[WS:] When I go to an art show or an art gallery I do so for aesthetic reasons. I get my political education elsewhere, from reading books, talking to people on lbo-talk ;) etc.
I do recognize the agit-prop potential of the arts, but that potential is what makes useful art but not necessarily aesthetically pleasing art.
Wojtek
On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 9:44 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
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> At any rate, between Contemporary Art of the last thirty, forty years and Dutch Golden Age painting say, I would say one looks like more of a joke than the other.
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> Well, yeah, in terms of craft, there's no question. But in terms of the political issues Chuck raised, I'm not so sure.
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> Vermeer and his contemporaries painted interiors, sometimes ironic, sometimes not using the iconography of a previous age as the underlying base line. I would say their colonial ravages did somewhat figure in some of the corners of some of the paintings as muted, nearly invisible questions. But the focus was squarely on the virtues of the rising merchant class.
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> Joanna
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