MCLC: corruption in calligraphy (1)

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MCLC LIST
corruption in calligraphy (1)
From: A. E. Clark <aec at raggedbanner.com>
“Leading officials shouldn’t steal meat from the bowls of artists.” There is an implicit economic model here. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s (CCDI) premise is that the same consumers buy calligraphy both from officials and from artists (one could also say, “either from officials or from artists”), and using the same discretionary income.  Then a yuan spent on an official’s calligraphy is a yuan that otherwise would have been spent on an artist’s calligraphy.  But if the purchase of an official’s calligraphy is a veiled bribe (or, more charitably, a form of flattery), then that premise is implausible.  Even if the same individuals are making both kinds of purchases, bribes and art will usually be unrelated budget lines.  If it ceased to be possible to buy an official’s calligraphy, the consumer would not buy genuine art with his money instead; he would use that money to please the official in some other way.
The CCDI’s dictum may be true if philistinism has reached such an extreme in China that art is purchased in pursuit of an undifferentiated good of “status,” and owning the work of a powerful incompetent delivers the same satisfaction (in kind and degree) as owning a work of great art.  If this is so, it is a problem unlikely to be solved by “grasping and implementing the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech.”
by denton.2 at osu.edu on January 23, 2015
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