“The secret life of us” [#geekgirl] [#art]
[From the fabulous Jeanette Winterson in the Guardian] “Modern art has become a media circus; a money-driven, prize-hungry extravaganza, dependent on marketing and spin, which may leave the public with a few extra names it recognises, but that makes everyone cynical about the product.
The word gives it away: product. Art is being treated as a commodity. We doubt that it is special. Dead artists belong to the heritage industry. Live artists belong to the PR industry.
It may be that capitalism will be as successful with art as it has been with religion, absorbing it to the point of neutrality. Capitalism, for all its emphasis on the free market, hates competition – that is, any challenge to its system. Anybody with a smattering of English history knows about the great conflicts between church and state. We know that traditionally there have been been two powers: the material world and the invisible world. God and Mammon…
Don’t be fooled by the way capitalism co-opts art. It pretends to do it for money, but underneath money is terror. Terror that there might be a different way to live. There is a different way, and it’s not a William Morris utopia, or an Omega workshop niche; it’s a celebration of the human spirit. Art reminds us of all the possibilities we are persuaded to forget. Peace or war, we need those alternatives.”