Is Art Industry Greed the Cause…
Posted by: admin in Bill Ivey, Art Inc., What planet are art policy makers from?, Artistic power struggles, Commerce and the failure of art, The art world is its own worst enemy, Artistic failure in America…Of all this artistic failure?
According to a new book called Art Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights, written by former NEA chair Bill Ivey, the state of the arts in America is (as regular readers of CAFA well know) bad. The reasons for this looming crisis, according to Ivey (from the UC Press book blurb):
The expanding footprint of copyright, an unconstrained arts industry marketplace, and a government unwilling to engage culture as a serious arena for public policy have come together to undermine art, artistry, and cultural heritage—the expressive life of America.
In Arts Inc., Ivey blends personal and professional memoir, policy analysis, and deeply held convictions to explore and define a coordinated vision for art, culture, and expression in American life. According to Andrew Taylor, an arts administration educator at the University of Wisconsin: “Arts, Inc. is the first comprehensive effort to explore the role and potential of a coordinated vision for art, culture, and expression in American public life… Bill Ivey defines a new canvas for more productive and inclusive conversations on the expressive life of our nation and its citizens.”
Lawrence Lessing, of Stanford Law School, says the book is, “a profoundly important diagnosis by perhaps America’s best-qualified critic of the harm to our culture caused by overregulation and inadequate support. Ivey has given us a rich and beautifully written warning about the culture we’re losing, and a powerful and historically compelling image of a culture that could be.”
Arts Inc. is the first title in CAFA’s artistic failure must-read summer book list.
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May 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Perhaps, adrift as we are in this Postmodern era, we (Americans) are incapable of having a culture. Therefore, without a culture, possessing merely the accoutrement of culture, museums, criticism, painting and such, we slip away from that which cannot be defined.
America is drifting. Its people don’t know who they are. Its culture is swiss cheese. Not difficult to understand that cultural “things” have little or no import. Americans tire of celebrating others’ culture, they tire of art.
Not long ago American painting took on Europe, remember? That was vibrant, exciting. I believe no one could express what has been lost, culturally. America has faced a four decade long deconstruction of its culture. Surprise, the decline of art follows. It’s easy to take things apart, difficult to build or rebuild.
No response necessary.