William: To respond to only one aspect of your informative note: with regard
to aesthetics (at least of a type): would you agree that there is an
assumption of class associated with the purchase/owning of "in" works of
art? Most people (less alert, or educated, or "high born") don't
understand/care about current "high" art.
Geoff C
From: William Conger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Comment?
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 23:19:44 -0800 (PST)
Geoff;
I'm glad you mentioned Tocqueville. He did indeed remark on American
rejection of class and "aristocracy" but did say that lawyers took the
place of a ruling class because they (with their specialized insider
language) could read the law thus effectively protecting/abusing the rights
of the minority from mob rule of the majority.
I agree that Americans have had a very odd sort of love/hate toward class
issues, with some always aspiring to a high born pretense and others
insisting on the practical value that in America there are no guarantees
that wealth or status can be passed on passed on as a birthright.
Tocqueville said that in America wealth and status are usually depleted in
two or three generations. He also made much of the glaring contradiction
of slavery in a classless America. He concluded that a slave economy was
very inefficient and unsuited to the then emerging Industrial Revolution
(1830s). He correctly showed that it held back economic and industrial
development in the south. So, if slavery was an outward symbol of
American aspirations to an aristocracy, it was doomed by economic reality
as much or even more than the moral outrage it fostered.
Tocqueville was an amazingly prescient person. Yet he was an aristocrat
and was hoping it could be preserved in a post-revolutionary France.
This issue is odd for me because my English pedigree is fully documented
back to Edward 1, through Dukes, Earls, and three Magna Carta Barons. My
American lineage begins with John Alden. So, although I can claim an thick
aristocratic English ancestry, my classless Plimouth Plantation Compact
heritage is more to my liking.
It is worth knowing that George Washington turned down the job of King of
America and showed up for his inauguration in a brown dress suit. Pretended
or real ommonness is the most basic and cherished value in America and that
is an aesthetic -- and vexing -- value as well
Although these class issues are not easily seen as relevant to aesthetics,
I do think there are the implied as you point out. Yet the American ideal
of classlessness may be evident in the force of avant-garde modernism here.
If anything the progressive nature of modernism has favored the levelling
of the aesthetic norms every generation or two, almost as if to prove the
built-in instability of any class oriented symbol-system. The power of mass
culture with its parody of class through easily acquired status objects is
further evidence of the aesthetics of classlessness.
The red blue thing in America is a disgusting trivialization of reality by
the media. Toruble is, mass media has created a reality from false
simplifications. It has established caricatures of class orders so
thoroughly that people have come to believe that the most complexly
authentic person is the one most plainly caricatured. This is a great
teagedy, akin to the way minority groups are always caricatured by a power
majority.
The relationships between culture, real and imagined, and aesthetics are
very important and revealing.
WC
GEOFF CREALOCK wrote:
>
> > William: Re American longings: Robertson Davies is a
> dead white
> > male (Canadian playwright and novelist). He was
> educated partly at
> > Oxford and although he was a late 20th century person,
> his writing
> > and thinking suggested to some (myself included) that
> his attitudes
> > were more characteristic of English persons of the
> early 20th century.
> > This could lead to discussion of differences between
> our countries
> > which might be wide of the mark for this list.
> However, I do agree
> > regarding what might be called the denial of class
> differences
> > south of the border, probably observed first by de
> Tocqueville.
> > (But there are those differences between folks in the
> red states
> > and blue states ..... not classes perhaps but,
> differences - and
> > the worship(?) of the latest crop of starlets in
> Hollywood by some
> > persons).
> > I presume that you would add "high-born" to
> your list of characters
> > absent from America.
> > Geoff C
> >
> >> From: William Conger
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> Reply-To: [email protected]
> >> To: [email protected]
> >> Subject: Re: Comment?
> >> Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 17:19:31 -0800 (PST)
> >>
> >> Mr. Davis needs to go back to class. When one
> says aristocratic
> >> one means privilege by birthright. No one has a
> birthright to
> >> art. And all art is made for some audience and is
> therefore
> >> selective, even when the selection is made by the
> audience and not
> >> the artist or the work.
> >>
> >> I'd say it's a peculiarly American
> longing or hatred for class
> >> distinctions to employ the word aristocratic.
> There are no Lords,
> >> Earls, Dukes, Dutchesses, Princes, Princesses,
> Kings or Queens or
> >> landed aristocrats in America...at least not yet.
> And no art
> >> exclusively for them either.
> >>
> >> As for mass art, popular art, or the imagery of
> material culture,
> >> it does indeed have a long life. It's the
> best way --often the
> >> only way-- to gain access to the ideals and values
> of a previous
> >> society, and it's usually far more accurate in
> that regard than so-
> >> called high art.
> >>
> >> Nevertheless, ultimately all art has an audience
> of just one
> >> person because its quality is uniquely constituted
> in the mind of
> >> each beholder. It matters not what titles that
> person claims.
> >> WC
> >>
> >>
> >> --- On Mon, 11/3/08, GEOFF CREALOCK
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >> > From: GEOFF CREALOCK
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> > Subject: Re: Comment?
> >> > To: [email protected]
> >> > Date: Monday, November 3, 2008, 11:28 AM
> >> > Robertson Davies: "What I mean when I
> say art is
> >> > aristocratic is that it is
> >> > selective. It's not a mass thing. There
> never is a mass
> >> > art that lasts very
> >> > long or explains very much. But I don't
> mean
> >> > aristocratic in the sense that
> >> > it's produced by high-born people for
> high-born people.
> >> > I just mean it's
> >> > produced by special people for people who can
> >> > understand."
> >> > Geoff C
> >> >
> >> >
