There was a little meme going around eight years ago this month: “Bad for the country. Bad for the planet. Good for art.”
Obviously not good for art in the sense of Americans on the whole showing themselves to be in a collective mood to support “the arts,” or of being open to what art brings us: “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery,” the painter Francis Bacon wrote.
Rather, that art thrives as rebellion in a time of close-mindedness, that the artist works better when not coddled...