So all of your versions are ok and coexist. There is a market for your turd, for people-art and for you elite-driven art and for many others.

In other words... No, if you can't attract and audience, there is no funding. But there is an audience for many things.

I don't disagree with you. But I do think that this is a really bad model for funding video games creation, and gives us the worst of both worlds: indie developers are struggling and don't create their best games because they can't afford to, while AAA developers rip us off with mtx and loot crates because they're not in it to make money not great games.

So I'd argue that we should try to avoid this for the art world ;) And if we can, find a better way of funding video game creation while we're at it.

A lot of the best art in history has been done because of rich people's money and influence. No doubt the 'urinals are art' crowd would disagree with that though.

In other words most of the grand artistic works people point to as being funded by "rich people" were funded by public wealth controlled by those "rich people".

They may have more money, but they're statistically the same Spotify/YouTube/TV slop addicted zombies as the class under them, perhaps with just a little less sportsball and more vapid traveling to "discover ze world and culture and stuff <3".

Just because rich people used to be the only source of arts funding doesn't make them the best source of arts funding.

wouldn't have happened without rich people's money and influence.

The difference is that today, civil servants/"democratic" structures/the "free" "market", through intent or fate, are also some of the powerful ones.

The point would be to find a structure of power that allows each and every one to express themselves fruitfully for/to the whole.

Paper mache turds are gauche. Real artists produce works that are extensions of themselves, capturing the very essence of their being. The texture should be genuine and the scent unmistakably original. True art requires a visceral connection, formed through a process of personal excavation. It's about creating something so authentic, viewers can practically taste the artist's commitment.

Slovenia has I think a pretty good solution to this: If you are registered as an independent artist, don't have a full-time job, and fulfill some reasonable criteria for being active (art exhibitions per year, poems published, etc), then the government pays you minimum wage. You are welcome and encouraged to freelance (or make royalties) for more.

It's basically UBI for the arts.

I'd much rather "throw money away" at the arts rather than waste more money on self-driving cars, fintech, going to Mars, or whatever else the Bay Area thinks will make the world a better place.

By all means, donate to your local artist. Tech gets all of this funding because it produces tangible results, tech provides what people ask for. Piss Christ, however ... well, give money to the artist if it pleases you.

There's a sculpture park not too far away from me. It has very large metal polygons, gently rusting. It certainly fits my modern art criteria: is it ugly? Is it incomprehensible?

And then comes the question of "What do you get out of this particular bit of art?" The standard defense is "anything you like." Which sounds great until you realize that only one piece of art is ever required, the rest being superfluous. That one piece is "anything you like," which is congruent with any other piece's identical "anything you like." No need for anything else.

With these sorts of things, modern art is backing itself into a corner. It isn't surprising that people aren't eager to open their wallets.

I reiterate my comment. Scientists and engineers get billions of dollars of other peoples' money, both private and public.

Regarding the rest of your comment, art is not the arts. The arts include theater, music, dance, etc.

Somehow, this is the only justification we can get anyone to agree on in the modern world. Should we educate kids? "Sure, as long as its STEM so they can be good taxpayers."

Come to think of it, this is also often the justification for art. Should I buy this piece? "Of course, it will gain in value"

"because it'll make me happy"

"why not just buy this lovely [painting/poem/record] instead, it'll directly give you joy"

The National Endowment for the Arts' budget is less than $200 million. Here's the approximate budgets for scientists and engineers:

* NASA: $23 billion

* NSF: $10 billion

* DARPA: $4.3 billion

* DoD: $780 billion (a lot of which goes to defense contractors and laboratories)

* The self-driving car industry has spent around $50 billion. And what have we got out of that industry that justifies that spending?

* Cryptocurrency startups are expected to get around $12 billion in funding in 2024. What have we got out of it that justifies that budget?

* Scientists got $5 billion dollars to smash around particles and play with statistics.

When it comes to funding, scientists, engineers, and tech-related endeavors have it extremely easy, and no one places the demands on the tech industry that they do on other industries.

But I think that would be comparing apples with oranges. If we make art with the same motivations that produce tech, is it still art?

it's more a reflection of modern business than anything else. you can objectively lay out a market analysis, profits projection, etc. and get a guaranteed minimum users. Those are things businesses love to hear.

For Art, You can in fact do all the things above too. But the market analysis has less confidence because because art itself is a premium. Someone can say they want X art, but if times get hard or moods shift, it's the first thing to be discarded.

It's really hard to build in a "need" for a specific art like it is tech. That manipulation is sadly a big part of business.

Let the public decide, and you get popular art. Let the rich people decide, and you get whatever art the elites value. And also have some public funding, and you get the kind of art experts and some politicians value.

Other areas are not so subjective.

You can have whatever subjective response to art you'd like, but whether your response should be considered as serious insight and commentary into the structure, context, and significance of that art depends on how much time you've spent studying the field and honing your ability to read artworks.

If the only music someone listens to is top 40, I don't think I care very much what they have to say about Bartok. If the only paintings someone is familiar with are the Mona Lisa and Van Gogh, they're not qualified to speak about an Imhof painting. Someone wearing Walmart doesn't have anything interesting to say about Demna. You get the idea.

I think the common response to this is that it is elitist and exclusionary... But we are elitist and exclusionary in most other fields too. Nobody would listen to the engineering opinions of someone who can't name a programming language. Art is more experiential, sure, but not all experience or cognition that arise from experiences is of equal insight.

Firstly, lots and lots of people use government-engineer built apps. I pay for the products of government engineering contracts every time I tap my phone to enter the subway. Car commuters use it every time their plate is scanned to cross a government-built bridge. Often the same companies that carry out government, tax-payer funded contracts are also taking on contracts in the open market.

Governments fund non-profits like art museums because these institutions, while existing within the free market, provide a public good that most agree ought to be as accessible as possible. To that end, the non-profit model allows for museums to guide themselves based on an ethical mission (usually having to do with providing accessible art and culture) rather than a profit-driven market strategy. They are still private, so the board has autonomy from government oversight, but they have tax structures and funding structures that position them as utilities rather than business ventures.

Museums, like for-profit ventures, still compete for funding, they still compete for relevance and cultural capital, and they are still beholden to providing a service that people care about. Fantasizing about slashing government budgets doesn't really make sense here. The government is taking money from people to fund museums because if we all pay $100 a year to arts funding in our taxes, we get to go see sculptures from 2500 years ago in a palatial building attached to a giant park for free... Without group buy in, that same experience might be stratified to only the very wealthy.

You seem to think it is politicians deciding what art people see. In reality, it is arts experts pitching the relevance of their expertise to secure funding and outputting culturally significant material to justify their existence in the same way software engineers make themselves appealing for government contracts.

It can be argued that tax deductions for donations make sense, if the government is already using money for similar purposes. You then get a greater effect from the tax money, at the expense of losing control over it. But if it's not the government's job to support the arts, then all donations to the arts should be made with after-tax money.

Except that civil servants are making those choices with money they took forcibly from people that don't have a real/significant say in the matter of the taking or what the takings are spent on. In kind it makes it much worse than any decision made by "rich folks". Sure some may agree with those bureaucratic choices, but others are simply giving their cash for no return in value.

And many of those laws are forcibly denying people from access to something when it is declared "private property".

These institutions are also constantly dependent on grants and budgets that need to be approved by the elected government.

The lack of flexibility can be a bit oppressive at times, and there can be severe penalties for ignoring rules, even on small protocol lapses, since they are the law. But it's mostly fine in practice, it's not a significant bottleneck to efficiency.

The result is that public education is generally much higher quality than private education. Private ones just tend to be for students with grades that are not high enough to get in a competitive public programme, not that they are very competitive, there's plenty of room. The qualifications required from professors also tend to be much higher in public education than in private, and they get more room to breathe to focus on their specialized courses and research, whereas private professors are overworked and used in areas they are not qualified in.

And the difference between the top and bottom educational institutions is so negligible that top-performing students can happily stay local and be successful. Perhaps there is a difference in the network you might acquire, but not in the quality of education.

It's all navel gazing, entrenched interests and nepotism. Effectively the art sector is given tax money to perpetuate their own interests with limited democratic control.

Generally subsidising art properly seems like such a fundamentally hard problem. I think a good policy would be to balance how much is given to popular art, fringe art and academic art, and have very different criteria to judge their merit.

I think they all have value, and I cannot see a better way of making decisions about "academic" art unless it is by their peers, however elitist that is. This can be counterbalanced by promoting some popular art, which is judged against its, well, broad popularity, a bit more democratic, but that has plenty of perverse incentives too. And what about "fringe" art? The truly innovative stuff. There is really no way to judge the merit of that by contemporaries, so perhaps we should prioritize helping people that can prove their commitment to an artsy lifestyle and have consistent output, whatever it is, as long it is not too derivative.

But think about what actually democratic art subsidising would be, having elected officials only in charge of it: effectively propaganda for the party that is currently in power.

There is a similar problem with funding science, which I believe is much more dangerous and has an enormous impact. You either have peer committees judging scientific merit by whatever criteria they feel is valid with no accountability, or you focus on performance metrics (citations, papers in reputable journals...), or again you have unqualified elected officials making rather arbitrary decisions based on public perception. They are all kind of terrible, it's such a hard problem. I guess the solution, again, is counter-balancing the terribleness of each option against the others, which is kind of what we are doing now. And it is terrible, but it kind of consistently works, quite inefficiently. But relative to what? Is there something better?

That's the whole reason why subsidies are a thing, and they are extremely effective for all kinds of common good. Indeed, that's the whole point of governments generally, to enforce the common good that falls through the cracks of market dynamics (and well, to ensure a fair market in the first place).

https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.h...

Second, taxes are not a gift or donation, nor is the government just taking them from you. They are payment for services. It's true that you are locked into a business transaction with the government, but it's meant to be a fair exchange. And unless you are incredibly wealthy, you have a favorable rate in the sense that the services you receive are worth more than what you're paying for.

it's peer pressure. Just because the force isn't voilence doesn't mean there isnt a reinforcement structure.

> They are payment for services.

so back to the art grants - are they services the citizens really want?

Do you have an alternative idea we could easily disabuse you of?

Instead we have an economy that is ruthless about costing as much as everybody can afford, and a culture that when there's more resources wants more and bigger stuff, leaving little surplus for culture, which often has to be funded with ads and grift because it is counterintuitive to fund it directly.

at least we've still got government-backed culture like arts councils and grants ... without that we'd be even more desperate.

but if you want a lot more art, make food, rent, education, and healthcare affordable, so that people have time and resources left over and don't feel the financial anxiety of capitalism breathing down their neck.

This is how we get productions like the planet-of-the-apes-meets-star-wars Rigoletto, which played to empty seats at one of the biggest theaters in Germany for years because it was so effective at getting grant money.

Ideally you need both. Attracting and holding an audience is an artistic value, and should be a driver for support. Convincing a neutral outsider with no context is also a useful measure, for art that may not be commercially appealing. Even Nepotism and elitism select for certain dimensions of artistic quality.

Going all in on one system or another is a recipe for cultural death. It's been clear since the ancient Greeks that there is no single definition of "quality", least of all in the arts. A plurality of support mechanisms is needed.

We don't. Individuals do.

Attempts to arrive at an objective notion of good are always motivated by a desire to extract rents from the group. Got 'em with the ole "greater good" trick.

Otherwise we’d get Walmarts all over the place