This article from Salon, called "No sympathy for the creative class," should be required reading. It's long, but worth it. In fact, I beg you to read it - it is so descriptive of my own life right now. In some ways, I am protected by the arts-loving city I live in; but even amongst the support, I get a strong sense that art is just "play" from anyone not actually working in the field.
Last week we celebrated what is American - how about this week we think about the direction we want our society to go, and the things about our cultural expectations that we could stand to change?
A few quotes:
"“There’s always this sense that art is just play,” says Peter Plagens, a New York painter and art critic. “Art is what children do and what retired people do. Your mom puts your work up on the refrigerator. Or the way Dwight Eisenhower said, ‘Now that I’ve fought my battles, I can put my easel up outside.’”"
"Our image of the creative class comes from a strange mix of sources, among them faux-populist politics, changing values, technological rewiring, and the media’s relationship to culture – as well as good old-fashioned American anti-intellectualism.
"Creativity is a form of expertise,” something a nation that keeps insisting on its status as a democracy has never been entirely comfortable with."
Go read!
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