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I tell you when. Since the second half of the 20th century. But it is not culture that the common man controls. It is the elitist that has lost control of culture.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander III
Culture has fallen and freedom of choice is expanding and being globalized in the hands of science, technology and marketing. Many refuse to see it or are paranoid about it, and so they go to a museum where they keep insisting they are where the action is.
When have the masses been the stimulus of art and culture? I suppose the answer to that is the whole period of public theater, and ever since the novel became a major genre. Plautus was a Roman playwright who competed for his audience on the public street with jugglers, singers, and tightrope walkers. Shakespeare likewise made his bread and butter as much from the "groundlings" who attended his plays as from royal patronage. Then there's Moliere, Racine, Lope de Vega etc. In short, all of the best playwrights.
Don Quixote was a popular novel, as were Robinson Crusoe, and The Three Musketeers. Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens were popular novelists of their time. Tolstoy may have been an aristocrat but he published his novels serially in public newspapers and not in private manuscripts like a poet of the Renaissance.
Mozart wrote his Magic Flute for the public among other things. And the Golden Age of Dutch Painting seems to have been driven in large part by the middle class. So I wouldn't say that the masses have never had a say in culture. They just usually don't have the final say in what gets passed on and preserved. That's usually left to a handful of critics, patrons, academics who write textbooks and educate the next generation, and other artists championed by the former.
On a personal note, I've lately begun to wonder if Dali and Chagall would be considered as important as Picasso and Matisse if they'd been better friends with Gertrude and Leo Stein. Did the Steins have great taste or did they have an abnormally large influence on the taste of of their peers, and is there even a difference? When people discuss the greatness of Picasso or T.S. Eliot they frequently do so according to the aesthetic criteria popularized by Picasso or T.S. Eliot and so it's an artificial metric. They can't fail to score high on their own system, a system perpetuated by a handful of influential disciples, and slowly becoming canon.
Alexander III- tell me anytime in history when culture was not dominated by the elite - art, literature, music ect..
cafolini- I tell you when. Since the second half of the 20th century. But it is not culture that the common man controls. It is the elitist that has lost control of culture.
Culture has fallen and freedom of choice is expanding and being globalized in the hands of science, technology and marketing. Many refuse to see it or are paranoid about it, and so they go to a museum where they keep insisting they are where the action is.
Alexander... you might have better said that art, literature, and music have always followed in the footsteps of where the money lies. With the advent of mass production and mass media (sound recording, film, radio, TV, photography, etc...) the source of the chief financial support for many of the arts has moved from any idea of an "elite" to the masses. There is far more money to be found in the hit song, the best selling novel, or the blockbuster film than there is in many of the works of art recognized as the finest achievements by critics, academics, etc... (the "elite").
Having said this much, one may question whether this is true of culture as a whole, or only of the culture of the moment. Books have been mass produced since the mid-1400s and a broad reading public has been a reality since the 1700s and the development of the novel. If we look across the span of time since then, few of the best-sellers remain recognized as books worthy of recognition today, while many works that were reviled or ignored have become recognized as "classics". The opinions of the masses may dominate popular culture, but popular culture seems rather myopic in that it focuses solely upon the present... seduced by the latest novelties. The masses have little interest (and hence little impact) in the art of the past... and thus in the larger question of culture as a whole.
I would add that in certain traditional art forms, painting, sculpture... to a lesser extent (perhaps) architecture... the opinions of the masses are almost wholly irrelevant. Due to the nature of these art forms as unique objects that cannot be mass produced they remain almost wholly subservient to the opinions of a wealthy "elite". When a painting costs $5000... $50,000... $5,000,000 the masses find themselves completely irrelevant in terms of financial influence... no artist is about to pander to an audience who cannot afford to support his or her endeavors.
I am uncertain whether this has been for better or worse. While this has afforded the painter, sculptor, etc... a certain autonomy from the tastes of the masses, the tastes of the wealthy over the past century has not exactly proven itself to be aesthetically superior in any way. Of course this might be seen as owing to the fact that today's "elite" are often an elite solely in terms of wealth... they are not necessarily an elite in terms of experience, knowledge, education, and taste as was more true if one were looking at the elite of the Renaissance in which the aristocrat and the higher ranking clergy were expected to be something more than an elite in terms of wealth.
I wouldn't say that the masses have never had a say in culture. They just usually don't have the final say in what gets passed on and preserved. That's usually left to a handful of critics, patrons, academics who write textbooks and educate the next generation, and other artists championed by the former.
Exactly.
On a personal note, I've lately begun to wonder if Dali and Chagall would be considered as important as Picasso and Matisse if they'd been better friends with Gertrude and Leo Stein. Did the Steins have great taste or did they have an abnormally large influence on the taste of of their peers...?
Gertrude and Leo were of little importance. Matisse was already an established figure and while they were a valuable source of support for Picasso during his early years in Paris, and their Salons introduced him to many influential individuals, but they stopped purchasing his work after the shift to Cubism. The same was true of his American collector, Albert C. Barnes. The dealers Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and Ambrose Vuillard were far more important, as were Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Alfred Barr, who were establishing the presence of Modernism in the American art museums. It has actually been argued far more effectively that Matisse may have been seen as the greater artist... or at least an equal to Picasso, were it not for the fact that a majority of his finest masterworks were "lost" to the West in the collections of wealthy Russian collectors such as Sergei Shchukin. Beyond these art-world power-brokers, Picasso and Matisse were clearly far more influential and respected among subsequent artists as well as art critics and art historians.
When people discuss the greatness of Picasso or T.S. Eliot they frequently do so according to the aesthetic criteria popularized by Picasso or T.S. Eliot and so it's an artificial metric. They can't fail to score high on their own system, a system perpetuated by a handful of influential disciples, and slowly becoming canon.
And where has this not been true? The reality is that these biases are temporal. The critics championing Abstract Expressionism and the artists who road on their coattails rapidly faded into history until an artist such as Rothko, Pollock, or Motherwell... like the earlier Picasso and Matisse... need to be able to stand up within the context of the whole of art history... something T.S. Eliot himself recognized.
Yes, I was thinking of Barnes and those billionaires too, but it is still a small handful of highly influential figures and I wanted to keep things literary for the rest of the forum who may have heard of Gertrude Stein but not of the others.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Yes, and I included them in my assessment of "who gets the final say." But you are missing the point that the only artists who's opinions would matter are the other artists picked from the same agreed upon group. The art world is sort of self-sustaining and self-reflective in that way. Picasso is good because Rothko says he is good and Rothko's opinion is good because the people who like Rothko like Picasso, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
By the way, you know more about the Dutch Golden Age than I do, so it was to you I was looking for corroboration or possible correction about how big a role the middle class played.
I'd need to check with Lokaseena to know how much of the Icelandic Sagas and Eddas, or Celtic literature was popular folklore and how much was written by court poets for kings. But I suspect that even there the masses had their moment. Also, wasn't Tom o' Bedlam a popular drinking song of Elizabethan England? There must be quite a history of worthwhile outsider poetry from around the world, if I am not much mistaken.
I have to agree with you on one point. I think the best idea you put forward above is that the common people don't cultivate and preserve the past to the extent that the elite do. The lower class has short memories when it comes to art, and when they do produce something of real merit it is often the elite who will dip it in bronze.
Thank you. That is all I have been trying to say.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Exactly. It might not be a popular opinion, but the fact remains that the majority of people have very little grasp of culture, science or technology. How can we strive to become better and yet at the same time pretend that everyone is equal? That doesn't make sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
I've heard this argument often. The thing is, I don't think that's fair to poor kids, especially in modern times when information is easy to access. This idea is outdated, money isn't a prerequisite to being considered an academic "elite" anymore. You can do a lot with a library card or a computer and a work ethic. Even someone with very little money can take full advantage of the education and chances that the government now provides and get far. Anyone could take the initiative to become educated, I come from a family of coal miners and prison guards and wasn't born with much; making excuses for me and others from my socioeconomic background is somewhat condescending (although I know you don't intend it that way). Almost every single person at my university is at least as poor as I am, we all eat pasta and work sh*tty part-time jobs and yet we can build computers from scraps, discuss classic literature and explain angiosperm reproduction in intricate detail.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
Yes but I wouldn't call it culture, sub-culture is more like it and even that may be stretching a point.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
However you rationalize it, or turn it around and around and around, the fact remains that culture is falling, has already fallen in a large perentage, and this needed to happen to insure freedom of choice for the common man. Today the economic elites are cooperating with the common man and this socialism is unstoppable. Of course, it's not communism, which we demonstrated was completely stoppable.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
No it isn't, chicken little. There has ALWAYS been garbage in every time period's culture. Don Quixote was a satire on old knight-errant penny novels. Ask Pip about some of the bad-to-the-point-of-being-funny classic books that he's been reading recently.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
Three words: Castle of OtrantoQuote:
Ask Pip about some of the bad-to-the-point-of-being-funny classic books that he's been reading recently.
I think this statement applies to almost every single person at most universities. Pasta and ****ty jobs is the thing to do at our age.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
Yes, there has always been garbage after every dinner. However, what I'm talking about is not garbage. It's where we are going, and it is unstoppable because it's the natural way of the future in freedom, evolution and globalizations. You are missing the point.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
cool story broQuote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
Yeah, what are you talking about?
Definitely not talking about "yeah."Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
I was talking about university the other week. What % of the poor kids actually go? I'm all for a fairer society that gives people the opportunity. Kids with intelligence and ambition will, and have always, done well - extra well because of the barriers that exist for them that just don't for those from a priviledged background.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
I see a sweeping generalisation about "the masses" from from someone who has the priviledge of having the best educational opportunities, and I feel I have to respond. I don't begrudge anyone what they or their parents have earned. Good luck to them, and all the best. It's the setting up of one group against another - worth against worthless - that really annoys me. Of course most of the masses haven't contributed as much to culture. It's obvious. My Mother in Law left school at 14 to work in a factory, as did most of the kids of her generation in the 30's and 40's. Not only were they not expected to contribute, but the expectation was that you worked hard for what you got. And that's when things were improving. In the previous century you had to be someone special to get anywhere. HG Wells toiled as an apprentice until he was able to devote time to writing.
Nowadays, as you point out, there has been a democratisation of knowledge. There definately are more opportunities, better education and better living standards. It does contribute to the opportunities, and that's fantastic. There are still barriers though for many, and these relate to money, ambition and example of the parents, and all those other things that don't necessarily come easily to those of us who have had to work hard to get where we are. The barriers are still there - we get people through our door who are feeling the effects of poverty, lack of opportunity etc decades after.
My son's year group consisted of maybe 200 kids - all boys, boys' school. I asked him how many went to university, and he said 8 or 9. That's a poor showing by any standard. There are other routes of course, and some may go later. But where will they all be now? They'll be one of the masses that our friend talks of. Written off almost in a few words.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
You had me at angiosperm reproduction:)
Well everyone can discuss any subject in detail with Google at their disposal; whether they actually know what it means is another matter.Quote:
Originally Posted by tonywalt
By the way, you know more about the Dutch Golden Age than I do, so it was to you I was looking for corroboration or possible correction about how big a role the middle class played.
Oh yes... the so-called Golden Age of Dutch painting was built upon a huge shift in the patronage of art. Where the patrons of almost all art prior were aristocratic (whether secular or religious... in the sense of the patronage of the aristocracy of the church: cardinals, Bishops, Popes, etc...) it was the upper-middle class... the burgher or bourgeois... who became the chief patrons of art. The result is clearly evidenced in a comparison of the works by Dutch artists such as Rembrandt, versus that of Belgian artists such as Rubens. Rembrandt and his compatriots worked to meet the desires of the bourgeois for paintings of a modest scale preferably on subjects such as the Dutch landscape:
http://projects.asds.org/ClassProjec...n/ruisdael.jpg
Still life paintings that exhibit the wealth of the bourgeois in the form of exotic fruit (lemons), exotic sea food (lobster) and expensive china and glasswear:
http://www.daydaypaint.com/images/St...inting-031.jpg
moralizing interior scenes:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DplGzHau1T...0/lemonade.jpg
and portraits showing one's modesty and piety:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/wm/paint/auth...60/ostrich.jpg
All these may be seen in contrast to the grandeur of scale and flamboyance of the Belgian paintings intended for an aristocratic audience in which dominant themes included mythological narratives:
http://www.artunframed.com/images/artmis61/rubens39.jpg
-Perseus/Rubens
religious narratives:
http://www.artunframed.com/images/1vandyck/dyck178.jpg
-Samson/Van Dyck
-allegories:
http://www.arlindo-correia.com/rubens5.jpg
-Allegory of Peace/Rubens
-erotic narratives:
http://juliagrey.files.wordpress.com...s431.jpg?w=780
and portraits that stressed flamboyance and color:
http://www.lib-art.com/imgpainting/1...y-van-dyck.jpg
Belgian artists such as Rubens might paint landscapes for themselves which later became quite prized by British artists... but the closest thing to the Dutch landscape that might be commissioned by an aristocratic buyer would be something like a grand hunting scene (hunting being a privilege reserved to the aristocracy):
http://i576.photobucket.com/albums/s...inture/072.jpg
Personally, I spite of the emotional depth of Rembrandt and the jewel-like perfection of Vermeer, I greatly prefer the color, the audacity, and the sensuality of the art of the aristocracy.
Along with the shift in patronage came the intermediary art dealer. Where the painters such as Rubens and Van Dyck would have dealt directly with the aristocratic patrons... and as such have needed to have been well-spoken, educated, and well-versed in the manners of the court, the Dutch burgher class had little time of inclination to learn about art or artists or to develop a personal relationship with them. Art became a commodity marketed by the middleman: the art dealer. It shouldn't be surprising that it is to this period that we can trace the beginning of the hostility between the artist and the bourgeois or the middle-class
However you rationalize it, or turn it around and around and around, the fact remains that culture is falling, has already fallen in a large perentage, and this needed to happen to insure freedom of choice for the common man. Today the economic elites are cooperating with the common man and this socialism is unstoppable.
As usual, you have completely missed the point... let alone the facts. The popular arts are certainly dominated by the tastes of the masses... for the moment. But that which remains and survives over time remains in the hands of an "elite" audience comprised of subsequent artists, critics, historians, and other academics... as well as that portion of the audience who actually follow the arts. The traditional art forms such as painting, sculpture, architecture, etc... remain almost wholly unaffected by the opinions of the masses for the simple reason that they make no economic impact upon these artists.
I know that it's been a while since you were in school, but we actually don't get to use google during biology exams.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
Almost all of us are in the same boat, like Alex said, eating pasta and working at sh*tty jobs is so common that it's become a cliche. It takes most students in Alberta at least five years to complete a bachelor's, because we have to work too much and don't have time to take a full course schedule. The tuition just keeps rising, and not many people have been able to gather much money (especially those who attend right after graduating highschool). Student loans exist and there are always private companies willing to dish out some PR cash, and that helps but it only covers about 1/3 - 1/2 of the cost and not all of us qualify.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
Yeah I know, that's the guttural reaction against the whole image of the rich, snobby, educated "elite." I used to think the same way, until I realized that the snobby educated "elite" monopolizing human advancement doesn't exist anymore. The smartest people I know are poor, they live in dumps with five or six roomates. We all wish we had money, it would mean that we wouldn't have to work like dogs to get somewhere, but if you want an education you have to have a work ethic to study no matter how much your parents give you. In my experience, rich kids who have everything handed to them don't work hard in school. They don't have a work ethic. Also, unlike the past, poor kids are actually able to attend school because the government and private companies help by giving them bursaries, grants and scholarships. They also make a lot more because of standard wage laws. All of this means that now, in today's world, the rich students are more likely to have low grades and the poor kids are more likely to have high grades (haha actually, in my experience rich kids are more likely to pay poor kids to do their homework and then subsequently fail their midterms and finals).Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
That's true. I strongly believe that for most of us, as long as there are people in the world who care about us, the challenges help us grow and make us stronger, but I had people at school who's parents were complete garbage. They used to send their kids to school dirty and messed up. Those kids really didn't stand much of a chance. They didn't make up the majority though, most of us had normal parents who weren't addicted to anything, worked hard, didn't beat us and made sure we were clean, even though they didn't have very much money (especially during the 90's when the mine shut down).Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
I'm sorry but this is not the case. The economic elites are actually using the common man in ways that were undreamed of before the advent of modern information technology.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
[QUOTE=JuniperWoolf;1107918]I know that it's been a while since you were in school, but we actually don't get to use google during biology exams.
QUOTE]
I think it's fairly obvious that I was referring to its use on the internet.
I think it's fairly obvious that I was originally referring to school. Where else would one care about angiosperms?Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
In horticulture, which is where I first came across the term years before the Internet was invented.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
I wish it were a level playing field here, but we have an obviously rich elite. I suppose every country is different. Still, you can go further than you used to.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
I still see a lot of young people who would like to do better, but they're already pretty far behind in their twenties. They can still achieve of course, but it takes a long time and life happens - family children and responsibilities. Then the cycle starts again. I'm sure we lose a lot of talent one way and another.
Hah! That is completely true, I'm spending my twenties guarding against pregnancy like it's the plague. I've lost a lot of very bright friends to pre-mature "accidents."Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem