I just discovered that a documentary called Dignity of the Nobodies is making the rounds on the indy film circuit. The director Fernando Solanas has a distinguished history in covering human rights issues in Latin America. Dignity of the Nobodies explores the lives of the people who have been struggling to survive in the Argentina slums, in the wake of a national economic disaster. It also attempts to instill the nobodies with the dignity of telling their own story. This quote from a protester says it all: “work is dignity … they are destroying all dignity.”

A few months ago I confessed to my best friend that I liked reading about modern art more than looking at it. Baudelaire, Kandinsky, and Rilke have an honored place on my bookshelf: they had interesting things to say and contributed to a revolution in consciousness. However, I prefer to look at traditional figurative art. I’m not sure whether this makes me a shallow philistine or a free spirit who broke the chains of art pundit indoctrination.

Today I read a reactionary article by Art Renewal Center founder Fred Ross that re-ignited my questions about art and taste. Ross is the self-proclaimed leader of the charge against the pressure to glorify the moderns.

While I don’t agree with Ross’s list of musical or literary masterworks, I do share his instincts when it comes to painting. However, while Ross and the ARC are unabashedly Eurocentric, my museum of choice is the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Still, it’s hard to tell whether my adoration of bodhisattvas and celadonware is a different flavor of art snobbery or a primitive instinct to return to idolatry. I’m the first to angst over the tyranny of beauty, yet I stare at White Tara until I fall into a trance.

While there are certainly more important things to worry about, it’s worth thinking about the human outlook on art because that communicates something about the state of our soul. While Ross is trying to swap one rankism for another, I think the underlying issue is not so much what we choose to contemplate as how to disentangle love of contemplation from claims to rank.

This article made me think about how gatekeepers distort the arts. It’s easy to overlook these interest-laden interventions since the sole contact most people have with the arts is at the point of sale. How many talented people have been blocked from pursuing their artistic vision because they didn’t fit into some powermongerer’s agenda?

While looking around for commentary on rankism in the arts, I found this interesting experiment. The organizers of Art-O-Mart are trying to help new artists slip under the gate and make direct contact with their market. That’s not to say that the market itself won’t harbor tastes and opinions that set unfortunate limits on artistic possibilities. However, perhaps the advertised Art-O-Mart mission will encourage potential patrons to think about where and why they’ve set their own boundaries:

At Art-O-Mart any artist can display work, even if they aren’t shown in a professional space. For creative types it means no gallery-owning gatekeepers, no professional critics. For art lovers, it means a chance to discover something new.

Where there are people of good will trying to help emerging artists get a foot in the door, there’s hope.