Even if you're too young to remember, you probably realize there was a time when art was incorporated into many areas of American's day to day lives, and the world our grandparents inhabited was more beautiful because of it. The coffee mug above is printed with a reproduction of an old fruit crate label. Crate labels were beautiful art -- today they are collector's items, and you find them (or larger art replicas of them) framed and matted, hung in people's homes. Or on coffee mugs, and who knows what else.
Somehow, I don't think today's packaged food artwork will ever adorn someone's wall as a piece of art. A Keebler Elves logo on a coffee mug? A Kellogg's Fruit Loops box lovingly reproduced and hung in a living room? Nope, I just don't see it. The same way courthouses no longer are built with winding steps and copper ceilings, with graceful murals adorning the chambers and gargoyles standing watch from high places. When a nation loses its desire to make industry, commerce and government beautiful, does that make it lose its soul? Or does it cease doing those things because its already lost its soul?
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