Actually, Berg's comment is not so cliched. It is a common sense view that is enshrined in our educational system. It also imitates Friedrich Schiller's views on art and beauty. (see his Letters: On the Aesthetic Education of Man" 1795). Briefly, Schiller concluded that since all men contain within them the ideal perfect human man they only need to be educated by example to manifest that perfection. Thus by becoming acquainted more and more with examples of the best artistic and moral expressions of ones culture, the better one is with respect to recognizing quality or beauty, etc. Of course Schiller felt that a society will naturally, eventually strive toward quality. Even today, our educational system adheres to the view that if people are given enough exposure to quality (high taste) they will strive to comprehend it and thus becomes better citizens and better able to demand high quality. Blame Schiller.
The trouble with Schiller's idea is that it presumes a non-ironic ideal for both art and people. Now, since the Duchamp-Warhol revolution at least, irony and bad taste have become the new ideal. Low art IS high art. Bad taste IS good taste. The commonplace IS the ideal. Almost everyone is expecting this upside-down view to change any moment. If there is such a thing as anxiety in art (I include theory and all art practices) or an aesthetic crises, it is the apprehension, the hope, the expectation, the prophecies, of a restoration of the Ideal. So far, no luck. All we have are periodic redundancies and, yep, mediocrity all around. The big difference between the notion of high quality as the best and mediocrity as the merely serviceable or good enough is that in many instances we know that the merely serviceable is indeed also the best quality. What beats the Styrofoam cup for throw-away one-time use? Nothing, unless you care about the environment and wasted oil. But those were never part of the quality equation when it existed as seeking the best that can be made. Now, if a smart society does put the environment and natural resources as a top priority, some other good enough throw away container will need to be made. How about paper? Try it and go broke or build a pr mindset for the Ideal all over again. I don't think we can easily escape Schiller's view (and thus Berg's), however cliched it is. It comes down to quality being contingent upon taste and taste is an expression of values and values are an expression of ideals and ideals must be non-ironic in order to hold up. That means the end of the Duchampian universe. I can hardly wait. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, November 12, 2012 8:35:53 AM Subject: Re: Error and quality On Nov 12, 2012, at 9:32 AM, Michael Brady <[email protected]> wrote: > > But Berg's remark is a clichi, That last word is "cliche" and not a kind of nut, folks. I typed an e-acute but the email system substituted an i.
