shute set out a part of my attitude most wonderfully when he
> commented in THE FAR COUNTRY on paintings "praised by critics who really
> should have known better". I am not attracted to visual art in any form --
> the only D grade I achieved in college was in an "art appreciation" course,
> the sort of slide course taken by the jocks to pump up their grade point
> average. I do not see the distinction between the products of, say, Eisie
> or Capa and the products of the average camera-jockey on a daily paper. I
> do like photography but I only wish to please myself: I have no interest in
> producing a print which would garner a reaction from you, as your opinion of
> my work is of no interest to me. And I cap this position of disinterest by
> promising NOT to reach for your pocketbook to pay me for my personal hobby.
>
> In the end, art is such an intensely private matter as to have no universal
> norms by which it can be judged. You can establish construction standards
> for highways and aircraft but you cannot establish such standards for art.
> If you cannot reduce it to a mathematical formula, the engineers claim, it
> is not real. And, so, a picture that YOU might like I might find of no
> worth at all. So, why should you be entitled to steal MY money to pay for
> pictures you like? Again, not very nice, old boy, not very nice at all.
>
> I really had thought Garrison Keillor had put the public funding of art to
> bed with his broad and very sarcastic tales of "Bob: A Starving Artist" on
> A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. If a Leftie like Keillor has no respect for the
> public funding of art, why should you?
>
>
> Marc
>
>
>
> msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
>
> ---
> Rollei List
>
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