Is he right?

[The Unnamable]

“I do not believe that it is a necessary effect of a democratic social condition and of democratic institutions to diminish the number of those who cultivate the fine arts, but these causes exert a powerful influence on the manner in which these arts are cultivated... The productions of artists are more numerous, but the merit of each production is diminished. . . In aristocracies, a few great pictures are produced; in democratic countries a vast number of insignificant ones.”

Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America

[blp]

Laurie Andersen said in an interview recently that she used to look forward to the day when everyone would have access to electronic means of creation and communication that would allow them to make and distribute art. Then she said, 'And now they can and it's sort of...awful. It's like "check out my website". Hey, how 'bout if I don't check out your website?'

So, I can see his point, but it's rubbish this de Toqueville quote really, to be blunt. I am very happy with the work produced under democracy, from Ingres to Manet, to Matisse, to Sophie Calle. I'm also very glad that I am not forced in some arbitrary way to choose between it and work produced under aristocracy or papacy as I'm just as happy with Piero Della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Velasquez and Goya.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I agree with blp. I would add that the increased proliferation of art is nothing to do with either democracy or monarchy, but rather that advances in science have led to more people with more leisure time. It's hard to paint when you're working 25 hours a day down t'pit.

[beer good]

While I agree with blp and Xamonas, I'd say there's a difference in the role and form of art in more opressive societies. Writers/film makers/whatever working in, say, the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany (or, for that matter, Rome under Nero or any religiously opressive society) had to find ways of saying things that were less obvious, yet potentially much more subversive since there really was something to subvert. The less oppressive a society is, the less reason for an artist to hide his intention to go against the grain - and the less the possibility of a single work of art causing an uproar. I could refer to a current case, but that's politics, so I won't.

But to say that this means that Soviet writers, on a whole, produced GREATER works of art than, say, British ones... nope. Just potentially more controversial ones. And if controversial equals great, then "The da Vinci Code" is the greatest work in modern history.

[rachel]

I must agree with Beer Good and somehow that which was brought forth with great labour pains in secrecy with the smell of fear and death all about really, in my mind called forth the very best that artist had within him/herself. For who knew but that it could be the last thing they created.

[Whifflingpin]

"So, I can see his point, but it's rubbish this de Toqueville quote really, to be blunt. I am very happy with the work produced under democracy, from Ingres to Manet, to Matisse, to Sophie Calle. I'm also very glad that I am not forced in some arbitrary way to choose between it and work produced under aristocracy or papacy as I'm just as happy with Piero Della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Velasquez and Goya."

So, as soon as you examine the evidence, the quotation is shown to be false. In that case what was he really trying to say. Perhaps he was saying that because America has produced no great art she must be more democratic - a bit like saying (if I may misquote Maugham) because she has no arms she must be the Venus de Milo. Of course, we are talking about the 1830s, aren't we?

[Virgil]

Not that I disagree with anything that's been said, but here's my two cents:

Art is produced when cultures are prosperous, whether under aristocracies or democracies. Prosperity allows education, training, museums, cross pollination of thought, affordibility of expensive mediums. How can you have a great writer if he doesn't have the means of reading books? How many people were literate three hundred years ago? How many peaple could afford to send their children to school three hundred years ago? We have more art today because we have a standard of living (at least the industrialized countries) way beyond any previous civilization. That reflects the quantity of art. Do we have greater art? How can one measure? Great art is probably a confleuence of many factors, not just democracy versus arisotcracy.

Good thread, Unnamable. This is something I've thought about in the past.

[The Unnamable]

I don’t think we should think of what we now mean by democracy when considering the quotation. I think the bit above is from 1835. I suppose I’m more interested in the idea of elitism with regards to his comment. Rather than seeing the conflict as one between democracy and one of its various opposites, I find it more interesting to think about it as a conflict between elitism and populism.

I’ve wondered about this for a while. Yes, de Toqueville can be dismissed but I can’t help noticing that the more ‘democratic’ democracy becomes, the more rubbish we end up having to endure. There is a powerful antagonism against any form of elitism. Apparently, we’ve decided it’s wrong in our brave new world.

It used to be said that if you took an infinite number of monkeys and sat them at an infinite number of typewriters, in an infinite amount of time, you’d eventually end up with the complete works of Shakespeare. The Internet proves this to be false.

[blp]

I agree that it feels the way you say, which is why I included the Laurie Andersen bit, but I think it's easy to get tricked by the filter of history. We can see it's power - admittedly in a negative way - by the way a painter of the order of Artemitia Gentilleschi, easily the equal of many of her male Renaissance contemporaries, has been largely forgotten. If she can have been so marginalised because of her gender, think how much genuine trash could have fallen by the wayside at the same time. At least in the present democratic moment, she wouldn't have suffered in the same way.

Anyhow, what's all this about democracy becoming more democratic? At the slight risk of getting into another current political debate, that's not the way I see it and I don't even believe it's how you see it, Unnamable. If kitsch and schlock are really in the ascendent, I'd be more inclined to blame unbridled capitalism, which is often counter-democratic, and a decline in educational standards.

All that said, I worry about that old filter of history. Is it going to preserve the things I care about? And what, precisely, from the immediate present (this decade, for the sake of argument) would I want it to keep?

[blp]

To take another tack, this era's doing very nicely thanks at producing its own elites. And at times, that may be to the benefit of arts. In broad global terms, most of citizens of democracies are part of an elite, however crappy our lives feel from day to day.

More narrowly, a few brave souls do occasionally manage even now to use the Hollywood machine to produce works of creditable art - Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney in the present and, from an earlier era, John Cassavetes who used his royalties as a leading man to kickstart the American indie movie movement with what I think were some of the most original and exciting films in history. In some respects, this is probably rather similar to making paintings amid the venality of the Renaissance papal court.

[The Unnamable]

Anyhow, what's all this about democracy becoming more democratic? At the slight risk of getting into another current political debate, that's not the way I see it and I don't even believe it's how you see it, Unnamable. If kitsch and schlock are really in the ascendent, I'd be more inclined to blame unbridled capitalism, which is often counter-democratic, and a decline in educational standards.
When I said that ‘democracy becoming more democratic’ I was thinking the ever more pervasive insistence that all views are equally valid, coupled with the technological capacity to enable those views to be made available. When I went to university, less than 10% of the population did. Now that it’s approaching 50% in the UK, are we to assume that in the past few decades improved standards in education and greater accessibility have resulted in a fivefold increase in intelligent people? It doesn’t feel like that. It’s as well we don’t extend this egalitarian approach to the realms of surgery or mechanical engineering.


All that said, I worry about that old filter of history. Is it going to preserve the things I care about? And what, precisely, from the immediate present (this decade, for the sake of argument) would I want it to keep?
Unfortunately, it won’t be a question of what you want to keep but of what will be considered worth keeping by the new arbiters of artistic merit. And their agenda is, of course, to dismiss the cultural productions of the past as predominantly white, male and heterosexual. The discourses with which to challenge certain assumptions are disappearing. Although the ridicule heaped upon political correctness has helped to destroy it as a phrase, its existence as a sentiment has never been more powerful or more damaging to serious art. Here’s what one academic wrote about this:

“The multiplication of special studies and special departments has made it possible for minority students not just to be better informed about their own culture, but to go through college without learning about anything else. What Christopher Lasch called 'the culture of narcissism' has now found its politically- approved form. Students learn by looking in a mirror and studying themselves; and what they see has got to be 'positive images' -no example of non-Caucasian brutality, or instance of female misbehavior, is allowed to upset the historical melodrama of minority victims and white male oppressors.”

The substitution of Milton for Madonna in the curriculum has been lauded by many as indicative of the long-overdue replacement of elitism by equality and fairness. What it actually represents is a surrendering to mediocrity due to sheer force of numbers. Perhaps it’s already happened in a gallery somewhere but I’ve no doubt we’ll have children’s fridge door paintings reclassified as art soon and given their space in the Tate, much to the enjoyment of those desperately tedious creatures called ‘proud parents’. Will there be room in galleries for those incredible late self-portraits by Rembrandt, especially when some gender-aware proponent of cultural diversity realises that he was just an old fat heterosexual white man? His best bet for remaining on the walls is to be rediscovered as a mixed race, lesbian Hindu.

PS Have you read Roth’s The Human Stain?

[Orionsbelt]

In a baron field a single flower shows brilliantly. In a field of flowers a single flower goes un-noticed. Yet how many would chose one flower over the field?

[blp]

I haven't read it, no, but will add it to the long list.

What you're talking about sounds like a description of a trend in American academia. I don't know too much about this, but do want to argue that it has some validity. There does need to be a counterweight to the idea that all worthwhile thought emanates solely from Europe, alright, a little from East Asia, but none from the Middle East or Africa. You don't have to know much to know that this is a distortion and a dangerous one. The pendulum may, at times, have swung too far in the other direction, but it has also opened doors for numerous black Americans that were closed to them some thirty years ago. The situation in England, where there are still very very few prominent black academics or black history courses, is lagging.

I'm absolutely aware that the filter of history may not pick the things that matter to me, which is why I said it worried me. But what you're talking about is stupidity and oppression by stupidity, which has always existed. Literature and art relentlessly bear witness to this and have always been a bulwark against it - and the filter of history's allowed a remarkable amount of that to survive. If the dominance of white males has shifted to the dominance of other interest groups, so be it and damn them all, but the situation isn't really new, just the details. Lots of contemporary art addresses the complexities of the current climate with reckless disregard for political correctness: Martin Kippenberger, now showing at Tate Modern, Tod Solondz's film 'Pallindromes', Kathy Acker, Vanessa Beecroft, Lars Von Trier's film 'Dogville', Brett Easton Ellis, lots more. The art group Bank, now defunct, made a lot of their work as a direct response to the brainless piety of the artworld and its funding bodies. In one show, they had a section called 'Bonkers Bird' and invited the older artist Susan Hiller to participate. Her considered refusal, sent as a fax, ended up as her unwilling contribution to the show, along with a note from Bank explaining that, as Bank consisted of three men and woman and, since, as anyone knew, women couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery, they had taken the decision not to allow the woman to make any more artistic decisions. They also made a video about their spurious plans to do a piece of public art on 'the Oswald Mosley Estate' in East London.

From friends who've had involvement with publishing here in London, it's obvious to me that the biggest threat to good literature is not political correctness but the supposed demands of the market. Pretty people who'll look good in the media get fatter contracts and the agents admit this. Books get bought because they're similar to something that did well last year. Being black or female is just one element that can be used for media manipulation, but by no means the only one. It sucks, but you only have to read 'New Grub Street' to see that the situation was horribly similar a hundred years ago.

The artworld is often dull and thick, but from my vantage point, I promise, it's not only almost completely devoid of political correctness, but still, however unconsciously, rather in thrall to the bullish, often boorish persona of the white male, inveterately inebriated genius, from Kippenberger to Damian Hirst. My problem with it is actually its shocking lack of political engagement or conscience. Everybody who can sells to Saatchi and plenty more sell to the wife of a prominent arms dealer here in London.

Meanwhile, Rembrandt is still in a prominent place in the National Gallery and young women still go and look and learn from him. I literally don't know a single female artist or intellectual who rejects other thinkers on the grounds that they're male.

[blp]

Oh - and sure, more people are going to unversity here, but they're going at a huge cost, leaving them massively in debt and most are going with the specific intention not of satisfying their curiosity, expanding their minds or even learning about their 'own' cultural heritage, but to learn skills they can use to make profits.

[Virgil]

In a baron field a single flower shows brilliantly. In a field of flowers a single flower goes un-noticed. Yet how many would chose one flower over the field?
Orion is essentially saying what I'm saying, although he did it more elegantly. Are you people confusing the quantity of art with lack of quality? It doesn't strike me that there is a lack of quality. Lots of great writers, painters, musicians, directors, etc. shine in this century. It's just mixed into a backdrop of lesser stuff. Is that bad? Is that bad that more people are creative and contributive to culture? Is it bad that the not so great poets are posting on the Literature Network? Not to me.

[blp]

not so great poets. Who can you mean? ;)

I think I'm saying the same thing too, except to add that, yes, there are some very bad aspects about the way culture is disseminated now, but there probably always have been and this is one of the things cultural producers have to address continually.

But to switch tacks again, recent cultural history is actually something I'm pretty pessimistic about. I hate nostalgia, but I can't help looking back to modernism and lamenting the loss of its promise and radicalism. To give just a small example, TV in the sixties used to commission decidedly experimental works of drama from the likes of Harold Pinter, Dennis Potter and Mike Leigh. Somebody said recently that if Dennis Potter turned up at the BBC with his ideas today, he'd be laughed out the door.

Publishing looks the same. It's difficult to imagine anyone writing like Beckett, Burroughs, Joyce, Woolf et al. getting a deal now. Film still squeezes out interesting work somehow, but to me it ain't Godard.

[Virgil]

Hey, we actually agree on something!!

[blp]

Hey, we actually agree on something!!

Well, I guess if you throw enough toast in the air, eventually one piece has got to land buttered side up. :p

[rachel]

you have to be British, only the Brits would even conceive of throwing toast into the air. What a delightful image. I think I shall try just that next time I have stuffy company to stay over. thank you for those words.