[Celtjew Libertarian]

I know a fair number of Neo-Pagans types with leftish to hard-left politics, who go adore Pre-Raphaelite art. If modernism is losing the left, it's dead.

[Tokhtamish]

The enduring mass popularity of Thomas Kinkade demonstrates that for a while now a substantial portion of the art consuming public has stopped listening to the deconstructionist babble of the elite critics and decides for themselves what is beautiful. After all, do you need a critic to tell you whether a Raphael or a Titian or an El Greco is beautiful ? If a piece of 'art' cannot communicate directly with you without some elite critic condescending to explain it to you, isn't it a bad piece of 'art' ?

It's like Erich von Stroheim, a 'great' silent director who made these 10 hour movies. There are critics who acclaim his 'Greed' as a masterpiece but a 10 hour movie is a bad movie, however good individual scenes may be, because no one can watch it.

To know something about art history is to know that critical tastes change like hemlines. There are lots of artist who are praised now who didn't make dime one in their lifetimes (Has anyone ever thought of a science fiction story where someone goes into the past and becomes rich by commissioning works from future great artists while they were starving bohemians ?) Has the consuming audience decided that whatever critics may be saying now, it is ridiculous to believe that a century from now art consumers are going to actually want a pig sawed in half and dipped in formaldehyde in their living rooms ?