Art is the visible corollary to whatever’s happening in the street -- that’s its job. Bernie’s popularity represents an awakening of a new conception of self and community, an immensely apparent transformation since he’s been saying the same stuff for years and no one took him seriously, at all, until just recently. That’s the point in a lot of ways -- it wasn’t him who changed.
The corporations who provide ‘the news’ have for years attempted to make even the word ‘socialism’ unthinkable, have suggested that labor unions are obsolete, and have trivialized the notion of art behind wrinkled knowing smiles when ‘sixty minutes’ visits some art brothel for millionaires way back east somewhere. They’re not changing either, but the audience is beginning to hear the siren call of their own self interest, to want healthy choices at lunchtime, and lately to discover an interest in art which expresses what they themselves feel and think.
The notion whose time has come doesn’t rebel against the previous regime and beat it down. It bursts through it, supersedes it, and becomes the new normal, or at least bends community consciousness in a new direction. This community, and probably many like it, is on the verge of taking an interest in regionally produced visual art, as in looking, seeing, and owning, just as it also begins to reassess the meaning of citizenship -- it comes as a package is the claim we're making.
The peer group review panel granting public funds and prestige to their own like-minded won’t go away, or maybe it will, but that’s not important. A curiosity about art that’s been around for a long time is awakening in one person after another, and suddenly galleries fill with afternoon strollers looking at art -- wondering if it’s any good, if it’s worth the price, if it might be nice to take some home. What this has to do with Bernie and his politics can only be shown with quantum formula as yet unrevealed, but that they’re related is plain to see.
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