High art and low art do not exist. Although art can be exclusive and difficult to access, whereas other art will be more inclusive and easier to get access to, this is no cultural difference of ‘high’ and ‘low’. Different accessibility only is difference in amount of dimensions and universality of subjectmatter. Some art might speak to the few, while other art resonances with a massive audience. However, the members of the public will always have to invest to have an artistic experience. The spectator must actively construct his or her own experience or must at least loosen their bindings with (collective) ‘reality’ and embrace an alternative (individual) reality. In general an artistic experience will include emotional, rational and associative aspects. Art is like science a means to comprehend reality, to find truth. Science aims for objective truth, but will only accomplish intersubjectivity, like art historians and art critics. Artists and the public can accomplish higher truth: purely subjective truth. The biggest difference between art and science is that science only has basis in the intellectual understanding, whereas art makes use of all kinds of human faculties and has its basis in the intuition or instinct. Artistic experience can be a mostly rational experience or a more dreamlike and associative experience. When an art experience is a rather rational one, there at least will be an alteration in ratio or a different conclusion following the ‘facts’. Confirmation of what we already know is not art.
The broad way of looking at art that derives from cultural relativism has little to do with art philosophy. Rather it is necessary to differentiate between culture and art. I will therefore strictly divide entertainment from art. The main route I will take to do so is the one of psychology. I will debate that entertainment serves a collective purpose of entertaining in a group, whereas art serves a individual and subjective experience. One might think of the difference between religion and spirituality. Religion serves as a body of rules and customs which make up a community that differs from other communities. Entertainment and culture also function as means to differentiate between individuals as members (or nonmembers) of groups. Even when someone deliberately does not follow cultural proscriptions, this ‘act of independence’ serves to maintain a relation to the group. Spirituality only serves an intrinsic purpose. A person wishes to leave their earthly boundaries, to find inner peace and meaningful quietness. Meditation is emptiness of the mind, this is different from the meaningful quietness a spiritual person aspires to.
Fromm concludes in his work ‘Escape from freedom’ that the collective is always oppressive and the only ways to stay true to oneself are via true love (I will not go into this one…) and via spontaneous creation. With ‘spontaneous’ he means out of free will.
Now we have to define artistic creation and other creation. Artistic creation springs from what Nietzsche calls instinct, Freud’s subconscious. Also one could use the term intuition. All are opposed to ratio. Rational creation is not artistic creation. Rational art does not exist.
With what we call postmodernism art and art critique are mixed up. Warhol created not art but art critique. His imagery can be understood by members of the public merely as popular. In this way they are entertainment. The deeper meaning of his work is criticizing the art world for being too exclusive. Not by making accessible art, but by posing entertainment as art. This goes for the whole of the pop art movement.
Art and culture are different things. Culture exists of what binds a group of people. Art can be part of culture in this sense, but is only truly art when every spectator has his own subjective experience. Art that is consumed by culture in a way that it poses a dominant reading, is psychologically not true art. A collective experience can not be an artistic experience. On this fundament I will construct my theory of art. I will oppose Art to entertainment. Entertainment makes use of formulae that are dependant on culture and thus collective. People search diversion in entertainment, without letting go of collective reality, without letting go of themselves. Art is letting go of oneself and reaching for alternatives for collective reality. Art is pure subjectivity. Senses become more important that ratio.
“I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition, I may not be affected by an actual event wich appears to concern me much more” writes Henry David Thoreau (Walden, 1854). Artistic experience can be more intense than real-life experience and in this way even more real to the subject.
I posed that art has no part in (collective) culture. Therefore ‘high’ or ‘low’ art does not exist. Off course one can differentiate between different social classes, these groups will have their cultural differences, maybe even more so than financial differences. Nouveau riche people tend to have culturally more in common with working class people, they only have more money. They will wear more expensive clothes, but not classical clothing. They will pay 300,- euros for a pair of jeans, whereas upper class folks who do not have much money in their family left, will be likely to spend the same amount of cash on a suit. The same goes with cars, houses etcetera. You might rather call this differences in style or fashion, but we will see there’s a common accepted dominant style. This style is classical and we call it high culture.
So we see that, as Bourdieu teaches us, there are different ways in which one can be ‘rich’. One can have a lot of money, one can have education and Bildung (the privilege of belonging to the culturally dominant group) and one can be in the possession of al lot of respectable friendships and a network of acquaintances. So there are different types of Kapital: financial, cultural and social. These commodities used to be reserved for one group only and be combined in a single person, a member of the elite. But in our postmodern age one can be a member of a cultural elite without having any money or be a member of a financial elite without the knowledge and customs that are recognized as highly cultural.
The customs of a certain group of people, let’s call them the cultural elite, include a lot of attention (investing time, energy and money) to the arts. Members of the cultural elite value artistic experience above collective experience. Artistic experience is also valued above personal and more or less instinctive experiences, like competing or winning and getting things or money in possession.
Now that we have seen that not only money, but also culture can be seen as power, we can understand that in the postmodern mix-up a broad perspective on culture has arisen and moreover cultural relativism. When people with ‘bad taste’ have come to make a financial fortune, they will not be pleased when culturally excluded. So now rich people can lay claim to a ‘different’ taste rather than to have to suffer of having ‘bad taste’. In this light we must understand Rancière’s notion that politics and aesthetics are essentially the same. Both are ways of creating discourse. By defining the way we look at and talk about things, one exercises power.
But we must differentiate between art and culture. Aesthetics can serve to protect the power of the few, also they can generate new discourse and help emancipate people. I would like to propose to call creative outings that speak to people as members of a group not artistic but cultural. With Rancière the psychological difference between individually experienced art and culturally experienced aesthetics might not be relevant, because he is interested in discourse, which is always intersubjective, a collective interplay of individual experiences. Emancipation of groups happens trough emancipation of individuals, in which art can play a (decisive) role. In this respect artistic experience is interesting as a source of input. However, I do not primarily want to talk about the social consequences of an individual artistic experience. I want to differentiate the individual experience from the collective one.
The interplay of individual experiences which lead to collective experience is not what I mean by collectively induced experience. For Example: A soccer match is not art. The purpose of watching a match is taking part in a collective experience. Also a royal wedding or national holiday are collective experiences. But what about watching a film or reading a book? Although seated in a theatre with a group of people, watching a film can be an individual experience. The relation with the creator(s) of the film is more important then the relation with the other spectators in this aspect. Hollywood movies are aspecific and composed along the lines of formulae. Sometimes five scriptwriters cooperate and often the director has to compromise with powerful producers. these characteristics make it impossible to have a personal and subjective experience. The hollywood movie has only one dimension and all the spectators are coerced in a singular reading. Someone like Stanley Kubrick managed to keep al strings attached and make an artwork of his own. That is an exception.
When reading a spontaneous novel that hasn’t been tempered with (too much) by editors, one will probably have an individual experience. Every reader constructs his or her own story. This is made possible by every subconscious aspect the author has put into his work. The story becomes multi interpretable when it has different dimensions and makes association possible. When a book is being published to please a crowd, the reading experience will be less multi-interpretable and the reader will be coerced into a collective experience. That’s the difference between art and entertainment.
Some books or films are new and attractive in different ways and produce a wide audience. Only when different experiences are possible, can we speak of a work of art. This might be an easily accessible work of art (all the better!), suited for a wide and diverse public, but still a work of art. Other works of art only speak to an experienced public that have defined their taste. These works of art are not ‘high art’ but rather exclusive art.
Probably the difference between what is regarded as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste is only dominance and collective acceptance of the dominant taste. Morals also play a big part in dividing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste. Changes in what is collectively regarded as good taste will occur only in accordance with the very thick and syrupy streaming substance this fashion of accepted ‘good taste’ is made of.
