Art for Art's Sake and Ours.

Today I went into Chicago proper with one goal. To visit for perhaps the last time a place that has given me enormous joy over the past twenty-five years.

The Chicago Art Institute. Just the act of walking past the two aquara green lions that stand at permanent guard at the top of the stairs (according to local legend ten year old Orsen Welles sat on top of one of the lions and drew sketches of passersby.) is a thrill hard to match.

In the past I have been witness to some of the greatest creations mankind and it's brilliant and infuriating citizens have ever produced.

Not just Van Gogh,s dazzling Starry Night, but also the many "first draft's" necessary to produce such a wonder.

Gauguins tropical explosions of color. Rembrandt's subtle manipulation of those colors and our aesthetics.

I also observed an exhibition of Soviet Stalinist era art. It was grim.

The lines were sharp. One might well cut one's self just touching one of the paintings. Colors, such as they were,seemed to be chosen for the purpose of bleaching out any creativity in either the artist or the observer. The very essence of authoritarianism was in those paintings. It was depressing to see, yet I think quite important to see.

President Donald Musk has,in a coup over the arts establishment made himself head of the national endowment of the arts.

Understandablely most of the country has responded to this with a shrug and a "Eh so what?". I would argue that this is a significant action in Elon Trump's war on democracy.

A country without a vibrant independent culture of art (here I'm referring not just to paintings, but also novels and film making.) is one deprived of it's imagination. No imagination ultimately no democracy. Democracy requires creativity to survive. Authoritarianism merely needs plodding gray to keep going.

Trump after his siege and takeover of the NEA has been clear that in the future the government would only support arts that supported his views and praise him vociferously.

Coming soon,Maoist style operas on the beauty of golden toilets and how it enriches the lives of the working class for president Trump Musk to have so many.

Frida Kahlo was the artist I saw today. Specifically the paintings she made will spending a month in Paris with her friend Mary Reynolds.

The colors boomed. Her imagination fired and fused with my own. When I parted I stepped out into a cold rainy day. Yet I felt sun on my face and lightness in my step.

Sadly I can't end this piece on a happy note. For I know that if President Elon Trump is successful in his culture coup de tat Kahlo would be Banished from our cultural institutions.

A Mexican woman who once belonged to the Mexican Communist party, who lived was sexually liberated. An icon for Chicanos, femininism and members of the LGBTQ community. I can see Elon Trump doing a full Fred Sanford.

This is why Donald Musk's counter revolution is dangerously awful . A pale banal culture is a rotten fruit easily picked by the facists currently in control of our government.