Oh you shouldn’t find fault with the ultra-wealthy, they make the world go around. That’s what they tell us and what they tell themselves, but it’s really the people they hire that do all the work while they enjoy their assets. They know that if they decide to play golf, or go skiing, or never come back at all things will be just fine because their executive secretary knows more than they do and doesn’t really need them. I’m not sure anyone does since they’re not much more than retread old world gentry, mostly just a bunch of high class thieves just like last time, and they hire out the stealing too, retaining only the best tax lawyers and art advisors, sometimes different offices in the same outfit.
I suppose there are good rich people out there, and if lottery money fell from the sky my own meager character would be tested, but the money at the top all comes from the bottom, that’s obvious. Do people on the bottom struggle to stay warm and dry and are they forced to consume unwholesome food because it’s cheap? How about the middle class, warm and dry but somehow perpetually dissatisfied with the shiny new products that never bring the happiness portrayed during time-outs and pitching changes. Turns out it isn’t just the money they’ve been stealing. Each person’s self regard has to be pretty battered or they wouldn’t be changing their hair color or buying a truck that belongs on a construction site just to improve themselves, and to be truly fulfilled, satisfied, and finally happy.
To cover their crimes the very rich stole art and turned it into a neutered and near-sighted house pet on a golden chain, and they steal a lot of money that way too. Would you pay millions of dollars for a painting by Mark Rothko? They’re all pretty much alike, that’s what makes them a Rothko, and no one has any idea how many were made or even who made them all. It would have been just like a job for one person to make so many so similar, hundreds. All significant no doubt, but drive, passion, and emotional intensity, maybe not after the first one or two, and the formula is so easy to copy that forgeries abound, and who can say otherwise? Publicly shy private art museums, philanthropy’s most classiest tax shelters, are getting antsy about their phony assets and trying to float the fifth Rothko in their stacks for cash, the parking lot needs paving, and there’s been wailing and gnashing of teeth throughout the entire industry all the way to the top.
When the international art industry eventually collapses in an avalanche of measured and responsible museum deaccessioning, leading to portfolios for pennies and investors wedged in all the exits, ordinary people will begin to discover organically-produced, locally-sourced original art all around them. Full of vitamins instead of empty calories, hormone free and unadulterated, friendly and challenging at the same time, a painting that represents the very best the painter could do in that moment has its own charm, and it broadcasts a good feeling out into a room. Over time the artist’s affection and regard become mutual and having it around just gets better, people say. In this dollar driven and competitive world we’ve inherited, each person deep down yearns for verification that’s there’s something more important than money, and some find that character, truth, and communion are things we can share through art, what it’s really for.
It’s the dawn before the world of tomorrow, a brand new day in which either great wealth tightens and consolidates it control and art as a channel of human expression and sincere communication drowns in cheap advertising like a swan sucked down in a cesspool, or material assets are distributed more evenly and art and artists become a feature of community life everywhere, contributing to the genuine sense of well being and satisfaction a fully realized and secure people deserve.
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