You Have the Right To Be offended

uscitizen said:
What about the funding of digging dino bones Damo ?
Click to expand...
Once again, science. You are attempting to create dichotomy where there is none. Most of this is done through the universities, students are almost never paid for their work. In other words, nobody is paying the dinosaur for just being alive and creating the bones to discover.

If the government is going to pay for what it cannot define such as simply giving money to the artist to create whatever they interpret to be art, what is to keep anybody at all, whether educated or not, from simply becoming "artists"? I am a switch engineering "artist" I want my cut.

An artist can actually benefit society for their pay, becoming a teacher is a good way for that, or they can make art that people like enough to pay for. Otherwise, just as with a writer, why simply pay them for creating something that can either be, or not be, art?
 
uscitizen said:
Damo,
I am a bit confused, you support Museums and education having art, but you are against and public money being spent on purchasing it for display or educational purposes ?
My confusion is mainly how this scheme would work.

Of course we could keep the same old art the musems and such have purchased over the centuries.....
Click to expand...
Not even necessarily against "purchase", say a museum gets a chance at a Rembrandt that previously was privately owned, I can see tax dollars going to that. They however would not be subsidizing Rembrandt and giving him money just because he is an "artist".

I am against simply giving money to somebody so they can stay home and create "art". I am against a museum pre-purchasing what "might" end up as a piece of art. I am against the government just giving money to people because they are "artists".

Basically I am against the National Endowments for the Arts that actually does, in some cases, just give people money because they are an "artist". That is simply retarded. Why pick them. Why not a National Endowment for the Switch Engineer?
 
Damocles said:
Not even necessarily against "purchase", say a museum gets a chance at a Rembrandt that previously was privately owned, I can see tax dolalrs going to that.

I am against simply giving money to somebody so they can stay home and create "art". I am against a museum pre-purchasing what "might" end up as a piece of art. I am against the government just giving money to people because they are "artists".
Click to expand...



Oh so if it was previously privately owned.....
 
uscitizen said:
Oh so if it was previously privately owned.....
Click to expand...
If it was previously created. Even if it was owned by the artist it would be "privately owned".

What makes "subsidize" so difficult for you?

In order to subsidize the artist you pay them before they have made a single piece of art, just for being an "artist". So what you end up with is a plastic bucket with pee in it and a thrown in cross. Did we really have to pay for that? They could have created that without our help, then later if it were deemed worthy it might make it into a museum.
 
LOL, I knew the urine cross would come out. Was just waiting for it.

But back to the origional topic of the other thread on "what is art" post, which you kept pulling away from.
Was the urine cross art ?
 
Last edited:
uscitizen said:
LOL, I knew the urine cross would come out. Was just waiting for it.

But back to the origional topic of the other thread on "what is art" post, which you kept pulling away from.
Was the urine cross art ?
Click to expand...
It came out a billion years ago, it was mentioned by AOI as the reason for this thread.

Give me a break, at least keep up with the conversation. This is the "you have a right to be offended thread" that AOI mentioned the piss-cross in early on. This is not your, "what is art" thread. I do notice how you simply ignored the rest of my post talking about subsidies so that you could make this erroneous statement.
 
Yes I did get the contents of a couple of threads confused, apologies.
but then you kept changing my what is art thread back to this one....

Hijackers do not need boxcutters.
 
uscitizen said:
Yes I did get the contents of a couple of threads confused, apologies.
but then you kept changing my what is art thread back to this one....

Hijackers do not need boxcutters.
Click to expand...
I'm professional at it. I only changed it back because the "somebody said that art could be defined" wasn't what I said. And instead of "successful" I probably should have said finished art. The government pays for a bunch of stuff, I'd prefer it be in existence when it is paid for, or easily and clearly defined such as a space capsule. I'd prefer that museums not pay to display, but that might never be possible.

Anyway, I don't want to subsidize artists. I'd prefer we didn't even purchase art to be shown in a museum, but it is far better than subsidizing it by paying people to be "artists". We wouldn't pay a guy just because he was a astrophysicist structural engineer, we'd pay him when he came up with a plan to create the newest space station and we chose his plan over another.
 
We pay people to become DR's and such....
Not that I am comparing DR's to artists, but there are some paralells.
 
uscitizen said:
We pay people to become DR's and such....
Not that I am comparing DR's to artists, but there are some paralells.
Click to expand...
But we don't pay them just because they are Drs. They must provide a service to get that cash. There is a direct correlation to the end product that does not exist when you pay somebody simply to "be" an artist. You are not purchasing an end product when you are just giving them money to "be" what they claim.

We give money to them, if they agree to serve in the role in certain places. I have a friend that lives in Alaska currently that got that deal. Much like one searches for bids to find the best deal with the best result then gives the money to the person with that deal, you are buying what is definable and not just throwing money to the nearest person who says they are a plumber and hoping your pipes get done.
 
Well we do pay people to be politicians with pretty much the same results as paying people to be artists Damo :D
 
IHateGovernment said:
Yes government should divest itself from art funding. It would be abhorrent for government to define what is art and what is not however this is what they have been doing.

On the other hand it is also abhorrent to take a persons earnings through taxes and use them for something like pisschrist if they are morally opposed to such a thing.

The best solution is for no art funding at all.
Click to expand...
Then there will be far less art produced, and most of that will be dictated by the needs and preferences of corporate sponsors.

Like it or not, arts funding has been a government function for a very long time.
 
Right, so you mean the government should determine the quality of art? This is abjectly funny! Seriously. The government should not fund what it cannot define.

Nobody can define philosophy. If an entity shouldn't fund what they cannot define, should all philosophy funding cease? Should all universities close their philosophy departments because they, and no-one, can come up with a definition of what philosophy is and does?

Now that is reductio per absurdum...lol
 
Last edited:
It would be abhorrent for government to define what is art and what is not however this is what they have been doing.

So, as opposed to Damo's position that government shouldn't fund art because it can't define art, you state the government shouldn't fund art because it is defining what is and isn't art?

What then, if the choice of art to be presented wasn't in the hands of the government, but of a gallery or museum, and the government merely funded it?

If you left the choice of art to consumer choice, most art galleries would be full of Che Guevara prints and posters of Einstein with his tongue out....

Art should challenge you. Consumerism, to be successful, doesn't challenge an individual.

The markets are not the infallible cure-all-ills they are made out to be. Far from it...
 
AnyOldIron said:
Right, so you mean the government should determine the quality of art? This is abjectly funny! Seriously. The government should not fund what it cannot define.

Nobody can define philosophy. If an entity shouldn't fund what they cannot define, should all philosophy funding cease? Should all universities close their philosophy departments because they, and no-one, can come up with a definition of what philosophy is and does?

Now that is reductio per absurdum...lol
Click to expand...
They should not fund you just to think. To teach is different. Much like along the thread I explained about art classes and other things. You simply didn't read all of it and took one statement from a conversation. That is reductio ad absurdum. You are right. However, it was not on my part.
 
AnyOldIron said:
It would be abhorrent for government to define what is art and what is not however this is what they have been doing.

So, as opposed to Damo's position that government shouldn't fund art because it can't define art, you state the government shouldn't fund art because it is defining what is and isn't art?

What then, if the choice of art to be presented wasn't in the hands of the government, but of a gallery or museum, and the government merely funded it?

If you left the choice of art to consumer choice, most art galleries would be full of Che Guevara prints and posters of Einstein with his tongue out....

Art should challenge you. Consumerism, to be successful, doesn't challenge an individual.

The markets are not the infallible cure-all-ills they are made out to be. Far from it...
Click to expand...
Much like government should not fund companies, even if they are not producing anything at all, nobody should be paid just for being an "artist" regardless of what they produce. Once again you take out of context of the greater conversation in an attempt to make a 'point' that is a logical fallacy according to what was expressed. This is a weak argument.

The government contracts for services and receives them, fine. The government should not just give you money because you are an 'artist' or a 'philosohper'. I even explained earlier in the thread, teach. That is acceptable funding of such a thing. But just because you are failing at your chosen job it doesn't mean you deserve money just to do it.
 
I find it hilarious that people who get upset over government subsidies for companies would support subsidies of another sort that also shouldn't come about. Funds just to sit back and create 'art' is simply a subsidy. Any artist, like any writer, can work at another job while they still create art. Such art can be displayed at museums. It is simply the idea that these people are so special that they deserve money others do not get to create a subjective item that really often needs no funding.

To say that the "piss-christ" couldn't have been created without subsidy is simply laughable. Yet we subsidized that 'art'.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top