"Garbed only in a fluorescent green thong, armed with a Bowie knife clenched between his teeth and a ten billion dollar bill carefully hidden away somewhere, he bravely sallied forth into the melee..."
The wealthy and their money and the corporate branding behind both infiltrate any edgy cultural thing that becomes in any way popular and they always have, regardless of that cultural thing's political leanings and postures..
To a certain extent or at least beyond a certain point, it's just an inevitable dual parasitic symbiosis of convenience that both end up embracing..
I can't think of a world changing artistic and creative movement in the last 130 years that hasn't slid right down this daisy chain. The very phrase "selling out" was born within it..
Most of the great expressionist and abstract painters of the 20th century painted themselves as anticapitalist almost to a fault, it didn't stop their art from being promoted by rich, connected players in the business and philanthropy worlds until it became financial playdough for the status-seeking billionaires of today... How many other artistic movements went down similar paths?
Simply being rich is emotionally no substitute for being involved in the rich texture of interesting cultural edges, but if you lack the creativity to start within them, you simply buy your way in, even if everything about your life and activities goes against the very grain of what those creative cultures tacitly aspire to stand for.
Burning man was always the 'somewhat wealthy' at very least. The people I worked with that went to it in 95 and 96 certainly had multiple millions to their names.
Maybe it was more grassroots in the 80s, but I bet you have to go back to when it was just a handful of people who knew each other or Larry Harvey personally.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 27.9 ms ] threadTo a certain extent or at least beyond a certain point, it's just an inevitable dual parasitic symbiosis of convenience that both end up embracing..
I can't think of a world changing artistic and creative movement in the last 130 years that hasn't slid right down this daisy chain. The very phrase "selling out" was born within it..
Most of the great expressionist and abstract painters of the 20th century painted themselves as anticapitalist almost to a fault, it didn't stop their art from being promoted by rich, connected players in the business and philanthropy worlds until it became financial playdough for the status-seeking billionaires of today... How many other artistic movements went down similar paths?
Simply being rich is emotionally no substitute for being involved in the rich texture of interesting cultural edges, but if you lack the creativity to start within them, you simply buy your way in, even if everything about your life and activities goes against the very grain of what those creative cultures tacitly aspire to stand for.
Maybe it was more grassroots in the 80s, but I bet you have to go back to when it was just a handful of people who knew each other or Larry Harvey personally.