William: You asserted that "anyone can learn to appreciate art". I claim
that however many can, few do. For example (and getting into other
territory) can it be that either McCain or Obama ever spoke publicly about
art or any aspect of art? I would presume it was avoided, as something which
would stir up controversy and deter some voters - a president who enjoyed
ballet, or Henry Moore, or Henry Miller or ?.... Joe the Plumber presumably
has no place for art in his life.
It was ever thus?
Geoff C
From: William Conger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Comment?
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 13:09:58 -0800 (PST)
Geoff:
Yes, I suppose you are right in general terms. But it's so fluid. Anyone,
no matter what his/her station in life, can learn to appreciate art, high
art. Who asks for pedigrees at the museum door? (In my youth the museums
were all free). For years I taught at a college where most students were
"first generation", meaning the first of their families to obtain higher
education. They flocked to art appreciation and art history and even art
studio courses. Maybe they aspired to acquire "class" traits but they were
sincere nonetheless. The tropes of the common man squirming in a tuxedo at
the opera or fumbling with the salad fork or pretending to be engaged in
front of the abstract painting (a famous Rockwell illustration shows that
very scene) are funny partly because they are true. No one is out-of-hand
excluded from the ranks of one's "betters".
But to reinforce your point, or the drift of your argument, we can turn to
Albrecht Durer whose Handbook of The Artist begins with a claim that
becoming an artist can enable one to move up the social ranks. Also, not
very many artists who achieve some success can afford to buy their own
work. Maybe that's always been true among those who live by their "craft".
What cabinet maker can afford the $1,000 a foot price for custom
cabinets. And what about the yacht builder? What boat carpenter can
afford a one-of-a-kind yacht? Etc.
Just a few minutes ago I was flipping through the latest art materials
catalog to arrive in my mail. The annual artist materials market is in the
billions of dollars. How much money does that generate in the form of art
product sold? If the market made sense it would be many times the value of
the materials. But in fact, the art product sold from the materials is
very tiny. Shall we guess less than 1%? It's a backwards market. That's
why the art materials market is essentially and end use consumer market and
that's why artists pay retail for their "raw materials" instead of
wholesale like other makers, like that cabinet maker or yacht builder. So,
whatever the concept about art and class, there's this goofy situation in
which even the raw materials of art are not indicators of art-making as an
economic strata, and thus they lack class categorization.
One might experience or buy art for higher class identity but, in contrast
to Durer's time, one does not make art to acquire higher class identity. By
almost any measurement, making art reduces one's class affiliation, even to
a level below that of the professional craftsman, like a cabinet maker,
because no wholesale market for art materials serves the artist.
Very weird, agreed.
WC
--- On Tue, 11/4/08, GEOFF CREALOCK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: GEOFF CREALOCK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Comment?
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2008, 1:53 PM
> 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
