Beauty is in the Eye of the Ministry of Art and Culture

I've been having an odd week.  Last night, I was dealing with a minor personal issue, and engaged in a conversation on the value of various forms of art.  Interestingly enough, both items had the same answer;

Our current culture has somehow, inexplicably, come to the conclusion that the individual is irrelevant.

It's paradoxical.  In a society that obsesses over telling our youth that everyone is a unique snowflake, we then proceed to institute policies and attitudes that render whatever uniqueness you may have irrelevant.  As I was explaining to a young Québecois last night, the government should not fund art.  Government funding of art warps its purpose.  You see, as time goes on I become more and more allergic to relativism.  Make no mistake-I am not evolving into a So-Con.  It's rather more utilitarian in nature.

Some things are objectively better than others. Some people are objectively contributing more to society than others.  Moral judgments aside, a doctor contributes more than a bureaucrat at the Health Ministry. Both have roles, but the doctor remains more important.  Which is why it took 7 years of schooling to make the doctor, and he gets paid more.  The bureaucrat is not necessarily a morally lesser person, but I'm certainly going to respect the doctor more. He has worked harder and achieved more.

The same holds true for art.  Some art is objectively better.  The whole point of art is to create a shared experience between the artist and the public.  The more people you are able to affect with your art, the better an artist you are.  The problem with government funding of art is that it perverts the natural mechanism by which people learn about moving pieces of art, be it word,film, or canvas.  You see, when the government gets involved, it becomes a pack of self-declared experts determining what art they think you should see.  And, because the type of people who work for these types of governmental bodies are almost always liberal-leftists, the art that is chosen for funding has to fit within the narrative already established by these busybodies.  The natural mechanism, however, is that an artist produces a piece, and takes the risk of showing it in a public sphere.  Should it be a moving piece, the public who saw it will tell their friends.  Using a Classically Liberal and Capitalist mechanism, which idiots now refer to as "going viral", more and more people come to see the work and encourage (monetarily and otherwise) the artist to continue producing. Patronage in the renaissance was merely the wealthy choosing to spend their money on artists.  Much more efficient than paying a horde of bureaucrats to form the Department of Arts and Culture.

To return to my point on individuality, the difference between what I want to see, and the way the government and society at large treats the issue, is that I am focused on the individual as the ultimate arbiter of what is art.  The "experts" would have you believe that you get enough people together who have Art History degrees, and they will necessarily know better than you as to what is moving and beautiful.  It's the tyranny of "expertise".  It's the idea that some kind of benevolent group has the right to infringe on what I think and feel because they are many and I am one.  It's the same idea that drives welfare- I'm too ignorant or evil to be charitable on my own, so a benevolent group will arbitrarily remove part of my income and give it to someone else. When it comes to something like art, there is no minimum qualification to appreciate art. Art that moves the people has to first move the person. You can tell me I should see something because you find it beautiful and think I will too.  You cannot declare something beautiful and force me to pay for it without my consent.  Legitimate governance comes from the consent of the individual.

No one has a right to demand that I feel a particular way about a particular thing.  Not even if they get a fancy title from the government.