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Fiedler points out that many artists and writers read both Batman and James Joyce, while those who attack the first have also never read the later, and in fact generally promote a cultural education at about the level of Readers’ Digest at best. As he states of one book attacking popular culture, which could stand in for most attacks, “it propounds the preposterous theory that the whole of “popular literature” is a conspiracy on the part of the “plutos” to corrupt an innocent American people. Such easy melodrama can only satisfy someone prepared to believe, as Mr. Wagner apparently does, that the young girls of Harlem are being led astray by the double-entendres of blues records! ”

“In none of the books on comics I have looked into, and in none of the reports of ladies’ clubs, protests of legislators, or statements of moral indignation by pastors, have I come on any real attempt to understand comic books: to define the form, midway between icon and story…”

“The most fascinating and suspicious aspect of the opposition … is its unanimity …. What they have in common is, I am afraid, the sense that they are all, according to their rights, righteous. And their protests represent only one more example … of the notorious failure of righteousness in matters involving art. What do the righteous really have against comic books? In some parts of the world, simply the fact that they are American is sufficient, and certain homegrown self-contemnors follow this line even in the United States. But it is really a minor argument, lent a certain temporary importance by passing political exigencies. To declare oneself against ‘the Americanization of culture’ is meaningless unless one is set resolutely against industrialization and mass education.”

More to the point is the attack on mass culture for its betrayal of literacy itself. What should set us on guard in this case is that it is not the fully literate, the intellectuals and serious writers, who lead the attack, but the insecure semiliterate. In America, there is something a little absurd about the indignant delegation from the Parent and Teachers Association (themselves clutching the latest issue of Life) crying out in defence of literature. Asked for suggestions, such critics are likely to propose the Readers’ Digest as required reading…. In other countries, corresponding counterparts are not hard to find.”

“About these charges [of violence and son on] that the enlightened censors deplore. First, by and large, they are true. Second, they are also true about the most serious art…. You cannot condemn Superman for the exploitation of violence and praise the existentialist-sadist-shockers of [fine literature such as Paul Bowles in the next breath)."

"Historically, one can make quite a convincing case to prove that our highest and lowest arts come from a common antibourgeois source ... that they challenge the more genteel versions of 'good taste'. By more 'advanced' consultants, the taboo (against any violence] is advanced further towards absurdity: no bloodsoaked Grimm, no terrifying [fairy tales], no childhood verses about cradles that fall…everywhere the fear of fear is endemic… those who have most ardently desired to end warfare and personal cruelty in the world around them,… are the most frustrated by their persistence, conspire to stamp out violence on the nursery bookshelf [or in superheroes]. This same fear of the instinctual, and the dark, this denial of death and guilt by the enlightened genteel, motivates their distrust of serious literature too. …In the name of a literature of the middle ground which finds its fictitious vision of a kindly and congenial world attacked from above and below. ”

“The failure of the petty-bourgeoisie [as exemplified in professionals such as teachers and middle-class lawyers] to achieve cultural hegemony threatens their dream of a truly classless society;… they see, in the persistence of a high art and a low art on either side their average own….The middlebrow reacts with equal fury to an art that baffles his understanding and to one which refuses to aspire to his level. The fear of the vulgar is the obverse of the fear of excellence, and both are aspects of the fear of difference: symptoms of the drive for conformity on the level of the timid, sentimental, mindless-bodiless genteel.”

Loooongggg, but important here I think.

Its interesting how in furniture design, in architecture – the basic premises of modernism are being pushed ever further -are forward looking, with results that are tangibly beyond dispute ……go down to River North -the most interesting design you will come across is going to be at Luminare -not in some art gallery……look at some of the buildings being done today..are the Richard Serra’s at Bilbao as successful as the building itself?..

-but you can’t blame this on painting, or sculpture -the simple fact is that the consensoriat is no smarter when they condescend to acknowledge painting, than when they misconstrue Baudrillard- and unfortunately, they simply have more power -or simply have power in these disciplines and not in either design or architecture.

the footprint of what is institutional is almost certainly about resentment and revenge upon what is talented, what is visual and often what is exceptional, and is perhaps what is really in need of discussion. What is the impact of educational/institutional patronage of high art? What is the impact upon art?……its all quite interesting…

Having said this, I don’t take as fact that what is most interesting is in some nebulous middle ground between the artworld and entertainment- which probably has something to do with my defintion of what the artworld is.

I don’t think that high art should neccessarily pander to anything or anyone. Usually, even when say, a particular painting is well known -it functions best on a one to one basis with each particular viewer -and is, a particular, aesthetic experience -not made, nor intended for the masses. But rather, for the unique individual in all of his or her concrete inimitability and apprehension.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

What makes painting interesting -is that due to its simplicity of means -ie a person and a mark making implement, along with something to do it on, within this context -all is possible -which is why paintings have traditionally served as blueprints to various modes of expression, ideation, sensuality, a plastic invention involving the basic stuff and the esoteric stuff that makes us human.

That art schools have been involved in a revenge of the Philistines type mode attack on the aristocracy of high art is clearly in evidence when we look at for instance the pack of obsequious plutocrats ensconsed in educational institutions around Chicago -far more interested in power than with anything aesthetic- that since the beginning of the patronage of high art in the mid 20th century by institutionalized education, -it is clear that rather than creating focus as far from human habitation as imaginatively possible -with the idea that those who strive to understand their cultural context will get the fragments shored against their ruins –that the work will fit them commensurate with their ability to comprehend, that approaching great art should make us as individuals, greater, that art has to do with things like, clarification of conciousness, rather than this, we have an ‘art’ whose concerns are more about addressing pop culture -being ‘socially relevant’……….considering the ‘artworld in terms of social event.

here is a question: what, is the difference between art, and entertainment? Or, what, is the relationship of craft to entertainment -as opposed to say, technique of expression?

I also admit a grand ignorance of the entertainment world (no TV, don’t watch much in the way of movies, don’t really listen to a lot of music) and would greatly appreciate some examples of this “most interesting production” that is going on out there. (And I mean that in a sincere, rather than a snarky way. Perhaps I have simply not seen it.)

(as an aside, the most interesting and exuberantly creative things I’ve seen in the last month have been both within and without the art world (the funhouse of Stingel at the MCA, and the super-rad work of the people at the graffiti research lab and the anti-advertising agency, who everyone probably knows about already, but who I just saw recently [check out, for example, http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=76#video or http://antiadvertisingagency.com/category/projects/light-criticism/ ]) Both are awesome, both are simultaneously exclusive/inclusive, both are really creative, both are popularly well-received. Neither requires a specialized language to understand, though both are receptive to the application of rigorous analysis within an academic/art framework.)

I also disagree with the idea that the artworld was _ever_ “the primary or most interesting place for people of ambitious intellect to produce and affect culture.” Artists are often at the edges of society, and intent on creating interesting and unusual or thought-provoking work. This means that they will often explore a position which is not mainstream at the time, but which later becomes so. History seems to point to past artworks as representative of cultural shifts, but I do not think this means that they alone were responsible for the cultural shift.

Any cultural change requires a large and wide-ranging force arrayed behind it, and while art is sometimes a rallying-point, we should not confuse the banner with the brigade behind it. Indeed, by the time the artist is part of any established art world, the cultural margin they were interested in has often become more mainstream… the “art world” itself being a fairly conservative construction.

i do tend to blather on. hope it’s making some sort of sense.