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I think it's the finance bros and suchlike who are funding a lot the bad contemporary art. Deutsche Bank in particular has made "we fund edgy contemporary art" into part of its corporate identity. Drexel was the founding sponsor of the Turner Prize. Saatchi and Saatchi were not finance bros, but a lot of finance bros showed up at their art parties.
The idea that most wealthy people in finance dislike this stuff is largely wrong. They either don’t care at all or, if they read literary fiction and like art, have similar PMC contemporary tastes to all the usual judges. Are there some vocal trads, particularly on twitter? Sure. And these people are certainly more likely to vote (or donate) to conservative parties for reasons of economic policy. But their artistic tastes are not different from their ‘woke’ peers, just trashier. Snobs make fun of rich new money trash for buying Kaws’ giant toys, but those are still contemporary art, just bad contemporary art.
Okay, perhaps I misphrased. I for one was not trying to insinuate majority of wealthy people dislike current esthetics, but was referring to the vocal tech and finance bros who complain about modern esthetics on the internet. Complaining gets some visibility, but it's the funding that results in work getting done. If only the ideologically left-PMC aligned nepobabies show up and they fund left-PMC aligned arts, that's free market capitalism working as intended.
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I believe he meant on a more personal level. Committees take on a life of their own, but two finance bros can fund a starving artist on a shoestring budget no problem, through commissions etc.
One finance bro can fund an artist. Probably multiple. In fact, there may be any number of wealthy people actually doing so. But that art would be lost in the sea of utter shit that is the art world. If you wanted to make a visible movement, you'd need a lot more money and you'd need marketing bros.
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Exactly so. It is a given that some rich and sufficiently affluent people like or at least put their money to contemporary art including their political fads. Someone funds them, otherwise they wouldn't exist. Complaining about it is all okay, but if you have any amount of disposable income, patronizing artists would be far more impactful than complaints alone.
I think "schools" and "circles" in various cities that later became influential enough to warrant a mention in an art history book have usually been something dozen or so artists who converged around one or two especially magnetic personality in a cheap locality. While there, they could influence each other while somehow not starving to death. You wouldn't need that many tech or finance bro who don't like what they currently see to fund a troupe of artists with commission so that they'd have chance to make something good that could become popular. Hollywood blockbusters and AAA games are expensive to make because they require a lot of personnel, but indie games, independent cinema are less expensive, and music or visual arts even less expensive because creation can be effectively solo work.
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