It Took Forty Years….

I discovered my hatred for those who control the arts at a relatively early age.  In a class on religion, I am quite sure it was, I got into an argument with a classmate from a prominent family in Indiana.  I was declaiming for the ages on why Norman Rockwell was a great artist, as great as many of the folks for whom others were thumping the tub. My opponent kept saying “Yes, as a commercial artist…” as condescending a put-down of a painter as could be imagined at the time.

I forgive my classmate forty odd years later, but it has taken that long.   He suffered from the disability of coming from a family of art patrons, and as such he divided true artists off from those who made a living at it so that people like his family could make a living off of them.  Of course, a great deal of what he believed was incorrect.  Artists – true artists – are often quite successful throughout their career, play the art patrons like demented morons (which…).  The fact that a huge contract exists before brush touches canvas does not diminish – or increase – the artistic value of the work.   Why Rockwell, who was a clever, manipulative, and masterful painter should be laughed at because he was rich and popular and not an addict and, oh, some New York tubercular AIDS victim worshipped because he died before value for his life work has been established (benefiting who, now?) makes no sense, at least of the artistic variety.

Artists, of course, are supposed to be poor and struggling.  But the unassailably great artists of the Western world were often no such thing.  The Medici and their would be successors want to be recalled and venerated for helping art and artists that their political and murderous shenanigans are forgot by history and the public.  The myth of their importance to society is something they do not want to see vanish.

For example, it is now revealed that Michelangelo, who has been portrayed through the years as the prototypical example of the downtrodden artist, a man who loved art and painting and sculpture and money be damned, was among the richest people in the world when he died, worth far more than many of his sponsors.  He got the fortune because he played the role of the poor naïf at the mercy of the powerful.  Hah!

For more go here: http://news.excite.com/odd/article/id/285855|oddlyenough|12-03-2002::08:09|reuters.html

I stand triumphant.