Dead-ending Paint?

Being a painter is tough these days, writes Blake Gopnik. “There will always be talented artists who can overcome the difficulties that painting faces. In fact, with the odds so stacked against them, the handful of truly good paintings that get turned out look that much more impressive. I’ll bet that somehow, somewhere, someday — in a decade, a century, could be a millennium or two — a whole new kind of painted work will come along to breathe new life into the medium. Painting has dead-ended before, and each time a Titian or a Monet, a Picasso or a Pollock has hit on a way out that no critic could have guessed at in advance. Any critic who insists that can never happen again is asking to eat crow.”

Scottish Artists Protest Government

“Fifty-five of Scotland’s best-known musicians, authors and artists have signed an open letter to the country’s First Minister in which they argue that ‘a void’ has opened up where an arts strategy should exist. The signatories include the composer laureate Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, authors Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and Alasdair Gray, and opera singer Jane Irwin. Dozens of theatre directors, poets, critics and administrators have also put their name to the letter, which represents an unprecedented revolt against government arts policy.”

Arts Funding Equation – Not Money In, Quick Results Back

“Politicians have to give up the idea that financial investment in the arts has to produce a quick and easily measurable result comparable to shorter hospital waiting times or improved school exam results. The insistence on the institution of a national theatre shows that the politicians remain incapable of giving up that perennial question when it comes to arts funding: “But what do we get for our money?”