I still don't quite understand why it is apparently such an awful thing for the rulers of the day to spend money on the arts?
I think you're ignoring the thread, which ran roughly like this: I opined that it was obvious that there was no particular reason why the arts had to be funded with tax dollars.
Someone asked why I thought it was obvious, and I replied that since there were times when arts weren't funded with tax dollars, and art still somehow got made that pretty much sealed it for me.
And we went into a little side discussion about whether the cave paintings were funded with tax dollars, and whether there were private individuals who patronized the arts during the renaissance, etc.
As for whether it's awful for a king (or duke, or whatever) to tax his subjects and then spend the cash on art, well...
Let's just agree to disagree. What's appropriate in a monarchy is not always what's appropriate in a democracy.
As for Meatyard - one can only wonder at what he might have produced if he hadn't had to spend sop much time and energy on his day job?
Sure. Or, we might spend time wondering whether his art was enhanced by the interactions with customers, his need to earn a living, the structure it imposed on his life. Maybe without the day job, he would have had little to say in his photographs.
Art doesn't necessarily improve just because you clear all the challenges out of the artist's life.
In any case, arguing that Meatyard's art might have been improved with better funding just tells me we should have better private funding. It's only people who think government should solve all problems by building a huge bureaucracy and inefficiently spending tax dollars who think that the funding should be from taxes.
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