What Good Are The Arts?

[A Lark Ascending]

Just read this very quickly. Had me punching the air again and again. An ultra-relativist stance that takes many of the claims of the world of 'the arts' - that they are good for you, elevate you, make you morally better, help you reach spiritual perfection - and skewers them. Carey has no beef with the products of artists of any type (and is very much in favour of practical engagement in 'the arts')- merely with the grandiose claims made by those who set themselves up as the arts establishment.

He doesn't mention jazz at all - but it isn't hard to relate his questioning of the arts establishment in general with the jazz critical establishment.

In the end it's a plea to accept that people are going to navigate their own way through what are termed the arts, rather than directing towards particularly hierarchies of importance.

Will delight anyone who gets irritated by the certainties of musical (or other) criticism; an interesting challenge to anyone who believes that there are absolute values in art by which it can be evaluated.

Edited April 17, 2009 by Bev Stapleton

[BillF]

That sounds very interesting, Bev and surely relates to our ongoing debate/whine about cultural elitism and Radio 3.

[A Lark Ascending]

That sounds very interesting, Bev and surely relates to our ongoing debate/whine about cultural elitism and Radio 3.

Though he doesn't mention the BBC specifically, he does have a real go at the Arts Council with its emphasis on upholding 'artistic standards' (i.e. Covent Garden, the big galleries etc) rather than promoting active involvement in music, painting etc. Cultural elitism is very much his target - he seems to have it in for Jeanette Winterson big time!

I first came across him in a TV documentary based on an earlier book 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' where he charts how the cultural elite strove to distance itself from the growing literacy of the mass population by creating an increasingly obscure art world. Must read the book now.

[clifford_thornton]

Clement Greenberg would still take his ass in a fight, I'll bet.

[A Lark Ascending]

Clement Greenberg would still take his ass in a fight, I'll bet.

In the eyes of those who like to defer to a particular strand of 'expert' opinion, perhaps.

Edited April 17, 2009 by Bev Stapleton

[carnivore]

That sounds very interesting, Bev and surely relates to our ongoing debate/whine about cultural elitism and Radio 3.

Though he doesn't mention the BBC specifically, he does have a real go at the Arts Council with its emphasis on upholding 'artistic standards' (i.e. Covent Garden, the big galleries etc) rather than promoting active involvement in music, painting etc. Cultural elitism is very much his target - he seems to have it in for Jeanette Winterson big time!

I first came across him in a TV documentary based on an earlier book 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' where he charts how the cultural elite strove to distance itself from the growing literacy of the mass population by creating an increasingly obscure art world. Must read the book now.

I haven't seen the TV prog, Bev - is his position that 'difficult' artistes like Picasso, Schoenberg, Beckett, Rothko, Corigliano, Bellow etc etc deliberately created their works in the hopes that virtually no one would get anything out of them?

[A Lark Ascending]

That sounds very interesting, Bev and surely relates to our ongoing debate/whine about cultural elitism and Radio 3.

Though he doesn't mention the BBC specifically, he does have a real go at the Arts Council with its emphasis on upholding 'artistic standards' (i.e. Covent Garden, the big galleries etc) rather than promoting active involvement in music, painting etc. Cultural elitism is very much his target - he seems to have it in for Jeanette Winterson big time!

I first came across him in a TV documentary based on an earlier book 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' where he charts how the cultural elite strove to distance itself from the growing literacy of the mass population by creating an increasingly obscure art world. Must read the book now.

I haven't seen the TV prog, Bev - is his position that 'difficult' artistes like Picasso, Schoenberg, Beckett, Rothko, Corigliano, Bellow etc etc deliberately created their works in the hopes that virtually no one would get anything out of them?

I don't think it's that simplistic. He doesn't challenge the right of anyone to enjoy any of those 'artists' - merely their right to be telling others that they ought to be enjoying those artists above other things because they are 'better'. He basically denies the existence of objective artistic truths in a non-religious world (he accepts that in a world with a God then you can have a supreme arbiter who will decide what is and is not worthy).

Most of his argument in 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' is based on English literature with the Bloomsbury group as a major target. He basically argues that up to the mid 19thC culture - literature, art, music in the 'art' sense - was the exclusive preserve of the wealthy. But with the advances of literacy in the later 19thC the cultural elites, who assumed that their love of art was another way of proving their superiority over the masses, found their territory invaded. So their arts evolved to take them beyond the common herd, thereby retaining their sense of superiority.

I'm half remembering this from a programme a few years back so can't comment on the detail of his argument - but in both that programme and the book I mention above he's able to quote limitless examples of the snobbery of the arts establishment. I'd be suprised if he was arguing that elitism was the only thing that drove 20thC arts into increasing abstraction; but he is arguing that this was a major part of the appeal of 'difficult' art.

I don't know what it is like in the US but in the UK control of the arts still lies very much within the influence of a small social/political elite - the Oxbridge crowd. Thus the constant preference given to opera and classical music over jazz (and to jazz over even less 'respectable' musics).

Edit: Nice synopsis of 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' here.

And a balanced biographical article here. I can see why he appeals to me so...I'm from that same first-generation-university-educated lower middle class 'sort'.

Edited April 17, 2009 by Bev Stapleton