Are tyrants good for art?

[Joe Allonby]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oRbStmxvm4



On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 1:03 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:
> "It's because traditional tyrants left a good deal of freedom in society.
> Ancient China wasn't anything like a modern democracy, but it produced some
> of the greatest art there's ever been, while Mao's China produced nothing.
> Tsarist Russia contained many kinds of discrimination and injustice, but in
> the late 19th and early 20th Century it was in the vanguard of literature,
> painting, music and dance. The Soviet Union produced little that was even
> remotely comparable. The arts flourished in the empire of the Habsburgs,
> while Nazism produced Leni Riefenstahl's repugnant and much over-rated
> Triumph of the Will. Whereas authoritarian regimes leave much of society
> alone, totalitarianism aims to control everything. Invariably, the result is
> a cultural desert."
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Culture thrives on conflict and antagonism, not social harmony - a
>> point made rather memorably by a certain Harry Lime, says philosopher
>> John Gray.
>>
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19202527
>>
>> John Gray
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray
>
>