Nina Power of Compact writes about the triviality of Big Art. There are two sources of money for Big Art. (1) Serving as tradable securities for rich fuckheads. (2) Licking the butts of bureaucrats who provide Arts Grants.
I’d argue that the first source is ancient. Big Artists always worked for aristocrats, and always painted the rich in glowing colors. The second is just a mechanized and depersonalized way of asslicking the rich and powerful.
Nina Power doesn’t see an alternative, but she’s missing the world of anime and videogaming. Many anime artists do deep historical research and create modern fables. Videogaming involves the player in the creativity to some extent.
Again this isn’t entirely new. Commercial artists like Norman Rockwell made strong moral points without descending into ugliness or partisan preachiness. The direct ancestor of anime is underground comics of the 60s, or Mad Magazine before it grew rich and famous.
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Big Science is also nothing more than asslicking. Tenure, grants and peer review are exact equivalents on the depersonalized side, and scientists working for Pharma or AI are the more personal asslickers. A patent is a tradable security.
The scientific form of anime is the world of Arduino and robotics experimenters, who aren’t as historically adept as anime artists but have the same spirit of rebellion.
Polistra's Mill 