Artistic Expressions : A Defence of Elitism

Swansong for the Century

Excerpts from an article by Andrew Clark

The arts have never been as unnecessary as they are now. Paradoxically, the arts have never been as available as they are now. That is the swansong of our century. It was the century in which, for the first time since man and woman gave aesthetic shape to life, art could be disseminated globally. Education, print, design, technology: these were to be the seeds of paradise, the tools of man’s regeneration. 

At least, that was the credo of arts visionaries at the last fin-ed siècle. It was a creed of altruism. Art was no longer to be the preserve of the aristocracy or the haute bourgeoisie. It was to inform every aspect of life. Its goal was nothing less than to open the eyes of the common man to the finer things in life — in short, to make life better. 

Zoom forward 100 years. Art is everywhere. We have museums, concerts, design awards, traveling exhibitions. Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” [La Gioconda] is recognized the world over. Schoolchildren are familiar with Monet and Mozart. Tunes from the classics have been adopted by the advertising industry. National cultures cross-fertilize on a scale that could never have been dreamed of a century ago. 

And yet the arts have been marginalized. On the one hand, they so commonplace that they have become routine and repetitive. On the other, they appear inaccessible next to the million other things that bombard our late-twentieth-century consciousness. Technical reproduction, that genie of the late nineteenth century, turned out to be a sorcerer’s apprentice. It did not simply facilitate the dissemination of the arts; it made possible the creation of popular culture — a phenomenon that had never previously entered the equation because the media did not exist to develop it. 

That is why, instead of disseminating aesthetic values, technical reproduction has ended up perverting them. It created a medium for popularizing things that have little substance. The power of pop culture lies not just in its superficial appeal, but also in its weight of numbers. It is thanks to that power that the numbers game — ratings, charts, the rule of the market, call it what you will — has become the touchstone of value. 

Value today is defined by demand, which is dictated by mass taste — which in turn is determined by the lowest common denominator. Instead of being a collective of individual expression, culture has been reduced to what “catches on” — in other words, what sells most. In an age when everything has to be instant, the ephemeral supplants the transcendental. By definition, the arts have a deeper aesthetic and philosophical foundation. They simply cannot compete. 

Commercial values are not something new to art. Many composers of the past made a living by trying to please. Most are now forgotten. Even Mozart had to please. But pleasing others was not his primary goal ... Great artists want to communicate — otherwise they would not create — and have always been gladdened when their creations went down well with large numbers of people. But their fundamental aim was to express what they wanted to express: a vision, a dream, a utopia, a countermodel to life, whatever. Happy as they were to entertain, they did not want to do so at any cost. Popular culture must entertain at all costs. 

Artists pay heavily for their ideals. Mozart enjoyed far less success in his lifetime than his contemporaries Salieri or Anfossi, who pandered to the market. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was a failure at its first performance. So was Carmen. Le Sacre du printemps was booed off the stage. But Beethoven, Bizet and Stravinsky survived because they had patrons intelligent to realize that they could not dictate what an artist should create. 

Today, if art does not please instantly, it will not sell. If it does not sell, the artist will not survive. There is every pressure not to experiment, not to dream for the future, not to suggest a countermodel to life, not to create utopias of love, harmony, freedom. That pressure comes from the market — a dictatorship to which politicians increasingly, surreptitiously, pay court. 

The function of art should be to stand outside society, to challenge it, to make people think. But such a philosophy threatens anyone whose power is based on populism rather than educated choice. That is why the function of art today is to serve the masses, to pander to the taste of the majority. If that was not the case, why would we invent such mantras as “access” and “accountability”? 

The old elitism, which restricted art to a narrow band of the privileged, has been replaced by a new elitism — the elitism of understanding. Today, “elitist” no longer means the application of the highest standards; it means something that is not comprehensible to everyone within a few minutes. The problem with this is that subverts the meaning of art. When art ceases to be a challenge, it ceases to be art. It has no future. 

Culture today is controlled not by people who know and care about art, but by those who understand the numbers game and have worked out how to make money from it. How else could a 12-year-old Welsh schoolgirl, a blind Italian tenor, or a scantily-clad Oriental violinist make it to the top of the record charts? None of these so-called “artists” is technically or musically exceptional. Their value lies in a gimmick factor, which their record companies knew would sell. Why has the soundtrack for Titanic proved so popular? Not because it is an original piece of orchestral music, but because it is an amalgam of feelgood sounds ... 

The sense of Platonic idealism which inspired the great arcs of classical culture, and which fueled its dissemination in the early part of the century, has given way to aesthetic nihilism. I am not just talking about computer games, techno-beat, dung-and-entrails art or the exclusion of Shakespeare from the Millennium Dome. I am referring to the way arts subsidies are discussed. On the one hand you have the arts-versus-hospital-beds argument, which presupposes only one choice. On the other, you have taxpayers, who say that, if they are paying good money for art, it ought to conform to their expectations. “If it’s not what I expect or understand, I don’t see why I should pay for it” has become the prevailing argument. 

Not, perhaps, in Germany — at least, not yet. The arts in Germany are still subsidized more generously than elsewhere, because it is acknowledged that artists cannot and should not give in to mass taste. But Germany is the exception. Even there, the head-in-the-sand attitude of artists in the post-war era, allied to the legacy of the Nazi years, has left the country ill-equipped to withstand the blast of pop culture. Germans are still proud of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. But, as in the UK and the US, non-pop musical performance is dominated by works that are on average 130 years old. And even that takes up a decreasing slice of the national consciousness. 

We are back to the question of “access.” Technical reproduction — that is, the media of print, screen, audio and CD — has unleashed a bombardment of sensations and images, for which the human consciousness has only limited space. The less thought-inducing the attack, the more likely it is to succeed. 

What can we take forward to the new millennium? It would be a mistake to assume that a century of commercialization will give way to a century of computerization. Computers may ease the technical process of creativity of creativity but they will not alter its basic forms any more than electronics did. The human mind can be relied on to use a computer no less creatively than it did a harmonic system or a movie screen. 

What we will see, thanks to computer-generated media, is a change in the way the arts are sold and consumed. We can look forward to a breaking down of barriers between creator and consumer. The middle man — in the shape of the record company, the publisher, the PR representative — will wither away. Some rock artistes are already blazing the trail by dispensing with their record companies and selling direct on the Internet. There is no reason that authors, composers and classical performers should not do the same. 

Perhaps society will react to the culture of dumbing down by returning to a new form of elitism — the elitism of those who prize individual excellence and individual expression above mass-produce ephemera. And after this century’s fragmentation of old forms and structures, we may start to search for a new alignment of mind and matter, for an aesthetic world in which structure and emotions regain their balance, for a sense of values in which the tyrannies of the media, of beat, of literal fidelity and harmonic breakdown are laid aside. Only then will the arts be necessary again. 
 

On Being Educated: Elitism in a Democratic Society 

Excerpts  from an article by Peter Gay

 But I must insist that culturalelite and democratic politics are not necessarily incompatible. In our frantic striving to be fair to groups in ourpopulations we have condescended to, or mistreated, we have in recent years been given over to a false culturalegalitarianism, in which no single piece of prose, no single composition, no single drama has any right to claim to bebetter than any other. But this deliberate, guilt-ridden abdication of judgment confuses proper objects of study withproper objects of valuation. That is to say: for the historian of culture, comic strips, Broadway hits, sentimentalpoems, are as interesting to investigate as their more sober, more demanding cousins. But it does not follow from thisrecognition -- I call it the democracy of research -- that there are no hierarchies of value in all these genres. In otherwords, I am arguing that there is nothing wrong with the recognition that Henry James, Proust, and Joyce are moreimportant and, in the right conditions more rewarding, novelists than the writers who occupy the top of our currentbest seller lists. There is, in other words, nothing wrong with recognizing that there is such a thing as a cultural elite,as long as it is an open elite 

ooo>

We must acknowledge the facts of life. Most people only too happily use their leisure hours to refreshthemselves with undemanding fare. Their purpose is not to improve their minds but to relax. Hence they are likely tofind the kind of cultural artifacts to which the educated person turns to be quite unsuitable. After all, they are likely tobe strenuous: they will demand close attention rather than casual reading or listening. I do not mean to say that theproducts of high culture must be unpleasant somehow and that to spend time with them is a kind of penance oneimposes on oneselfin search for elite status. But it is true that if reading and listening are to be in any way refinedand yet give pleasure -- and for the educated person this is a basic requirement -- it becomes necessary to cultivateonee's tastes to make these products accessible -- and, I repeat, pleasurable -- to a fine point. To read instead of adetective story a novel by Henry James, especially a late novel, as anything but a dutiful assignment is what theeducated person will want to do. But, as we have seen, it takes work.This, then, is my first argument: a cultural elite is not identical with elitism, in the negative sense of thatword. And here is my second argument: Our egalitarian age has done a great deal to reduce, at times to dismantle,the obstacles to acquiring the status of an educated person. Indeed, the struggle to democratize the elite of theeducated has been an intellectual and moral crusade, amply supported by commercial interests, for at least a centuryand a half. The roots of this opening of the elite, then, go back to the Victorians, and I must return to that century for the evidence I need.
 

 In Defence of Elitism

 Excerpts from an article by Daryl L. Hale
 

 "Now, my Friend, who are the aristoi ["the best"]? Philosophy may Answer "The Wise 
and Good." But the World, Mankind, have by their practice always answered, "the rich 
the beautiful and well born". . . . What chance have Talents and Virtues in comparison 
with Wealth and Birth? and Beauty?" 

John Adams to Thomas Jefferson; Sept. 2, 1813 

ooooo>

The recent idea that all should be rewarded equally, no matter how much or how little 
they contribute to or even care about the ultimate goal, is a mistaken and ultimately 
self-defeating social/political and educational goal. Similarly, the conception that all are 
equally talented and evenly prepared for present or future tasks is doomed to a short life. 
Imagine how destructive such a policy would be were we to institute it in our hiring 
craftspeople: we would have to say that we don’t want the best mechanic or doctor or 
carpenter; after all, they all are equally gifted or all deserve equal recognition. Of course, 
this on the surface sounds like egalitarianism, but it is the sort that is destined to subject 
us all to the ‘Tyranny of the Majority’, as John Stuart Mill rightly called the desires for power 
of the ill-informed and ill-willed. 

oooo>

To reflect on our democratic ideal of disseminating knowledge among the people is to 
recognize that some people are naturally going to be more well-informed than others. 
A true republic depends on a populace of well-informed citizens; however, let’s face it: 
not everyone desires or is competent at being well-informed. Many people rely on 
journalists, news anchors, film critics, ministers, politicians, doctors, and other ‘experts’ 
for their information. Consequently, ill-informed or biased sorts often dominate all sorts of 
media: ideologues clog our scholarly journals; religious and political demagogues pander 
the masses for financial support; dysfunctional whiners/exhibitionists/doomsdayers 
terrorize communications media; and pseudo-scientists feel compelled to offer up their 
‘solutions’ to the less informed. Without some individual and groups of well-informed, 
reflective, and constructively critical activists, a lively democratic regime cannot survive. 
We should not confuse power-elitism (rule by a specially privileged group unfairly wielding 
inordinate power) with knowledge-elitism (reliance on leadership by a select group on the 
basis of their deliberations). 

oooo>

As Jefferson and Adams noted in their survey of the past, all societies bring forth a "natural 
aristocracy" of leaders. Who are these aristoi ["the best"]? Certainly not, as Adams and 
Jefferson fully agree, the ‘usual suspects’, i.e. the rich, beautiful, or well born. Nor, one 
might add, are they the ‘sweetly disabled’. Of course, that does not mean that we are not to 
help all of those under our charge to become liberated to actualize their potentialities. 
Certainly, that is a main part of our task. "The Wise and the Good" is the answer given by 
thinkers from Socrates to Jefferson; that is because they are the ones who can best reason 
through wisely and moderately, speaking about the driving issues of every age, not merely 
the present. It was Adams’ whispered fear that the ‘pseudo-aristocracy’, comprised of the 
wealthy, beautiful, and wellborn, would domineer and destroy the young republic: what chance, 
he says, do talents and virtues have when competing with wealth, birth, and beauty? More 
distrustful than Jefferson, he was sure that Washington’s children would be courted by or 
become enamored of European aristocracy here. A moment’s thought about American 
obsessions with Princess Di or the Rockefellers demonstrates the fear to be well-founded. 
And so it is with the modern Academy: obsessions with pedigrees, titles, and ‘professionalism’ 
prevails in teaching; and our withdrawal into scholarly cubicles is of a piece with our surrenders 
to marketing analysis of external consultants, educational assessments from those not in the 
trenches, public relations hypes of mission statements, political agendas of demagogic
legislators, and any number of other pressures.