In Europe, people in the arts are considered part of the intelligentsia; they are considered part of the elite.
I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.
'Frasier' was a classy gig. I didn't for one minute think it was less prestigious or artistic than doing a play.
In New York, the theater is a destination point. In Los Angeles, no matter how provocative, how successful, how star-studded the theater event may be, it is, at best, a second-class citizen.
Fairs are beneath the dignity of art. To stand there in a booth and hawk your wares - it is just not how you sell art.
Photographs trade simultaneously on the prestige of art and the magic of the real.
The art house is an elitist idea.
Art is for the elite because it has a very high price-point of entry. And when one is in that social strata, they look down at illustrators because they just draw things directly for a few hundred dollars, and that's seen as being a bit grubby. Galleries allow artists to stay relatively divorced from the financial aspects of their trade.
Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.
In the 1970s when I started in the art world, no self-respecting artist would have stood in line to try to get on a television show. It never would have happened.
It is almost impossible for the poetess, once laurelled, to take off the crown for good or to reject values and taste of those who tender it.
The first impression and a natural one is, that the fine arts have risen or declined in proportion as patronage has been given to them or withdrawn, but it will be found that there has often been more money lavished on them in their worst periods than in their best, and that the highest honours have frequently been bestowed on artists whose names are scarcely now known.
