Unless you consider variety to have its own value, which I do. I disagree with just about all of that post’s fundamental premises.
I don’t think society should discourage economic inefficiency, at least not beyond the inherent discouragement that comes with unprofitability; I agree that unprofitable activities shouldn’t be actively subsidized, but I don’t see why they should be actively suppressed either. If someone had a lot of money to burn and wanted to fund some vanity project with no real artistic value, or just decided to give money to writers and painters and filmmakers to do whatever they wanted even if it had no public appeal, I don’t see anything wrong with that. And if instead of one independently wealthy sponsor, it was several thousand fans contributing $20-50 each for a studio to make a new season of the trashy show they liked, all the better.
And I certainly don’t think that people would be meaningfully better off with a smaller variety of art to consume, even if it meant a higher proportion of better quality are. I consider plenitude of options to be a good thing in itself. Besides, quality is extremely subjective anyway, which means that at least some people would be left with less art that they personally consider enjoyable.
But the assertion that I find most objectionable is the idea that people waste too much time consuming art and media already. Let people do what they want.
Unless you consider variety to have its own value, which I do.
Yes, but does most new art really increase variety, in a broadly-acknowledged sense? It’s not at all clear that it does: even most of the OP is about how art- and design tendencies are getting more uniform rather than less, and variety is if anything being done away with. I think if we truly care about variety, by far the best bang for the buck is had by promoting availability of existing works from previous eras, and to some extent (especially in new media where there isn’t as much of a history to draw from) by specifically encouraging new art from less-represented geographical locales, social groups, political outlooks and the like. But this is not what usually happens when we subsidize new artworks.
That’s a fair point, and I agree with both of your solutions: We should promote the availability of works from past eras, and encourage more new art from underrepresented cultures and groups. But I don’t think there’s any need to discourage or reduce the creation of new art overall. There seems to be a concern that truly beautiful works of art will get buried under a flood of disposable pop culture trash and forever lost in the glut. I’ll admit there might be some truth to that, but for the most part, I think it’s a greatly overblown fear. Shining jewels are bright enough to stand out on their own merits.
Also, I don’t really want a world where all art is high art. There are times when I’m in the mood for low art, sometimes I just want to sit back and enjoy some shallow comedy or mindless action movie. I enjoy a good steak, but that doesn’t mean I never want to eat hamburgers or cold cuts again.
“Low vs. high art” is indeed a key dimension of variation, and both have a role to play in a complete arts ecosystem. For that matter, sometimes it is really hard to place works of art on the ″low vs. high” spectrum: for instance is a still life painting “low” or “high” art? Historically it was considered the lowest-status genre of them all in visual art, yet in practice, ‘still lifes’ heavily feature values such as symbolism and abstraction in their settings, that are very prominent, indeed even distinctive, features of “high” art!
Unless you consider variety to have its own value, which I do. I disagree with just about all of that post’s fundamental premises.
I don’t think society should discourage economic inefficiency, at least not beyond the inherent discouragement that comes with unprofitability; I agree that unprofitable activities shouldn’t be actively subsidized, but I don’t see why they should be actively suppressed either. If someone had a lot of money to burn and wanted to fund some vanity project with no real artistic value, or just decided to give money to writers and painters and filmmakers to do whatever they wanted even if it had no public appeal, I don’t see anything wrong with that. And if instead of one independently wealthy sponsor, it was several thousand fans contributing $20-50 each for a studio to make a new season of the trashy show they liked, all the better.
And I certainly don’t think that people would be meaningfully better off with a smaller variety of art to consume, even if it meant a higher proportion of better quality are. I consider plenitude of options to be a good thing in itself. Besides, quality is extremely subjective anyway, which means that at least some people would be left with less art that they personally consider enjoyable.
But the assertion that I find most objectionable is the idea that people waste too much time consuming art and media already. Let people do what they want.
Yes, but does most new art really increase variety, in a broadly-acknowledged sense? It’s not at all clear that it does: even most of the OP is about how art- and design tendencies are getting more uniform rather than less, and variety is if anything being done away with. I think if we truly care about variety, by far the best bang for the buck is had by promoting availability of existing works from previous eras, and to some extent (especially in new media where there isn’t as much of a history to draw from) by specifically encouraging new art from less-represented geographical locales, social groups, political outlooks and the like. But this is not what usually happens when we subsidize new artworks.
That’s a fair point, and I agree with both of your solutions: We should promote the availability of works from past eras, and encourage more new art from underrepresented cultures and groups. But I don’t think there’s any need to discourage or reduce the creation of new art overall. There seems to be a concern that truly beautiful works of art will get buried under a flood of disposable pop culture trash and forever lost in the glut. I’ll admit there might be some truth to that, but for the most part, I think it’s a greatly overblown fear. Shining jewels are bright enough to stand out on their own merits.
Also, I don’t really want a world where all art is high art. There are times when I’m in the mood for low art, sometimes I just want to sit back and enjoy some shallow comedy or mindless action movie. I enjoy a good steak, but that doesn’t mean I never want to eat hamburgers or cold cuts again.
“Low vs. high art” is indeed a key dimension of variation, and both have a role to play in a complete arts ecosystem. For that matter, sometimes it is really hard to place works of art on the ″low vs. high” spectrum: for instance is a still life painting “low” or “high” art? Historically it was considered the lowest-status genre of them all in visual art, yet in practice, ‘still lifes’ heavily feature values such as symbolism and abstraction in their settings, that are very prominent, indeed even distinctive, features of “high” art!