Culture vs. the People

[Treefrog]

Here's an article from the Chicago Tribune that discusses the divide between Art (or Culture) and popularity. Can the twain meet?

(Note: this article does not mention ballet at all, but the general topic is one that has been raised on this board with regard to ballet. Perhaps this article will stimulate more thoughts.)

Snooty critics vs. regular folks. Highbrow vs. lowbrow. Professors vs. philistines. The artistically refined vs. the grossly popular.

Haven't we been here before?

Indeed we have, yet we never seem quite able to get beyond it. The truism that good things don't sell, and things that sell aren't good, keeps popping up in American culture, despite our otherwise powerful allegiance to the simple arithmetic of capitalism: pleasing the greatest number of people for the longest possible time. In politics, in business, the idea is to outdo the opposition in an old-fashioned head count. Numbers matter. Majority rules.

Or the opposite . . . In the arts, however, the opposite sometimes seems to be true, according to certain commentators: The broader your appeal, the less worthy you must be. Too much fame, too much acceptance by too many people, only means that you've sold out. You've dumbed things down. You've stooped to conquer.

[Hans]

Well, to tackle one point the article makes, it doesn't follow that the more popular or famous (for example, a ballet company) is, the worse it must be. The idea is to become famous (and lucrative) without compromising artistic standards.

[Alexandra]

It's a fascinating question -- I don't think that everything that's popular has been dumbed down, but I can think of many ballets I've seen that seem to be aimiing for the Lowest Common Denominator, following the example of television.

There are also examples of "high art" that are very popular ("Swan Lake," in any guise) that may have nothing to do with its artistic worth. But that's always part of it, I think. I may be attracted to a jewel, a pretty bauble, not having the vaguest idea whether it's real or fake, or how many carots it has, or if it's been cut well or ill. I just think it's pretty. It may be the most perfect diamond in the world, it may be a zircon.

Thanks for posting this, Treefrog -- it's a good topic for us to discuss.

[Leigh Witchel]

Thanks for bringing the article to our attention, Treefrog. It's interesting. I apologize, because my response is disjointed.

My reading was that the author has definitely staked out her turf on the issue, and it's populist. Fair enough, but I'd like to add a few thoughts about the other side of the coin.

American culture, by and large, is one that has a profound ambivalence towards elitism. There are plenty of types of elitism out there, economic, social, intellectual. We respond differently to each of them (we love celebrity, and there's little we seem to enjoy more as sport than creating a media sensation and then feeding them to the lions) but we tend to respond most favorably to economic elitism and least to intellectual. Broad generalization, but I think it's because our mythology is that anybody can do anything. Well, it's easier to believe that about having money - somehow, anyone might be able to strike it rich. It's a lot harder to believe that anyone can be intellectual. We've tried to democratize it, but it's the last frontier.

I think that's what we're looking at here. Anything is art, and anyone is artist. I think the impulse that she's stating as "don't try and keep art out of our reach!" has hidden in that statement "don't you dare think that you know more, can do more or are any better than us."

It's obviously more complicated than this. There's an economic component - for most of western history art and culture took its cues from the upper classes. In the twentieth century the driving force was the middle class. Now there's a movement to drop it even further to the streets. I've never found inspiration there, so it doesn't really interest me.

There's always been a creep upwards in art - popular art becomes high art (look at folk dance influencing ballet or opera going from being popular culture to high culture) but that creep was just that - a creep, over a few generations and it took place as the art in question got removed from the vernacular.

To me, a significant difference between high and pop art is temporality. In "The Disco Project" by Neil Greenberg, Greenberg projected text that placed his soundtrack in time "This is the song that was big when my brother died." That's popular art in a sentence. It places itself on a timeline; its resonances are with a place, a time, a moment in your life, a situation. And they're beloved for that reason. It is what makes popular art popular.

Of course high art can have that specific meaning as well, and it speaks of its time - but it also steps outside of time. I once said Balanchine felt "slippery" in time. You saw the era of its creation, the era of the music and the present all at once. And it is its classicism that does that.

[diane]

I agree.

I also want to believe that it is indeed possible to have art and still be popular in the sense of not-alienating-everyone-or-nearly-everyone.

A lot probably depends on education, but that costs money, which most societies are not willing to put up in the amount really needed.

I do refuse to see "art" as something devoid of "skill", though.

Will have to think about this some more.

Thanks for bringing it up.

Another thing: I find myself often torn between what some would call populist on the one side, and "heavy-duty art" on the other side.

That is quite easy over here, where really many theater folk like to believe that if no one wants to see what they are putting up on the stage, then it must be above the heads of the audience, and therefore good.

-sigh-

-d-