The kind of art he supports already gets plenty of funding. No one seriously expects MOMA or the Met Opera to go bust any time soon.
Patreon is a successful alternative for relatively small-scale public-supported art. Of course it reflects public tastes. That's what it's for.
Or what once was known as "refinement". It's not like high/low culture is some kind of settled issue, and everybody agrees that it's "all the same"...
>The kind of art he supports already gets plenty of funding. No one seriously expects MOMA or the Met Opera to go bust any time soon.
Isn't that part of the author's point? In that the MOMA or Met Opera's funding are quite distinct from what the masses fund (and from what the masses consume). Not to mention that museums shouldn't be where the culture is consumed, that's where already established culture goes to die.
I think the author gives us a hint about what is ordinary:
"They tend not to be representations of noble ambition, or of a classical or romantic vision of how human beings might achieve greatness."
As an aside and don't take this personally - perhaps your question was actually "I am sure what they mean but I'm trying to disagree" ? Or perhaps it's "I wouldn't be able to make the decision if I had to do it"? I never know about this use of language. It's like asking "I don't understand why someone would vote for X" when the question is really about them actually understanding and wanting to state ones opposition to it? That type of question is not asking the reader "help me understand", right? It's confusing to me.
> a classical or romantic vision of how human beings might achieve greatness
How does a singer-songwriter provide this but not the minecraft shader guy? Is there something I'm missing?
This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent?
This article is weird and full of stereotypes; it's written from the point as if art was easily and objectively classifiable. No, art is not classifiable like that, and something that one man calls everyday trash can be eye-opening and mind-blowing to another. This fact alone disproves the main assumption that this article is based on, and breaks the point of the whole article for me.
I've only heard the 'art is subjective' defense from people with uncultivated tastes. Myself, I don't know much about chemistry, and something I don't do is wander into conversations with chemists and expect my unfounded opinion to be anything other than a nuisance to them. When it comes to art, for some reason, people who haven't done their homework nonetheless expect their opinion to matter.
Because else you're in an endless loop, where you define what you like by what you like.
It is (or, perhaps, it has been) generally understood, that being schooled into things, learning about them, their history, aesthetic rivalries and ideas abotu them, and appreciating the cultured opinions of people who have studied them more, helps one appreciate finer things and cultivate their preferences.
The alternative, "because I like it", sounds like a regression to childhood.
I find it worthwhile to listen to people who describe what touches them and what they are indifferent to. However, the tone of the article describes the "mundane" and the "extraordinary" from an objectivesque point of view, which I personally find silly due to the fact that art is an inherently subjective experience.
I don't think that's settled. For that matter, I don't think that's true.
Like how there’s good code and shit code.
100 years from now, this guy’s socio-economical equivalents will criticize whatever is popular then while revering the lost transcendent beauty of Minecraft shaders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just let people enjoy things. I’ve also found that making things yourself is much more rewarding than telling people that they shouldn’t enjoy what they enjoy.
The saving grace I think are podcasts. There is some authentic intellectual stuff going on there, it's a renaissance medium that humanises debate and invites nuance and complexity.
How about just looking at Hollywood box office numbers? A Michael Bay explosion spectacle makes way more money than some insightful art house movie dealing with complex issues.
We don't.
We spend huge amounts of energy and time trying to convince each other that our needs are whats best for everyone else.
In reality, people and their needs are on as wide a spectrum, as the needs of a cactus and a banyan tree. And it doesn't end there, those needs change with time and context.
I didn’t find the author criticism the artists as much as their subject matter. Talking about Elon Musk or nuclear technology or philosophy is transcendent. Talking about the everyday life of a Charleston crab fisher is ordinary.
I like both! But I agree that pop culture fetishises the latter while looking down on the former. (It reminds of of revolutionary France, dialled down orders of magnitude.) I also agree that a healthy culture embraces both.
Virtue signalling in popular culture increasingly looks down on transcendent subjects as out of touch. It’s an interesting recapitulation of classical virtue signalling, e.g. eschewing rock for the opera.
This information could also help make the author's point -- depending on the quality of said "cultural zeitgeist".
> It is between those who believe in aspiring to something greater and those who do not. (...) something greater and grander than everyday life.
So "transcendent" would mean "concerning things that are not common encounters in daily life".
What they do not properly motivate, in my opinion, is why that would be better ("high") than focusing on ordinary life. I wonder if they're also turned off by Impressionism?
Because you need to wait for the generation who enjoyed his work during collage to be the political / social elite.
Take https://www.patreon.com/sonicether who earns $50k a month creating shaders for Minecraft. That sounds mundane until you realise that he's probably enabling tens of thousands of people to create transcendent art from the comfort of their homes.
He doesn't think much of the artists creating comics either. Maybe he thinks only artists that display their work in galleries are "real" artists. Personally I think artists like Bill Watterson and Randall Munroe have done more to push the cultural zeitgeist than any artist in the last 30 years.
If you want to appreciate your fine classical works in a museum while listening to an orchestra and sipping your Pinot Noir, that's fine. But I think it's incorrect to presume to know what "real" culture is and labeling everything else "ordinary".