[wtcactus]

Art and culture have always existed - and one may very well argue, it existed in much richer forms than most of the dubious "art" produced today.

Society never needed to hand out money to every self-proclaimed artist for art to thrive.

[racktash]

Some art produced today is good, some bad. Subjectivity will mean people disagree. It has ever been so.

But the idea that art / artists don't require money isn't my read of history.

When you go to an art museum in, say, London, you'll find lots of fantastic paintings depicting religious themes. Were artists of the time fixated only on the religious aspects of life? No doubt religion was more important, but the real consideration was that patronage came once from the Church.

[wtcactus]

Nothing against patronage, but this is none of it.

Patronage chooses the best artists available to produce art for the patron. This measures grant money to self-proclaimed artists and are not based on merit.

[racktash]

I get where you're coming from. I would be a bit annoyed if, for instance, taxpayer money went to artists painting white-paint-on-white-canvas non-paintings or recording silence as a form of music. The trouble is that it's hard to measure / assess "merit" beyond extreme cases like I've listed. To illustrate: there are plenty of movies that were panned by critics of their time only to later become "cult classics".

[wtcactus]

Well, that's an interesting point you raise. I see it as critics using to have some "skin in the game". They used to be either recognized artists themselves or later the patrons, or someone that was paid by the patrons to critic works and find the best artists to work for the patrons (I see that part a bit like the people that today search for young talents for big football (i.e. soccer) teams).

With the democratization of art that followed the subsidizing with public money of artists an all new class of people was born. One that didn't really have that same "skin in the game" but had at their disposal money that wasn't theirs to distribute as they saw fit.

I believe that gave rise to situations like you mention. Yes, there are a lot of excellent movies that were destroying by early critics (not saying that didn't happen before, I'm very well aware of great music compositions being ruined because some monarch didn't like the opening concert). The thing is, why do we let (and keep letting) those critics to be some kind of gate keepers of art?

Here is some interesting read about the history of art critics: https://www.artrewards.net/editorial/the-evolution-of-art-cr...

[account42]

So what you're saying is that we should all pay to produce more art that shows the government in a positive light, aka propaganda?