Yes, but is it art?

Those of us who had a 'good' education had some exposure to art and music.  My primary was an LEA school, it only went 'public' school later.

Generally, even those who were lucky enough to have a multi-disciplinary education became jacks of all trades, pretty good at journeyman level at a few disciplines, master perhaps at one or two.  We move in certain directions and avidly pursue them.

My forte was English language but my heart was in sport, esp. sailing, cricket, rugby.  Any opportunity, I was outside indulging in that.  Which doesn't leave a lot of room for art.  Music you can listen to in spare moments, art requires application.

And yet art and architecture in particular were very interesting to me all my life.  So I read up on them, saw much ... but was never of an artistic temperament in the lefty-woke-luvvy sense, only in appreciating the different schools and movements.  My surrealism was of the Magritte and Escher variety, some Dali, not much Miro, forget whatever Pollock thought he was doing. Art Deco and Streamline Moderne were my thing.  Early to mid C20th colour and quaintness.

The final few words of this I'll come back to further down:

The term ‘artivism’ means political propaganda masquerading as art. ‘Artists’ receive funding from ‘cultural entyrist’ museum directors, who have politically captured the institutions they run, then launch some ‘installation’, ‘hub’ or ‘happening’. As Adams acutely observes, this ‘art’ is left-wing without exception. 

Quite agree with this:

Practitioners of artivism are parasites, chancers and charlatans sucking up public money, and their paymasters in museums and galleries are an arrogant elite who seek, in a rather colonial way, to impose a minority viewpoint on the majority – who merely pay for it and in return are held in contempt.

'Left wing'?  Well, these are just words, are they not?  The 20s to 50s left liked to think they had the discerning eyes whilst the right were brutal Marquesses of Queensberry ... trampling beasts with as much culture as a hippo.  I agree with the author of this article in wondering how the aggressive globo-beasts and luvvies hijacked art, which had been a noble pursuit, and turned it into a jargon-fed wankfest.

It's also interesting to me how the French 'gauche', meaning unappreciative and yahooish, also literally means 'left'.  And don't forget the other meaning ... sinister.  Hmmm, I wonder what a-droit could mean?

As far as education goes, which opened this post, far from wishing to be of an elite, I firmly believe that education should be rounded for all but that the talented and committed in any field can be backed and encouraged to pursue excellence.  Yes, I'm afraid I'm talking grammar schools.  Why not?