How to Fix Art?
After a recent interview (with Gio) I got to thinking, once more – what was the most important element to regaining a ‘real’ art? Everyone can see that art is broken, but what would be a remotely practical route to steering it back towards ascension? Forming art groups with a vision is not enough. I once again came to the conclusion that the most effective way would be (as I say in my book) bringing back the historic system of craft guilds, which existed from prehistory up to the late 19th century before being replaced by ‘corporations’.
The craft guild system treated EVERYTHING as both a practical commercial vocation AND an art, each with their own trade secret traditions.
This would require at least three major changes: first the dismantling of the total maniacal control currently enjoyed by the middleman, globalist corporation and his system of distribution and advertising, and returning to a direct customer-to-craft guild(labour) transaction for goods. Everything that is a material need thereby has a guild associated with it. The guitar players guild, the plumbing guild, the cushion-makers, the rocket scientist guild, the astrology guild, the painters guild, the bakers guild, the robotics guild, etc.
The issue of technology supplanting a historic corporeal art, such as painting with AI art etc, is a wholly separate issue/problem. I suppose the painting guild would need a subdivision of itself devoted to digital art and AI art, and each art would need to be practically (commercially) considered. But for as long as we are material beings requiring architects and bread makers and mosaic floors and indoor plumbing we will require analog (non-digital) craftsmen.
The second requirement, In terms of fine arts such as painting, would require the destruction of the Greenbergian concept that painting as a ‘fine art’ is about creating an (impractical) narrative of political philosophizing, and is not, as it was considered during its pre-Modernism golden age, a craft like any other, with a rational standard of excellence, with an extant value not requiring a narrative (artspeak).
The third requirement is, sadly, a coherent, self-confident, and united nation with goals and a future. Something which may not occur again for some time.
