Conversation

Replying to
Ultimately the only person who can keep you honest is you. If you’re moderately smart, it’s just too easy to get literate in the taste culture around an institution or powerful individual. You can’t help figuring out how to push buttons to make bank. The challenge is not to.
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It’s even harder to resist temptation when _not_ operating within a coercive taste culture with monopolistic ambitions attracts active hostility. If you happen to make it work without seeking (or worse, refusing) their approval, prepare for hell to rain down.
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Hell hath no fury like a tastemaker scorned. And it’s insecurely attached ones at the margins who are the worst. The ones at the center/top tend to be cheerfully mercenary about being the masters of the grift and tend to be grudgingly respectful if you care enough to stay away.
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I mean pop culture/low art doesn’t need to do this. McDonald’s doesn’t sell a nothingburger in the form of a paper bag with an empty wrapper. Hollywood doesn’t try to sell you tickets to a 2 hour blank-screen movie. So why does high-art need nihilistic absurdity to calibrate?
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I suspect it has no larger logic beyond simply pre-empting and co-opting criticism and arrogating to itself the sole right to judge itself.
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“You normies cannot possibly criticize us more subtly and cleverly than we criticize ourselves. Now give us taxpayer money or your ancient civilization dies.”
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Replying to
I’m ok with that barbell of public begging vs ridiculous $ laundry grift. Most arts grants just about cover the cost of an empty picture frame, and the aggregate is a single F-22, which also helps ancient civilizations die.
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