In defense of “elitism” in art

Cafe Society
1

Often in this forum, people express a negative feeling about art that requires the consumer/recipient/auditor/viewer of the art to meet the artist halfway; art that requires effort for understanding. It’s been suggested numerous times that such art is a failure because it doesn’t immediately reveal its message on one’s first experience of it. “If the art requires explanation, then it has failed” has been elevated almost to the status of a natural law by some of the people who feel this way. Many people on that side of the debate seem often to be expressing a perception of insult, or at least snobbery, when such works are discussed here.

I was struck by a new theory when pondering this, precipitated by an article about the Nobel Literature Prizewinner Derek Walcott, in which he defends poetry against the charge that it should be a democratic artform. He insists that poetry is an aristocratic artform. Now, I don’t claim to be smarter than a Nobel Laureate, but I think his characterization only serves to muddy the waters further, because I think the model he evokes—the class hierarchy of an aristocracy—is not a good model. Nonetheless, I think he’s right in that this is how many people view the issue. His use of the word aristocratic suddenly cast a light, for me, on how some of the participants in this forum feel about artists who appear, to them, to look down on them; to judge them as lesser beings because they don’t “get” complicated art.

My new theory is that this is a big part of the problem, this inappropriate model of a hierarchy of art. A better model, I think, would be to think of different kinds of art as parallel to different languages, rather than different levels within a hierarchy.

In other words, the people who feel shut out by an artist who uses layers of references, or whatever, do not feel shut out by an author who writes in Icelandic. The fact of my inability to understand a novel written in Icelandic does not make me feel looked down upon, unlike, say, the way the later writings of James Joyce, or the complicated layers of a Kubrick film evoke terms like “art snob” for some people.

The difference of the two models is an important one: an aristocracy is a predetermined hierarchy, with the implication that some people are born better than others. The other model, of different languages, does not have the same connotation, because we all know that other languages are closed off to us. Knowledge of another language, we know, is learnable. It requires only desire and effort.

Art is the same way. There’s no question that certain forms of art open up more to people who’ve had certain forms of education. This should engender no more perception of insult or snobbery than the fact that Icelandic can only be understood by people who have had the opportunity to learn the Icelandic language.

So I think it would be helpful to keep this model in mind when discussions of controversial art arise in this forum. Instead of insisting that it’s an artist’s responsibility to frame his art in such a way that it is equally accessible by all people, of all levels of experience and education, we should remember that for any type of art, there is an audience. If you don’t perceive yourself to be the intended audience for a particular piece of art, it’s not useful, or even accurate, to insist that it is therefore a failure. At the same time, it’s not fair to accuse you of a failure to understand it. It’s a choice: you want to understand something written in Icelandic, you can learn to speak Icelandic. Ditto Joyce, Kubrick, Verhoeven, Marcel Duchamp, or Tupac Shakur.

2

I appreciate your intention, and that of Mr. Walcott, but I’m not very fond of the language model you propose, for one main reason. It doesn’t seem to take into account the progression through the levels of appreciation that’s common to all art forms. It’s often a natural progression to move from one level of artistic appreciation to another, while acquiring a new language is a complex and difficult act of will.

People frequently move up in their appreciation for art forms, the most demonstrable case being the printed word. Readers progress from being read to, to reading a few words with pictures, to reading a little in class, to reading full books by themselves. At this point, there’s considerable divergence; some people go straight into great literature, and some will never pick up a book after high school. But at no point is there a language’s worth of divide between any of the strata of literature. It’s a series of small steps from The Cat In The Hat and Finnegan’s Wake, not a giant leap. (Though some would argue that the distance isn’t all that great to start with.)

The idea of a language of art is pervasive; there’s a vocabulary to silent film, for instance, that makes little sense without education or extensive exposure. However, viewers of sound film adapt to it quickly, as their experience with a similar vocabulary is an excellent foundation.

It seems to me to be a disservice to make the different levels of artistic appreciation seem unapproachable. Kubrick didn’t speak a different language than Verhoeven, he spoke the same language differently. A dialect, if you will. But then that brings an aristocratic model back into play, as social status tends to have a profound impact upon dialect.

3

You’re right. I’m frustrated to no end with James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon, because I’m not nearly worldly enough to get either of them. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s not THEIR problem I’m culturally unsophisticated. And if someone asked me to dumb down my art so the vanilla masses could get it, I’d probably have to be restrained.

The proper response to sophisticated art is to either “work” your way up to it, if you will, or move on. But don’t diss it just because you don’t get it.

4

MrV, all analogies eventually break down: nothing is universal interchangeable with a different thing (as Buffy would say to me at this point, “Could you vague that up for me a bit?”). So your suggestion that a “dialect” model would necessitate a class hierarchy just because language dialects are often bound to such class distinctions is entirely invalid: class distinctions in dialects are cultural constructions that have an entirely different genesis from the dialects themselves.

Further, your insistence on the language of hierarchy–“progression,” “up,” etc.–is your own projection, and is not at all intrinsic to the various forms and avenues of art, which are all arranged on a lateral plane rather than an inclined plane.

It’s true that one’s knowledge of any particular discipline will increase with one’s familiarity, and with work and attention, but this is exactly what makes the language analogy an apt one. It’s fair to point to a progression within a particulr, distinct path of art education, but my point was to deny a hierarchical distinction between them.

It’s each individual’s choice whether he wants to commit the effort to learn the vocabulary of Kubrick’s approach to film as opposed to Michael Bay’s approach. That a particular individual has chosen not to devote the time and industry to learn about Kubrick’s approach should not be viewed as a failure on that person’s part, but as a choice. Just as Kubrick’s attempt to work in a “dialect” that’s not the same as Michael Bay’s should not be construed as a failure on Kubrick’s part to reach every single individual who might randomly happen upon his films. Each individual artist makes such choices, and each individual audience member makes such choices.

That’s the primary distinction I’m trying to make: an aristocratic model excludes the idea of choice.

5

“There’s no question that certain forms of art open up more to people who’ve had certain forms of education. This should engender no more perception of insult or snobbery than the fact that Icelandic can only be understood by people who have had the opportunity to learn the Icelandic language.”

By the same token, artists who choose to write in Icelandic when they’re also perfectly fluent in more popular languages forfeit the right to complain that their audience is limited. :slight_smile:

6

I’d be interested in such an example; I can’t think of one offhand.

I was addressing the practice of some consumers of art to shout “elitism” when they don’t identify with a piece of art, or to argue with someone who likes a particular piece of art and insisting that it’s bad, rather than simply saying “it doesn’t communicate anything to me.”

7

“I’d be interested in such an example; I can’t think of one offhand.”

Can’t think of which: a case where an artist’s techniques limited his audience, or a case where an artist complained that his audience was limited?

A bunch of post-1940 jazz artists would fit either description, with early Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler as extreme cases.

Of course, it’s only human nature to want to have total creative freedom and widespread mass approval at the same time. Yet the more esoteric an artistic language you adopt, the smaller your audience becomes (unless you are the one-in-million artist who actually inspires the audience to learn a new artistic language.)

(This is all a tangent with regards to the topic of the main post; it’s just a little corollary that occured to me while reading it.)

8

Imagine your average modern artist. Sure, he can paint a picture and get his point across the normal way, but he’d much rather staple shoes to dead chickens, then impale them with shards of sheetmetal, accomplsihing the same degree of communication in a much more abstract and involved way. Oh, if only the world could appreciate his efforts!

I stand by my guns, and my definition of art: Art is emotional communication that overcomes boundaries. A true artist can play with your heartstrings whether you are college educated or illiterate, can make you laugh or cry whether you speak english or yiddish. “Language barriers” mean nothing to art. It MAKES you understand.

Contrast this with my definition of contemporary art, “What ever you can con someone into buying,” and you pretty much understand my esteem for the intellectual artists, who merely produce a more sophisticated form of drek.

9

I’m not sure anecdotal exammples of individual megalomaniacal artists would have any real relevance to this discussion. I’m addressing the overarching paradigm, not the exceptional wacko who thinks the world should bow to his vision of it.

10

I.I., my impression from your post is that you’re not interested in engaging in this debate; your post gives a drive-by vibe. If I’m mistaken, please correct me and I’ll be happy to address your points, such as they are: your definition of the “average” modern artists is more indicative of ignorance than familiarity.

Again, that’s your choice, but your insistance that an artist speak in your individual idiom is just as megalomaniacal as the most obnoxiously elitist artist. More to the point, it suggests a total ignorance of reality: you suggest that there IS a universal idiom; that there is a way to make art that will speak to everyone in exactly the same way. This of course is ludicrous.

11

You’re language paradigm works for me. But I think InquisitiveIdiot’s point is that some artists effectively make up their own languages.

Your idea still posits art as a form of communication. A fair portion of modern art, however, is inaccessible to anyone without a detailed “translation” by the artist explaining what he or she was thinking when they produced the piece. In other words, this kind of art does not communicate.

12

That’s too absolute a statement for me: “A fair portion of modern art, however, is inaccessible to anyone without a detailed “translation” by the artist.” To accept “fair portion,” I’d want to qualify “anyone.” To accept an unqualified “anyone,” I’d want “fair portion” defined pretty narrowly.

In any case, bad art is not a modern invention. I think many people imagine, incorrectly, that most old art they’ve seen is “better” than modern art because most old art was better, when it’s far more likely that the older works that have stood the test of time are the cream of the crop.

I’d be the first to agree that not a whole lot of current art will survive the ages, but I would seriously doubt that the ratio has changed much over the ages.

13

James Joyce was very disappointed with the reaction to Finnegans Wake. He apparently thought that everyone who enjoyed Ulysses could enjoy its follow-up. But can everyone enjoy even Ulysses? John Carey has pointed out one of the great ironies of the book: though it is a celebration of the life of the ordinary man, in the form of Leopold Bloom, there is no way that Bloom himself could ever read the book.

To consider his namesake, Harold Bloom is often decried as an elitist, but I think this is wrong, or at least half-wrong. He is certainly an elitist when it comes to works of literature, but he is no social snob. He passionately believes that Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoy and Joyce are for everyone. So I suppose the question is, “Is he right, and if he isn’t, does it matter?” Is William Faulkner diminished as an artist if, say, only one reader in ten can enjoy him? The poetry of J H Prynne has recently come to my attention, and I find it completely baffling (see for example “Rich in Vitamin C”). Is this Prynne’s problem or mine? There must come a point where necessary difficulty becomes willful obscurantism, but who decides where that point is?

As an avid reader (and rereader), my gut feeling is that difficult literature is valuable. As a purely empirical observation, if we banish anything harder than Frederick Forsyth we are going to lose almost all of what is generally taken to be the literary canon.

I shall ponder the issue and return if and when I can think of anything to say.

14

lissener and I were discussing this very issue a few days ago (I believe it was after having seen City of God: amazing), and I brought up what might be considered an analogous metaphor from a more populist venue.

In last week’s episode of Enterprise, the doctor character is being asked by the Vulcan to perform some technical task, and he snaps in response, “I’m a physician, not an engineer!”

Now, obviously, for longtime fans of Trek, this is a cute and funny (if obvious) reference back to the original series, and McCoy’s occasional pronouncements that he is a doctor, not a fill-in-the-blank-with-something-he’s-not. You have to have more than a passing familiarity with the history of the show to get the joke, but at the same time you don’t have to be an expert, either. If you’re a first-time viewer, it’ll sail over your head, of course, but you don’t have to have memorized every single episode and read Mr. Scott’s Technical Manual and whatnot in order to get it.

Is it elitist for Trek to make jokes about itself that only fans will get? Of course not, because we don’t think of Trek as being a “superior” art form. And yet, a certain amount of “education” is required, insofar as education can be loosely defined as “learning about a subject,” to get the allusion inherent in the doctor’s line of dialogue.

So why does it become “elitist” when said education refers to painting, or poetry, or dance?

15

Oh, and before somebody dings me, I recognize “analogous metaphor” as being redundant, or at least clumsy. Did some rewriting on the fly and didn’t preview. Drat.

16

Let’s look at the language model: Is one language fundamentally harder to learn than the other? If not, how come bumping and grinding to “Milkshake” comes easier than appreciating an aria?

17

What I mean to say is that there are various degrees of human emotions and tastes. Just like wine tasting is more subtle and complex than say, tasting sugar, resonating with a particular musical piece may require more work and effort.

18

Hey, wait… I thought we were arguing in defense of artistic elitism here. I’ll never be egalitarian enough to compare a generic romance novel with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I agree that there’s inherent value in the appreciation of art in any form, and I’ll burn through the latest fantasy bestseller happily. But I know that the experience that I get from, say, Michael Chabon is on a completely different, superior, plane. One I have to work harder to achieve.

I’m starting to think that the only metaphor complex enough to achieve what you’re attempting would be art itself, at which point we devolve into paradox and futility.

And then there’s the question of language itself being art…

Feh. I’m gonna go watch a movie.

19

The same reason it’s easier to learn how to say “hello” in Spanish than to learn how to write a master’s thesis in Spanish.

20

Funny, but I find the exact opposite to be true. I would have to work at learning to appreciate most modern music today. An aria speaks more clearly to me. And I’m a hard-core rocker.