Alice Saarinen wrote in the '60 'The Great American Collectors' depicting a story of passion nailing men & women of extraordinary sensibility and - not necessarily - discreet wealth, to the necessity of pursuing art collection as a mean to improve society and satisfy great egos.
The book narrated biographies which reminded, for their furious love of arts, some influential personalities of the human history which similarly got obsessed and used arts and artists as a tool to emphasize their epical lives. Aestethic always matters.
The cardinal Scipione Borghese, in Rome, in the XVII century, used to steal statues he liked - even from monasteries - leaving something else in exchange. He forced Bernini to stay 'as guest' at the Villa until he made some of the most powerful 'living' sculptures. Pharaohs, kings, queens & priests have always been aware of the power of images and symbols not only to enjoy an aesthetic life dimension but also as an instrument of social control. The personification of the art work is the only key to get it, and this is why people are willing to get art as - probably - they want to become art themselves and become immortal, as a permanent sign of their times.
The real artist cannot do anything else than his own art, which is due to represent his feelings toward the - present - world. Throughout the century, art flew to describe reality and the concept of reality as in a mirror: people moving around the arts and the artists changed dramatically, in the time, their shape and purposes. While the religions, and the churches, were in the past the most important sponsor for the arts - and 'priests' the most enthusiastic supporters, nowadays - back to basic - people are surrounded by arts to impress, speculate, make a footprint in the society, with all of the consequent manipulations.
These discussions aim to talk about art flows nowadays, see who are the new priests of the arts, who is moving the arts, who is loving art despite the money and who wants to sneak between the boundaries of the industry and, possibly, avoid and fight the 'pyramid' effect which is dominating the global society...a progressive reduction of accessibility, or a widening of the 'exclusion': art is the new luxury, is art just for fews?
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