Every economy in history contained elements of trickle-up and trickle-down. Wealthy ruling classes used taxation and outright slavery to confiscate the labors of the poor. Taxation is the origin and the essence of trickle-up. Trickle-up is the same today. Not so with trickle-down.
Patronage was the origin and essence of trickle-down; i.e., wealthy, powerful, individuals supported artists, architects, and superior craftsmen. In controlled economies trickle-up replaced whatever benefits trickle-down offered. Trickle-up in controlled economies funds the mediocre under the guise of equality. That is where I have one slight disagreement with George Will:
Socialists practice trickle-up as seen in the Stock Market. Socialists never engage in trickle-down in a positive sense. Socialists/Communists cater to the mediocre and call it art, talent, or whatever, but the things they create are garbage. Musicians who make noise not music; painters who crap on a piece of canvas and sell it as art; sculptors who weld junk together then install their eyesores in public places; writers who acquire master’s degrees in English —— then say nothing of value; actors who cannot speak the language; passion plays written and produced for Hollywood by dirty little propagandists —— then passed off great artistic endeavors, and on and on it goes.
Artistic jokes
Photography is art? Photographers snap pictures with a mechanical device and call it art when, in fact, photography is a craft at best. If there is one private sector income group that gives Socialism’s game away, it is those photographers who are hailed as artists rather than artisans.
Socialists/Communists wasted no time hailing photographers as artists because an endless supply of one image that can be reproduced and sold over and over again.
On a more mundane level, the thing about high-priced snapshots sold by art galleries that always puzzled me is what happens to the negatives? At least if you purchased a Picasso you knew he was not going to run off a few more “originals” after he had your money in his pocket. And can anyone honestly see any of today’s photographs selling at any time in the future for 50 million plus in today’s dollars?
The joke is that photographers take pictures of true art. Somehow a photograph of the Grand Canyon, or Michelangelo’s David, implies that the guy who took the picture is an artists, too.
The camera never lies
In fact, the camera never does anything but lie just like Socialists. Movie and television cameras combined with sound to create the greatest propaganda apparatus ever known. Even the still photo is often combined with printed text to promote a Socialist lie. True art and true artists cannot be bent to fit a lie.
Question: Do you consider motion pictures an art form? If you answer yes then movies must be defined as organized art at worst, or collaborative art at best. More to the point, who is the artist? Is it the writer, the director, the actor, the film editor, the cameraman, the producer, the prop man? Note that the makeup artist used to be the only person in the industry that was called an “artist.”
There is no doubt that the television camera is the most destructive purveyor of lies attached to images ever invented. Before TV there was photography. I used to think that it was the violence portrayed in moving pictures that was corroding society. Violence on film is a contributing factor, but the lasting harm is that photography has become the arbiter of physical beauty. A two dimensional image of photogenic women is now the standard defining female magnificence. Women who buy makeup because they think they will look like an airbrushed photograph after applying the stuff would be better off spending their money taking a course in reality.
Plain Janes who photograph well are worshiped irrespective of their personalities. Even those show biz women who are so unattractive nothing can improve their photo images are said to possess an inner-beauty that only the camera, and the cameraman, can see.
The paparazzi are a hybrid. The pictures provided by the paparazzi sell newspapers and magazines not products. Paparazzi make a buck selling pictures of the good, the bad, and the ugly captured in unguarded moments.
Cinematographers are supposed to be artists and TV cameramen are supposed to be artisans; that supposedly puts them a notch above the paparazzi. In truth, the three are only separated by obituaries; the death of a well-known cinematographer is reported far and wide; the other two depart unlamented.
Every once in a while a cinematographer screws up and a Hollywood beauty is caught on film in less than a flattering angle. It is in those few fleeting frames that the physical truth registers in the subconscious minds of the viewers. Call it unintended subliminal coverage.
It has been said that men fall in love with their eyes. If there is any truth to that old chestnut a lot of men are having sex with photographs.
Bottom line: There are a few “great beauties” who are so repulsive in person they would make the Frankenstein monster go gay.
Exterior decorators
Christo (1935 –) and Jeanne-Claude (1935 - 2009) are listed among collectivism’s greatest artists. I always saw them as frustrated interior decorators hanging drapes outdoors. They are best-known for creating environmental works of art whatever the hell that means. All I ever saw was colorful fabrics that would fade and turn into rags if left in the sun too long. To be fair they funded their own creations. I do not know where their income came from. Short-term economic benefits to local economies, tourism, etc. was the only justification for their creations. On the other hand the world would have been spared their fabric frauds had they relied on patronage. Can you see Pope Sixtus IV paying for this:
Public trough patronage
Soviet Communists invented tax dollar patronage out of necessity when they realized they had abolished traditional patronage. Communists understood that true artists are the primary creators of wealth; they create something from nothing.
The problem for Soviet Communists was that their ideology would never tolerate individualism; so it was imperative to convince the world that Communism creates wealth rather than accumulate it through various forms of oppression. Hence, patronage had to be saved with a new definition. In Communism’s definition of patronage —— art itself was defined by bureaucrats dispensing tax dollars to no-talent parasites. By the time art by bureaucrats found a home in America, pissing in a glass jar was held in the same esteem as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Government art that was born in the Soviet Union is a tribute to shoddy people who aspire to mediocrity. My point: Our own National Endowment for the Arts is a continuation of Soviet policy.
Socialists had to show the world that their system of government was artist-friendly; so mechanically generated motion pictures, and still pictures, became art for the masses. Labeling photography art was the best thing Socialist propagandists could come up with since a true artist cannot create simply to decorate an economic system even if he or she wanted to. Michelangelo’s superb eye-hand coordination may have flourished under the patronage system, but artists in every field thrive where the most individual liberties exist.
Patronage was the origin and essence of trickle-down; i.e., wealthy, powerful, individuals supported artists, architects, and superior craftsmen. In controlled economies trickle-up replaced whatever benefits trickle-down offered. Trickle-up in controlled economies funds the mediocre under the guise of equality. That is where I have one slight disagreement with George Will:
“Now, the president, we just heard, disparage trickle-down economics while bragging about doubling the stock market value. He is practicing trickle-down economics by doubling the stock market.”
Socialists practice trickle-up as seen in the Stock Market. Socialists never engage in trickle-down in a positive sense. Socialists/Communists cater to the mediocre and call it art, talent, or whatever, but the things they create are garbage. Musicians who make noise not music; painters who crap on a piece of canvas and sell it as art; sculptors who weld junk together then install their eyesores in public places; writers who acquire master’s degrees in English —— then say nothing of value; actors who cannot speak the language; passion plays written and produced for Hollywood by dirty little propagandists —— then passed off great artistic endeavors, and on and on it goes.
Artistic jokes
Photography is art? Photographers snap pictures with a mechanical device and call it art when, in fact, photography is a craft at best. If there is one private sector income group that gives Socialism’s game away, it is those photographers who are hailed as artists rather than artisans.
Socialists/Communists wasted no time hailing photographers as artists because an endless supply of one image that can be reproduced and sold over and over again.
On a more mundane level, the thing about high-priced snapshots sold by art galleries that always puzzled me is what happens to the negatives? At least if you purchased a Picasso you knew he was not going to run off a few more “originals” after he had your money in his pocket. And can anyone honestly see any of today’s photographs selling at any time in the future for 50 million plus in today’s dollars?
The joke is that photographers take pictures of true art. Somehow a photograph of the Grand Canyon, or Michelangelo’s David, implies that the guy who took the picture is an artists, too.
The camera never lies
In fact, the camera never does anything but lie just like Socialists. Movie and television cameras combined with sound to create the greatest propaganda apparatus ever known. Even the still photo is often combined with printed text to promote a Socialist lie. True art and true artists cannot be bent to fit a lie.
Question: Do you consider motion pictures an art form? If you answer yes then movies must be defined as organized art at worst, or collaborative art at best. More to the point, who is the artist? Is it the writer, the director, the actor, the film editor, the cameraman, the producer, the prop man? Note that the makeup artist used to be the only person in the industry that was called an “artist.”
There is no doubt that the television camera is the most destructive purveyor of lies attached to images ever invented. Before TV there was photography. I used to think that it was the violence portrayed in moving pictures that was corroding society. Violence on film is a contributing factor, but the lasting harm is that photography has become the arbiter of physical beauty. A two dimensional image of photogenic women is now the standard defining female magnificence. Women who buy makeup because they think they will look like an airbrushed photograph after applying the stuff would be better off spending their money taking a course in reality.
Plain Janes who photograph well are worshiped irrespective of their personalities. Even those show biz women who are so unattractive nothing can improve their photo images are said to possess an inner-beauty that only the camera, and the cameraman, can see.
The paparazzi are a hybrid. The pictures provided by the paparazzi sell newspapers and magazines not products. Paparazzi make a buck selling pictures of the good, the bad, and the ugly captured in unguarded moments.
Cinematographers are supposed to be artists and TV cameramen are supposed to be artisans; that supposedly puts them a notch above the paparazzi. In truth, the three are only separated by obituaries; the death of a well-known cinematographer is reported far and wide; the other two depart unlamented.
Every once in a while a cinematographer screws up and a Hollywood beauty is caught on film in less than a flattering angle. It is in those few fleeting frames that the physical truth registers in the subconscious minds of the viewers. Call it unintended subliminal coverage.
It has been said that men fall in love with their eyes. If there is any truth to that old chestnut a lot of men are having sex with photographs.
Bottom line: There are a few “great beauties” who are so repulsive in person they would make the Frankenstein monster go gay.
Exterior decorators
Christo (1935 –) and Jeanne-Claude (1935 - 2009) are listed among collectivism’s greatest artists. I always saw them as frustrated interior decorators hanging drapes outdoors. They are best-known for creating environmental works of art whatever the hell that means. All I ever saw was colorful fabrics that would fade and turn into rags if left in the sun too long. To be fair they funded their own creations. I do not know where their income came from. Short-term economic benefits to local economies, tourism, etc. was the only justification for their creations. On the other hand the world would have been spared their fabric frauds had they relied on patronage. Can you see Pope Sixtus IV paying for this:
Public trough patronage
Soviet Communists invented tax dollar patronage out of necessity when they realized they had abolished traditional patronage. Communists understood that true artists are the primary creators of wealth; they create something from nothing.
The problem for Soviet Communists was that their ideology would never tolerate individualism; so it was imperative to convince the world that Communism creates wealth rather than accumulate it through various forms of oppression. Hence, patronage had to be saved with a new definition. In Communism’s definition of patronage —— art itself was defined by bureaucrats dispensing tax dollars to no-talent parasites. By the time art by bureaucrats found a home in America, pissing in a glass jar was held in the same esteem as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Government art that was born in the Soviet Union is a tribute to shoddy people who aspire to mediocrity. My point: Our own National Endowment for the Arts is a continuation of Soviet policy.
Socialists had to show the world that their system of government was artist-friendly; so mechanically generated motion pictures, and still pictures, became art for the masses. Labeling photography art was the best thing Socialist propagandists could come up with since a true artist cannot create simply to decorate an economic system even if he or she wanted to. Michelangelo’s superb eye-hand coordination may have flourished under the patronage system, but artists in every field thrive where the most individual liberties exist.
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