[WS:] Not necessarily, at least not in the "individualistic" sense. The market system encourages competition, which in the intellectual commodity business invariably means vying for audience's attention. So everyone tries to outbid everyone else by employing more and more crass attention grabbing gimmicks - hence the primacy of showmanship over craftsmanship. It is the race to the bottom and it comes not form individualistic preferences, as the market apologists want us to believe, but from the market system itself.
I am reasonably sure that if we had generous public financing of the arts so the artists do not have to vie for attention and novelty to survive, the ratio of craftsmanship to showmanship in the arts would significantly improve.
Wojtek
On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 1:50 AM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> On Nov 24, 2011, at 7:48 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
>> [WS:] From where I sit, a great deal of what passes for modern art has
>> a rather low ratio of craftsmanship to showmanship, which tends to
>> turn me off. To illustrate: Vermeer was mostly superb craftsmanship
>> even though his paintings could be rendered by photographic processes
>> today. Warhol is mostly gimmicks aimed to razzle dazzle the public.
>> It is not that modern artists do not possess good craftsmanship, most
>> of them probably do, but rather that craftsmanship does not sell
>> nowadays. Showmanship does. And artists tend to do what sells. Art
>> is another victim of the market, if you will.
>>
>
> Yes (I would add: sells implies some sort of market or consumer decision, but even that’s not the case, is it? It’s about the opinions of critics and academics). There is a great and very apropos passage by Stravinsky about the content of art that I would have loved to quote here, but I am 8000 miles away from my books! I will post it for thoughts/comments when I come back.
>
> —ravi
>
>
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