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racktash | 4 months ago

Art and culture may be "unproductive" from a utilitarian point of view, but it's valuable and enriching in ways hard to measure on a spreadsheet.

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overrun11|4 months ago

If it's impossible to measure art's value then there can't be any cutoff point at which we stop funding ever more art. Anyone who attempts to put a number on its value is treated as an overly rational boor but we obviously can't just devote the entirety of society's resources to creating more of it.

wtcactus|4 months ago

Art and culture have always existed - and one may very well argue, it existed in much richer forms than most of the dubious "art" produced today.

Society never needed to hand out money to every self-proclaimed artist for art to thrive.

racktash|4 months ago

Some art produced today is good, some bad. Subjectivity will mean people disagree. It has ever been so.

But the idea that art / artists don't require money isn't my read of history.

When you go to an art museum in, say, London, you'll find lots of fantastic paintings depicting religious themes. Were artists of the time fixated only on the religious aspects of life? No doubt religion was more important, but the real consideration was that patronage came once from the Church.

account42|4 months ago

A tiny minority of art is valuable to the average member of society.