Rob, humans have been creating arts long before governments and funding were even a thing. Why do we need to fund arts then? Well, why do we need to plant seeds for plants to grow, when it would grow spontaneously anyway? Because the yield is better than otherwise. Arts need funding not because it couldn’t exist without it, but because that existence is bigger and better with it.
And there you state the flaw: it leads to genetic modification and political pressure, as now, from the US trying to strong-arm future trade deals with Britain and Europe by insisting it buy American chlorine-washed chickens and GM crops that neither Britain nor Europe desire. If we did, we would long have been using our own; we are not exactly laggards in science.
It's not that the world can't produce enough food (remember the mountains of grain and olive oil and wine?) to feed itself, but that it won't distribute it at prices that all can afford to avoid the starvation we see around us and have shoved in our faces by charities every single day. The food's there, can be grown, but the desire to make much more money from it that need be is too strong. Even in places like Britain, farmers have a tough time selling their produce at profit, yet the supemarkets make zillions. If there is nothing to be seen as out of kilter there, then I'm a Dutchman.
And applying such concepts to art, as is the inevitable situation when galleries find themselves making decisions as to whom to champion and which trends to create and to back, we end up with the crap and excesses that exist today, designed for the commercial good of said galleries and owners and, of course, auction houses.
Ray's right about the high
value prices in art: they represent a hedge against currency fluctuations. Here, in Mallorca, the area around the capital, Palma, ran out of multi-million pound houses for sale to people dumping their exposure to pounds sterling because of Brexit pressures in the currency.
Movies and football: people with not a lot else going for them beyond the physical ability to look sexually desirable and play a part until they get it right in the case of the former, and the ability to kick an object in a given direction in the other, amass vast sums of money derived from relatively small payments made by people going to the movies or watching at home, with television pouring zillions into football in order to get high viewing figures and to sell on through the subscription channels. That any of those people contribute anything that I can ever find of value to myself is debatable, other than yes, I did snap Brigitte and the pix did me no harm in my portfolio at the time. Today, younger peope have no idea what she was or represented. Frankly, there is nobody around today that matches the fame, in their time, of the old stars. All is devalued by the very system that constantly pushes for new, not better.
It's what you get with the culture.
