Cutting the Arts

[ysabetwordsmith]

The Dumpling is now bragging about saving money by defunding government oil paintings.  Which is to say, cutting a vital support of the fine arts.  >_<  

Comments

Even more skeevey than that...

[capri0mni]

...This is the man who took $20,000 that donors paid in good faith to his bogus Trump Foundation (thinking they were supporting research into children's cancer) to buy a six-foot tall portrait of himself.

Paraphrasing Lady Paulina from The Winter's Tale:

I'll not call him 'tyrant,' but this egotistical greed something savors of tyranny that makes him scandalous to the world.

[lone_cat]

Also, Bill Cassidy had the gall to invoke the size of the debt as a reason for voting for this bill after having voted for the Reverse Robin Hood tax bill, which should drop his credibility on that issue into negative numbers.

Re: Even more skeevey than that...

[cmcmck]

"Why, but there's many a man who hath more hair than wit."

The Bard has it right so often! :o)

[arlie]

Official portraits of politicians are a vital support of the fine arts?

I guess I'm totally not plugged into either the artistic or the art-supporting communities.

I'd figured this was going to be about grants to artists etc. (Does the US even do them? Canada does, or at least did when I still lived there.)

Re: Even more skeevey than that...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I don't have a problem calling him a tyrant, as he meets the behavioral profile of one. While his rule is widely considered legal, it is tainted by all manner of misbehavior, from his hobby of violating women to the meddling of Russia. These contaminations, like his beliefs and personality, are also in keeping with those commonly found in tyrants.

Basically, if a character performs the techniques of a villain, I'll classify him as a villain, even if the author has labeled him a hero. That doesn't make him a hero. It makes him a villain the author is rooting for. Tyrants can be quite popular, although this is rare -- you have to watch out for the smarmy charmer subset, and not think they're all hated murderers.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Official portraits of politicians are a vital support of the fine arts? <<

They commission artists to paint the portraits and pay tens of thousands of dollars for each. That supports those oil painters. While I'm not a personal fan of politicians, I am enough of a historian to recognize the values of portraits to art, culture, and history. They show us who was valued, how those people dressed, what were the conventions of posing, the paints and techniques used at the time, etc. That's a valuable resource, even if many of the people portrayed are not the most upstanding members of society. And it allowed some number of people to be professional oil painters, which I see as a good thing.

>> I'd figured this was going to be about grants to artists etc. (Does the US even do them? Canada does, or at least did when I still lived there.) <<

That fluctuates over time. The United States has many stunning examples of public art, such as statues, memorials, and murals in famous buildings along with important paintings. But funding for artist grants, along with major commissions, has dwindled over time. I find this sad.

When we have great artists, we should put them to making art full-time, not force them to do work that other people could do and restrict art to a hobby or side job. I feel the same about writing and other great cultural endeavors. For fucksake, the history books are full of examples of starving creators who died in squalor but were later considered great. I'd really like to see people stop making this mistake, and really support creativity. Some other cultures in the past have managed it for some professions, so we know it can be done. Commissioning public art is a step in the right direction, by supporting civic artists.

Meanwhile, over in Terramagne ...

From my notes on T-America's budget:
The National Endowment for the Arts gets enough to merit an entry. It's 0.012% in L-America and 1.20% in T-America. So this is by far the biggest jump: T-America spends 100 times what L-America does. Why have starving artists when you can have public art and artists who can support themselves? Some of the funds go to enrichment programs such as scholarships and residencies, or to locations such as museums and artist colonies. However, much of the money pays for actual works of cultural material. Many of those works go straight into the public domain, either because the project parameters stipulate it from the beginning (much the same way government science projects typically free their data) or because the creators choose to release it that way. Primary fields include paintings (both canvas and building murals), sculptures, music, theatre (dances and plays), and literature.

Another feature of T-America is that most towns, even smallish ones, have at least one civic artist who makes things like park benches, bike racks, or murals. They usually have at least one writer who makes commemorative poems or prose for special occasions. That means when you go from one town to another, it's not all the same; there's a lot of interesting local variation to enjoy. Bigger cities employ whole fleets of creative people. If you go to River City, it's plastered with paintings of famous musicians, poetry about paddleboats, plays featuring its historic figures, and so on.

You can see a few examples in "From the Deepest Part of Ourselves." The True Blue Bikeshare has smartly painted bikes and corrals with sculptured bikers on them; it's part of the public transportation system supported by a combination of municipal funds, grants, and donations. The garden follies in Mill Creek Park commemorate a long-ago soup fight. There are statues of famous local people. Local newspapers support local (or state) writers and artists. The food truck park has picnic tables made from reclaimed wood, by volunteers, a different expression of public art. There are Little Free Libraries scattered around, a charming display of woodwork; some are made by volunteers, but in other cases the park service or a business owner has hired someone to make them. Real Live Writers is a storefront for creative writing, and the same people get hired by the town to do civic writing sometimes. They live and work downtown and everyone knows who they are. There are more examples in some other poems, too.

Any town can do that. Mine has a good six or eight murals scattered around. The hometown of Popeye has a magnificent trail of sculptures of the characters.

Re: Even more skeevey than that...

[capri0mni]

Well, in that scene, Lady Paulina is saying this directly to the king's face, and if she calls him "tyrant" to his face, in so many words, the king can order her killed on the spot and they both know it.

So she's saying: "I'll not call you tyrant... but based on your behavior (and how you're treating your wife), you sure stink like one, and everyone in the whole world can smell your $#-+iness."

Which is basically what I'm saying about the current squatter in the Oval Office. He may have been elected according to a narrow reading of the letter of the law, but everything he does and says STINKS to high Heaven of tyranny.

Here's the whole passage of her rebuke:

LEONTES

I'll ha' thee burnt.

PAULINA

I care not:
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in't. I'll not call you tyrant;
But this most cruel usage of your queen,
Not able to produce more accusation
Than your own weak-hinged fancy, something savours
Of tyranny and will ignoble make you,
Yea, scandalous to the world.

Re: Thoughts

[(Anonymous)]

You mention River City; is there a master list of L-America to T-America city correspondences? I know Easy City is New Orleans, and I'm pretty sure Eastbord is at least part of the BosWash Corridor, but other than that, I'm kinda stumped sometimes as to whereabouts a story is set.

--Jessica

[johnpalmer]

I dunno. I'd imagine tyrants start popular, for all the usual reasons.

Trump's rule probably isn't legal; the problem is, ordinary law enforcement and the courts aren't able to rein in a President who takes bribes, self-deals, conspires with foreign powers, and allows his people to profit directly and indirectly by his rule. That role is supposed to be taken on by Congress, but Congress isn't even pretending to care - not even holding sham investigations, in most cases.

This part - that Congress isn't even going through the motions - is what scares me most. I've seen numerous news stories mentioning, casually, that the GOP Congress doesn't want to harm their party by causing trouble for their President. That shouldn't be casual. That should be, like, "and Congress, whether due to cowardice, corruption, or cronyism, is completely ignoring the huge risks to all aspects of the national interest; never before has partisanship extended to this level, to the clear detriment to the nation and the rule of law."

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I dunno. I'd imagine tyrants start popular, for all the usual reasons. <<

The smarmy ones do. But some are all about brute force from the beginning. They attract a lot of followers who enjoy hurting other people -- juntas are basically large-scale bully rings.

>> Trump's rule probably isn't legal; the problem is, ordinary law enforcement and the courts aren't able to rein in a President who takes bribes, self-deals, conspires with foreign powers, and allows his people to profit directly and indirectly by his rule.<<

Sadly so.

>> That role is supposed to be taken on by Congress, but Congress isn't even pretending to care - not even holding sham investigations, in most cases. <<

Well, if they turned up hard evidence, they'd have to do something about that, and they don't want to.

>>That shouldn't be casual. That should be, like, "and Congress, whether due to cowardice, corruption, or cronyism, is completely ignoring the huge risks to all aspects of the national interest; never before has partisanship extended to this level, to the clear detriment to the nation and the rule of law."<<

Most journalists prefer to present themselves as more objective than that, instead of taking sides on an issue. This is sometimes a wise course, and other times destructive -- but it's usually the only option permitted in journalism classes. Learning when to stand the fuck up for an issue, and then write about that, is something students have to figure out on their own. There are, of course, partisan magazines and newspapers; but the bigger a venue, the more likely it tries to present itself as "balanced." Which may or may not be accurate.