Is a more cultured person better able to judge art/literature?

Great Debates
1

In a recent argument it was proposed that someone with a better grasp of culture, a greater and broader knowledge of the arts (literature, art etc.) and a good ability to read deep detail in texts and artwork, is better able to judge any other artform.

What is the general feeling on this?

This all started when one of my friends who is artier, better read and highly qualified in the arts (especially English literature) argued that Patricia Cornwell (and Stephen King) was fine in her genre, but could never really be said to produce great works of literature. She made books - not literature.

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2

Some people need to validate their own interests by attacking others.

100 years from now people will be attacking contemporary artists for not being real literature and they will claim that the stuff from today is real literature.

3

I don’t think that King or Cornwell are particularly ‘good’ writers although they are good at what they do. I do think they produce genre writing as opposed to fine literature. However I think posterity will decide. A lot of what we currently consider to be classic literature was in its time considered to be a potboiler. Dickens, Austen, the Brontes.

Actually… I’m confused. What is your OP trying to say? I don’t get the link between the first paragraphs.

I don’t agree that competency in one art form translates into competency in another. I’m competent to assess certain forms of literature but give me your average modern painting and I’m at a loss. I know what I like and I usually don’t like it ;).

4

Are you asking if someone whose passion, experience, and knowledge of a certain area would make a good judge of said area? Then the answer would be yes.

Do you have to be careful about what individual biases come into play when judging? Yes, yes, and yes.

However, saying the Cornwell and King can’t produce great works of literature is more judging the author’s ability than their current works. And that is one leap I’m not willing to take because we won’t know until their lives are over with wether or not they are able to produce “great” literature.

5

Anyone can judge a work of art. Ya like it or ya don’t. But the educated critic can put it into some kind of context (historical or whatever, depending on whatever theoretical apparatus he favors), maybe even help you appreciate it. Whether you eventually come to enjoy it and are able to agree that it deserves to be called a “great work” is another matter. So what the expert tells you may be irrelevant if it doesn’t enhance your enjoyment.

The trouble is, the critical consensus slowly evolves, and what was great becomes crap and vice versa. I often wonder if these experts know what they’re talking about, or are just parroting what they’ve heard from their peers.

To go beyond literature for an anecdotal example: I like to listen to classical music, but I don’t know much about it. One of my favorite composers is Saint-Saens. A friend of mine is much better educated musically than I am, and disdains Saint-Saens but loves Stravinsky, whom I can’t stand. I suspect he only thinks certain composers are good because that’s what he’s learned. But then I’ve never had a critic teach me to appreciate Stravinsky.

6

If you are more “cultured”, I think that perhaps you’re in a better position to enjoy certain types of art and literature because you’re more aware of the cultural context. You can make connections and notice details that the untutored will miss. You might also find some works lacking when they are compared with other “great art” but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing at all to be gained from those “lesser” works.

Someone who was not as educated would miss much of the depth of some of the “great” works, and think they were stupid, and not see such a great difference in quality between the “greater” and the “lesser.”

However, there’s plenty of room for personal taste. Even broadly-read scholars can’t agree on the best book in the English language, for example, and any one of them would probably deride at least one selection on another’s Top 20 list.

As for Stephen King, I find his work puerile, but there are plenty of folks who would disagree with me. The only way to tell if his “books” will come to be considered “literature” is to wait a few decades, or, better yet, generations. A book that has much to offer to its readers will survive while shallower pieces fall by the wayside.

7

Podkayne

I’m afraid it’s more arbitrary than that. Some “great works” are forgotten, then found. Reputations rise & fall in response to current fashion.

8

I agree almost wholeheartedly, but it depends on who is receiving the judgement (I mean, who hears the judgement and considers it). The judge can only suit the crowd he preaches to.

Someone with a background in the relevant history, with a specific art movement, and so on, is far more likely to draw the responses the artist meant or hoped to evoke than the average schmoe…but the average schmoe, if he is interested, can get those feelings by listening to the proper authority build a background.

My mom, for example, taught me to appreciate surrealism (painting, never got into photography) when I alsways thought it was a load of shit. She hasn’t gotten me into imressionism yet, but Eris knows she tries.

At any rate, art is so very contextual that it seems to me that someone steeped in that context would be a better judge than most.

As far as King goes, I think some of his works will indeed stand the test of time. Horror they may be (mostly) but there are, in many of them, some deep issues at hand. That’s just MHO, however; I am not in the position to judge authoritatively :smiley:

9

Podkayne wrote what I would’ve liked to–right up until the last paragraph, since I have enjoyed a lot of the SK I’ve read.

A few years ago I took a community college literature class. My roommate had found himself 3 credits short in humanities (according to the medical schools to which he was applying) so he found this night class and I signed up to keep him company.

Well, it was quite a mix in there. I’m not very learned in literature, but thanks to a liberal arts education I think I brought more context than most of them to the class. My expectations for the course careened southward when one of my classmates criticized “Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright!” on the basis of the inflammability of said feline: “How could a tiger be on fire? That’s just stupid.” Yipes.

But as the term progressed, I actually came to value his insights. I mean, hey, it’s a measure of great literature (not the only measure, but still, an interesting one) if it can reach people who read at the surface level. This guy was great on Madame Bovary, which had always left me cold.

I guess I came away from that whole experience believing that one’s experience of a work of art can be enhanced by having a cultured mind, but I’m more reluctant to say that the cultured person is a better judge of its ultimate quality. I don’t think that additional knowledge necessarily makes them more objective, for example. Bias and preferences abound, and that decreases the validity of a judgment of “quality.”

10

phartizan “…[W]hat was great becomes crap and vice versa. I often wonder if these experts know what they’re talking about, or are just parroting what they’ve heard from their peers.”

I think, phartizan that you are making art (or literary or music) criticism seem more arbitrary than in fact it is. It is one thing to say that critics disagree, or that a composer (Saint-Saens) may be less popular with critics than he is with listeners. But it’s another to say that the “great” becomes “crap.” In fact I can’t really think of a single instance of the great becoming crap, though I can think of several instances of commercially successful art declining into obscurity or perceived crapdom; and I can think of many instances of commercial failures being eventually elevated to the great. (Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a good example of the latter: it was a dud in its own day and rediscovered in the 1920s by a literary critic.)

Primaflora pointed out that some commercially successful literature (Dickens) is now thought great. The reason is actually fairly straightforward. Dickens (who was a huge popular success), and Austen and the Brontes (who had some popular success) all broke new ground. As a result their novels are still read today as “classics” or works of art. George Eliot who was a groundbreaking realist is also thought great; yet Arnold Bennet, who wrote awesome realist novels in a similar vein about thirty years later is not considered great. Nevertheless, if you like realist novels (as I do), you may well find Bennet’s novels as enjoyable, even as brilliant, as are Eliot’s. On the other hand, you may positively dislike the difficult modernist novels of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf who, unlike Bennet, were the great literary artists of their time.

Steven King is not an an innovator and is therefore very unlikely to be considered great in the future. But that doesn’t necessarily mean people won’t continue to read him. In addition, I know plenty of really well-read, critically educated people who like to read King’s works (on airplanes especially) and I know at least one who considers The Shining to be an American “classic”–worth teaching in a classroom.

Personally, I think that’s owing to Stanley Kubrick and not to King–but that’s another thread I suppose.

In my experience, the more one knows about a particular art form (say literature) the more one is likely to sympathize with critical judgements. But I would say the best reason to learn about art is for the sake of art itself. That is, I always try to appreciate what the learned see as “great”; but, at the same time, I’m happy to enjoy what gives me* pleasure regardless of what anyone says.

Shameless hijack alert: at the moment I think that the sixth track off the new Radiohead CD is the greatest art of the present moment. Anyone agree?

11

But we have to figure that there have been other great masterworks that fell so totally into oblivion that not even the most determined grad student has rooted them out: great volumes of poetry that had limited runs, sold two copies, and were subsequntly recycled as toliet paper. Though I admit, the publish or perish mentality hoas gone a long way towards helping to ensure that everything ever written has been given at least a look-over in the last generation. All those fantastic undiscovered artists out there can’t comfort themselves that if their work is brilliant then it will be a sure thing that they will be recognized someday: it ain’t true.

12

I’m not sure what gave you the impression that I was saying that today’s unsung geniuses are guaranteed a posthumous reputation thanks to the untiring efforts of graduate students! “Many instances” does not constitute a law of nature. But thanks for your comments anyway which, in other respects, I tend to agree with. :slight_smile:

13

Actually, I was more responding to Podkayne, who said:

It would be nice if it were a sure thing, though, wouldn’t it?

14

Yes, there would be justice in the world… I’ve occasionally bought very old books and given them a read just to see if I might stumble across a forgotten Melville. No luck so far I’m afraid.