While art as a profession certainly wasn’t taken seriously, there was the belief that any student need train only once and could be in the same job with yearly promotion for life.
When we use imagination to create anything, how much is already programmed?
An art gallery owning friend was expressing her frustration with gallery visitors a few days ago. Many were in and out in two minutes
I watched film some time ago of an elephant painting. It painted elephants and trees in startlingly observed detail..
I have no doubt that visual artists are going to have to adapt and train themselves to use digital tools. After all, if an ageing David Hockney can show the way with an iPad as his main creative tool, then who are we lesser mortals to argue the toss.
Sadder still was the fate of Elvis and Tom Jones. The latter is still singing the same songs of decades ago on the stages on Las Vegas while elderly women queue up to throw their underwear in his direction. The last days of Elvis [fat, flat and sweating] were mostly an embarrassment. The plethora of Elvis imitators who gather annually in various corners of the world choose to remember the early songs and the white jump suit. The King died at just the right time to be inaugurated as a legend. Given another couple of decades and the world might not have been so kind.