The problem with this article, and others like it, is to describe an extreme situation and then contrast the whole of a complex issue against it, thus wrongly falsifying the issue and suggesting it has a simple resolution. First, there is much patronage today but it tends to go to non-profit institutions which in turn 'patronize' art they like. This supports the institutions while it provides legitimate tax deductions for the patrons and benefits some artists -- presumably the wrong artists. Second, the sort of patronage the author favors -- direct support payments to artists from patrons -- is a feature of very unbalanced economies, such as aristocracies which are out of step with today's world (despite drooling plutocrats awaiting their chance to pounce on anyone's meager resources). Finally, the patronage offered by the author also inculcates a kind of indentured servitude of artists. The models of the past, immersed in their own economic and cultural realities can't be brought back without also bringing back the world they belong to. That has never -- never -- happened.
wc ________________________________ From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, December 25, 2012 3:58:55 AM Subject: "The obsession with the new, with the young and fresh, has produced an environment in which an artist in her mid-forties, having worked in the art world for over twenty years, is too old to attract the attention of these taste-making collectors and their train of curators." "The obsession with the new, with the young and fresh, has produced an environment in which an artist in her mid-forties, having worked in the art world for over twenty years, is too old to attract the attention of these taste-making collectors and their train of curators." http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cultivare/2012/12/re-imagining-art-patronage/
