From: vlad@netcom.com (Vladimir Kuznetsov)
Subject: Re: government and the arts
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 92 09:06:08 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In article <1992Apr12.010721.20787@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>Just look at what government support did to the arts in Medicean
>Florence and Papal Rome and Absolutist Paris and Georgian England and
>Ducal Saxony and Royal Prussia and Imperial Germany and Weimar Germany
>and Federal Germany.  
>

You did not answer my question about Nazi Germany and USSR. 
Before changing direction of the conversation I'd like to
know what you think about it.

>Can you name an opera house on earth that is not government supported?
>

Here, in San Francisco.

>For that matter, despite all his trials, Shostakovich drew his salary
>from the state for 50 years.  Prokof'ev, too, for a while.  And I do

Read his biography, may be you will reconsider your views about this
matter. You don't know how much of junky music Shostakovich 
was forced tov write for this salary and how mush humilation
he had to swallow for the privilege of being court composer. 
Prokofiev was not happy either.

>recall a few decent instrumentalists coming out of the SU: Richter,
>Gilels, Oistrakh, Rostropovich, Berman, etc.
>

Did you learn this way of reasoning from soviet propaganda machine?
They also were first in space, their sportsmen had many
sport records, they were turning rivers, etc. etc. You 
don't want to know (I suspect, intentionally) what price was paid
for these achivements ( in art, too). 
Do you know how many talented performers and artists were shut down by 
party machine to give the way to "a few decent instrumentalists"? 

Just open your eyes and read what is available.
For example, an autobiography of Galina Vishnevskaja (the 
Rostropovich's wife).

>> In both cases it was a complete devastation and riuning
>>of he culture and cultivating of pseudo-art.

It was!

>
>Funny, this very year New York will be host to *two* opera companies
>from Russia.  And they weren't constituted in the last 12 months,
>either.
>

Go there, listen to them and let me know your opinion about these
companies. I bet they cannot be compared with good opera companies
here, in US.

>
>Devotees of Italian opera might disagree.  Not to mention readers of,
>say, Dickens.
>

I'm rather sceptical about most of Italian operas, but I
must confess here that my listening experience of Italian opera is
very limited. 

Do you want to talk about Wagner?

>On the other hand, how does one tell what "real" art is?  

Cannot agree with you more. Everyone has his own idea what the
real art is. Here in US rapp music is an art too.

>
>Roger
>

It is simply unfair to all people who lived under these regimes
and were fed with erzatz of the culture for the most of their lives.

In general, dictatorial regimes are the best suited for 
support of arts and democracies will always have difficulties with it.

vlad

-- 
Vladimir Kuznetsov                         (408)252-5455
Natural Intelligence Consulting            vlad@netcom.COM
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