That's why I'm a big art nouveau nerd. Authentic creativity is only possible once we've addressed Walter Benjamin's critique in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Challenging it as a commodity, as a product of academies and patrons, and now as a ponzi scheme. Modernism and proletarian art are strangled by those things. Art should be like a garden city where there's no clear distinction between the forest and the buildings. Municipally-enabled craftsmanship for public benefit, reflecting the local culture and natural setting, replacing every mass-produced object we can with art that values the real things around us.

It isn't the endgame of modernism for me but that's the bare minimum starting point to change the mass perception of art from generic consumption to participating in something radical. The result of my city's urban forest is that people who know nothing about trees defend our municipal trees, plant them on volunteer days, and vote to expand the green spaces to continue the project that authentically represents their needs. I want that but with stained glass and stone engraving so people who now feel entitled to nature also feel entitled to beauty that only they can produce with the tools provided to them by the public they're benefiting.