I have never understood why art has to be something that everybody has to understand. If people want to know what the fuzz is about they are free to take up a book, join a club or university to study.

There is still enough art made that can be enjoyed by the average Joe, in fact, most art made is of the simple kind. I have no problem with that, but it doesn’t interest me personally. When I was five years old I thought Boney M was great, no I think Arne Nordheim is great.

To me Art is best described as Berman did it: All that is solid melts into air, and thank goodness for that! There’s something for everyone. Art is just a product from an Artist. It is everything and nothing. The arrogance of the Elite will never be greater than that of the masses craving for popular, enjoyable and easy art and with the little knowledge they posess they claim to understand what is and isn’t art. Leave the quick fixes for the junkies please!

Candy Minx, this is an interesting but disturbing metaphor.

Actually, art being spearated by an idea of heirarcy or elite is a very recent modern occurance.

In Europe, art became an upper class, mercantile industry for the very few. Before the Renaissance, art ws the peoples. Byzantine art may actually be the last great art. Art for everyone for people who all agreed and understood the narrative of the art works.

Asian block painting may have been somewhat elite, but more because the people who produced it dedicated so much study…their work was understood as a profession, but again. Every one understood the narrative.

Artists have not always been an elite practice, but rather a different form of historian or storyteller. In all other societies…we see the arts as understood by the community, a basic repetitive language being used that the community understood. Southwester pottery art, Innuit sculpture and Haida animals. All had intricate, but integral narratives for their communities. The artist has been more of a specialized position in a society, like a shaman or medicine healer…rather than elite. Important but equal…and a normal natural part of a community.

I think both Auspiciaous and Svein-frode are correct in articulating where the artt and artist reside within our community in North America and Europe…and this has been moving more and more removed from our society since the Renaissance. Our last great community art was the Byzantine.

I like the Renaissance as much as the next guy…but unfortunately, it was the bigging of the end for the artist as having a narrative that was relevant and enjoyed by the public.

I’d much rather a family take one of my paintings home, than a stuffy boring gallery…but no one wants to take art home anymore.

Art is a series of one-trick wonders…only suited toa museum or gallery setting where after a ten dollar entry fee…the audience might get a feeble bit of laughter or walk away alienated. Artists have turned into really really bad stand-up commedians. It’s like the kings court has the worst jesters…

And very few of us are brave enough to even say or acknowledge this folly.

We are long over due for that hook.

I don’t think you are right about “What is Art” is being answered by a more concentrated few than before. There has never been so many people involved in Art as there is right now. That is why it is so hard to tell what is Art these days, because so many people have an opinion and so many different kinds of artists make art. That is why you can go into a gallery and view anything from a video installation to a naturalistic romantic painting. The diversity has never been greater.

As for public spending, does it matter? The average Joe is being taxed to build roads, pump oil and make wars that should be of no interest to them either. Industrialized nations of the world allow the destruction of this planet’s climate and eco systems.