Thank you for reading my post, as always!
It’s taken some years, but I am forming a hypothesis that most famous visual art had (has) a courtier-sponsored success. Money and power allowed it to grow exponentially. 500 years ago there weren’t so many artists as there were expert illustrators. Michelangelo wasn’t going to remind the Pope that the Vatican was the Devil’s lair. Not if he wanted to get paid:)
“Artist” Tracey Emin sold her dander-infested double bed to multi-millionaire British gallerist Charles Saatchi in 2001 for 100K I believe. Maybe two hundred. He installed it in the open in his mansion so visitors would see it when they came for cocktail parties and decadence. Ten years later he sold in “on the market” (not my market for sure) for 3.2 million.
I don’t think the Impressionists were as shallow as the Hollyweird denizens (love the term!). They were making paintings for the rich—bankers, industrialists, and they knew what they were doing. However, their shallow was born of ignorance and need, not arrogance. And Picasso was a pauper until he wasn’t. He didn’t have an agent, just the city of Paris and cool parties that rich people went to to buy his paintings. No personal trainer, driver or red carpet pageants to attend. Bread and good olive oil if he was lucky.
You have a point about the movie stars. How they normalize war and even get the Pentagon to play along with the leasing of its machines. Propaganda is any movie with fighter jets, tanks and Apache helicopters. I won’t watch them anymore. If I get “caught” mid-movie, I start rooting for the enemy.
It’s a coping strategy for a peasant. I can always dream Ben Affleck starves, rather than breaks out, of the prison camp. Never happens, even though it’s fun to play.
All power to the imagination!
Thanks again:)