Once again, Left Outside brings you quality programming. But does it matter that today’s video is sponsored by Nokia or that yesterday’s video was sponsored by Zapata Racing? [1]
I don’t think it really does.
A lot of great art has been sponsored by rich people or by religious powers or by wealthy and powerful statesmen. That art is now produced by private companies isn’t much of a step down. For example, I’d rather be sponsored by Nokia than the pope, or WordPress (hello!) than Henry VIII.
A polarisation in wealth might pose many problems for many things, mental health, macroeconomic stability, cosmopolitan theories of justice, but art? No. I think inequality might be good for art, or at least neutral.
There seem to be two contrasting currents to art, one is very rich people sponsoring art the other is people of reasonable means taking up art for fun. I don’t know which dominates. But I don’t think we’ve really had any significant stagnation in aesthetic life for the last couple of centuries so . [2]
So, art in corporate hands. Not ideal, but probably not any different to anything that has happened before, nor any worse than any other set up that we’ve seen. [3]
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[1] Your humble blogger uses a blackberry and I don’t know what the hell Zapata do, so I’ve no horse in this race.
[2] other than that period where we built hundreds of hideous concrete buildings after the war.
[3] Okay, so the analysis on this site has suffered of late, but I’m trying.
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