Interesting post by Michael over at Two Blowhards on the intolerance of many in the art world. His inspiration is a book on Karl Popper by Frederic Raphael but he has some intelligent insights himself. I particularly like this paragraph:
Quarrelling with the main tenets of the arts world doesn’t make you what you’d imagine — an arts person who disagrees about a topic with other arts people. It makes you something else entirely. First, you’re attacked. Then you’re shunned. Then you’re ignored. You become persona non grata, in other words. You may be writing, painting, thinking, composing, or performing up a storm, yet you still lose your membership card. Those academic-classical painters? They aren’t to be accepted as artists, they’re … well, something else entirely, god only knows what. Non-artists, in any case. Possibly scum, and almost certainly fascists.
I have a great story that sort of relates to this theme. When I was in grad school at George Washington I often rode the metro with a guy who was interning at the Democratic National Committee. One day I met my wife at a stop so we could transfer and head home to our Maryland apartment. I introduced my wife who had a nose ring at the time. His response was: “Your wife has a nose ring! I thought you were a Republican!” He simply couldn’t conceive that I might be married to a person with a nose ring. Now I will admit I didn’t particularly like the nose ring and it certainly wasn’t my idea (and neither was the tattoo she acquired recently
). But my wife has a mind of here own and our relationship is not based on my politics for that matter. Just thought I would share that . . .
