It's very low-brow, but not the sort of independent low-brow that bursts with charm and zeal. It's too transactional, too structured, too contextualized, and too eagerly public. At best, this sort of big-money, one-off commission leads to the Teleharmonium and EPCOT and the Saatchi gallery, not Schiele or Baraka or I-Be Area.
If this project succeeds (which I hope it does, since that'll be good for humanity's efforts to get more active in space), it'll produce some works that can be appreciated as art. But it won't produce classics. People will forget about the works. The advancement into space will rightfully overshadow them. The works won't inspire other artists, and they won't advance any movements. They'll be curiosities studied by space historians, not art historians.
Schiele or Baraka or I-Be Area ?
An expressionist painter (now dead), a non-narrative movie-length documentary by someone who still lives, a series of deranged surreal video shorts also by someone living.
The only thing that unifies those three things is that you used them in a sentence together.
Can I play?
Tanguy or Man with a Movie Camera or Dead Mall Series !
Did I win‽
Great art transcends its origins, no matter what they are. Indeed, perhaps art is made greater by transcending its origins, just as it is by transcending the limitations of its form. The art created by this project probably won't be great, because most art isn't great. But it certainly could be. And, if so, your a priori dismissal of it will look about as informed as a contemporary renaissance critic dismissing a masterpiece as just another piece of church-funded propaganda.
I never really thought about it this way before, but Musk in a lot of ways is like late-life Walt Disney. Disney started having some _very_ ambitious projects, which never did pan out, especially after his death. Both were incredibly optimistic about the future, even when it was quite illogical. EPCOT was the idea of building a city of the future, and while it was never completed, it still inspired generations. He progressed the field of robotics, all in the name of inspiring and entertaining people, starting with the World's Fairs.
1 in 10 odds it happens?
It is amazing, isn't it? There's no guarantee that TSLA will still be around in ten years, but I bet their cars will be, along with the industry that was forced into existence by a non-incumbent player.
If that kind of outcome gets you implicated for failure, BMW must be distraught as it looks at those dwindling 3 series sales figures.
FWIW all the people trapped in the cave were rescued.
[0]https://www.space.com/40662-china-first-private-spaceflight-...