@Indy
"Did I touch a nerve?"
No nerve touched, just strong conviction.
"Don't know if all these artists I see in New York would agree with you."
Many can't see in themselves the truth and that often goes double with artists. I've traveled in artist circles here where I am, from school to school and I continually see people who don't live in the real world, on someone else's dollar without a thanks or an acknowledgement and often adding insult or disgust against society. Some of them are nice people and can be fun to be around, but they're horrible artists and aren't worth a dime, yet they are never denied scholarships, tools, materials and a toleration that few others ever get. I have not been impressed with them on the whole whether it be their works or their character and there are thousands in my area alone.
"On the whole, they are malnourished, living in relatively impoverished enclaves but are quite ingenious with making do."
Their choice, not mine to support them.
"They make their "art" (I have no way of knowing whether it is or isn't "art"."
If you can tell me what food is, you can tell me if something is art or not. I don't like Mexican food, but I can tell you it is food. I don't ever want to try someone's excrement and I can certainly tell you that isn't food. The same way with art. I may not like all of it, but there is a difference between art and crap.
"I don't know where these loafer artists may be but they certainly not here."
You're either overestimating them or you tolerate an awful lot.
"If we only promote as "art" things that "people like to see," what do we get? Do we get Grant Wood's American Gothic or do we get the Addams Family?"
I just learned a lot about you from your choices you gave me. But as to what people want to see ... Of the works in museums the majority were made originally for private individuals to use, to enjoy or to own themselves. Whether a clay pot with an ornate design from 3000 BC Mesopatamia, a commissioned portrait for a merchant or a Monet painting, these things were purchased by individuals originally.
An true artist has a choice in how to do his art. Either make something and hope it sells or be commissioned to do works. As most fall into the first category, they take onto themselves the risk of what might and might not sell. There are certainly going to be some who try to cater to the mainstream with dull originality, as do movies and television that want to make a buck. But it doesn't mean that the truly gifted artists won't be able to make their works. People do recognize the difference between quality art and targeted martketing. To think otherwise is to underestimate normal people.
What people want to see doesn't automatically transfer to safe, unoriginal art as your post would lead me to believe. There are lots of people who love art and do pay for it. And there is no excuse for artists not to be able to make it on their own these days with all the variable options for selling their art: Originals, serigraphs, lithographs, glicees, molds, fabrications etc. There are more ways today to sell the same work over and over again than ever before. Not to mention the vast more resources they have to distribute their work.
Other industries of life naturally weed out the great doers from the poor ones. We go to this restaurant because their food is good, we don't go to that one because their food is bad, it's called discriminating tastes. Thus after time, the poor restaurant will be gone as it cannot survive with its poor quality. By some vast support system from undiscriminating govermental dollars the low-quality artists, for the most part, are allowed to remain bad artists and keep taking regardless of not having an audience for their work. The system of how we as a society decide things is undermined so that we are not allowed to whittle out the crap.
Sir S
