An interesting question

[mortalterror]

Elitism, like all the other negative -isms basically says my people are better than your people. The logical conclusion of this is that they are worth less than individuals in the elite - and we all know where that thinking goes.

Given a good home, good parenting, ambition, vision, good teaching and schools, opportunities for higher ed, money, support, private tutors, work opportunities, family support - it's no wonder that there seems to be self fulfilling elite.

The greater wonder is that anyone from the masses could ever - by virtue of their own cleverness, intelligence, fortitude, endeavour, luck, resiliance etc make anything more of themselves than become one of the masses. But they do.

The masses are little better than sheep. Sterilize them all!

[Paulclem]

The masses are little better than sheep. Sterilize them all!

[Emil Miller]

The greater wonder is that anyone from the masses could ever - by virtue of their own cleverness, intelligence, fortitude, endeavour, luck, resiliance etc make anything more of themselves than become one of the masses. But they do.

And then they become one of the elite.

[Alexander III]

Elitism, like all the other negative -isms basically says my people are better than your people. The logical conclusion of this is that they are worth less than individuals in the elite - and we all know where that thinking goes.

Given a good home, good parenting, ambition, vision, good teaching and schools, opportunities for higher ed, money, support, private tutors, work opportunities, family support - it's no wonder that there seems to be self fulfilling elite.

The greater wonder is that anyone from the masses could ever - by virtue of their own cleverness, intelligence, fortitude, endeavour, luck, resiliance etc make anything more of themselves than become one of the masses. But they do.

Very well, if you wish to play by this route - tell me of just a single time in historey, when art was controlled and cultivated by the masses...

It's all nice and fun to think of ourselves as all equall, but then when we look at history, the pretense of human eqallity is just a disillusion. There has always been slave and there has always been master.

[Alexander III]

And then they become one of the elite.

Thats how it works. If one is clever/beautifull/charismatic enough - he rarley does not end up well. For those with not enough beauty/intelligence/charisma, they remain part of the masses.

[Emil Miller]

That's how it works. If one is clever/beautiful/charismatic enough - he rarely does not end up well. For those with not enough beauty/intelligence/charisma, they remain part of the masses.

I'm glad you said rarely, because it certainly doesn't apply across the board.
Adolf Hitler was easily the most charismatic leader of any country during the 20th century and nobody could say that he ended up well. Going to the opposite end of the political spectrum, George Orwell, who came from the governing class and was also an old Etonian, spent most of his adult life trying to identify with the masses to the extent of living like a tramp and seeking out the low life. He hated elitism and railed against it in his writing but he remains to this day one of the literary elite.

[Paulclem]

Very well, if you wish to play by this route - tell me of just a single time in historey, when art was controlled and cultivated by the masses...

It's all nice and fun to think of ourselves as all equall, but then when we look at history, the pretense of human eqallity is just a disillusion. There has always been slave and there has always been master.

Equality - an unattainable dream. I never said that.

The presumption that being born into a rich and priviledged class, with the right blood perhaps makes you altogether a better person - no. There's no level playing field with which to compare, and so those with the advantages always retain the advantage. So a self fulfilling prophecy is set in motion. I'm better because I'm cultured and educated as opposed to those who are relatively uneducated and uncultured and thus lesser.

I've seen this kind of argument before. Of course there won't be any masses contributing much to the culture - they're too busy earning a crust.

Except of course those individuals who always emerge against the odds - Blake for example.

Our own Royal family are a prime example. Andrew - sacked as economic envoy for lining his own pockets. Edward with his failed and censured media company that traded on it's own connections. Fergie facing prosecution for illegal filming. These are the true blue bloods who should exemplify the best qualities according to your ideas.

The Queen herself - never interviewed but why? Is it that it would show her up to be a mediocre speaker who can't handle a question? Prince Phillip - too much of a priviledged loose cannon. Prince Charles - well less said.

[Alexander III]

Equality - an unattainable dream. I never said that.

The presumption that being born into a rich and priviledged class, with the right blood perhaps makes you altogether a better person - no. There's no level playing field with which to compare, and so those with the advantages always retain the advantage. So a self fulfilling prophecy is set in motion. I'm better because I'm cultured and educated as opposed to those who are relatively uneducated and uncultured and thus lesser.

I've seen this kind of argument before. Of course there won't be any masses contributing much to the culture - they're too busy earning a crust.

Except of course those individuals who always emerge against the odds - Blake for example.

Our own Royal family are a prime example. Andrew - sacked as economic envoy for lining his own pockets. Edward with his failed and censured media company that traded on it's own connections. Fergie facing prosecution for illegal filming. These are the true blue bloods who should exemplify the best qualities according to your ideas.

The Queen herself - never interviewed but why? Is it that it would show her up to be a mediocre speaker who can't handle a question? Prince Phillip - too much of a priviledged loose cannon. Prince Charles - well less said.

I never said being born rich makes you better - but being born rich gives one hugh advatnges to do with as one pleases.

But Elite, does not imply economic eilite soley.

I am not seeing what point if any your made with this post?

[Paulclem]

I never said being born rich makes you better - but being born rich gives one hugh advatnges to do with as one pleases.

But Elite, does not imply economic eilite soley.

I am not seeing what point if any your made with this post?

[COLOR="DarkRed"]The masses have always been, are and shall always be ignorant. There was never a time when the common man was writing verse, philisophising and spent his entire nights in metaphisical debate. The common man is ignorant. The elite have always been the elite. Culture is theirs, not of the common man. The difference between now and the past is that the presentday common man is literate and has a basic grasp of culture. The common men before were not literate and had no grasp of culture.[/COLOR

The masses have always been, are and shall always be ignorant.
The common man is ignorant
The common men before were not literate

I always thought common meant ordinary, everyday and, in the main, poor. It's just a bit pejorative, and was a favourite insult of the common people where I lived. I'm only surprised you didn't call them the great unwashed.

You're right - being rich gives a person huge advantages.

But Elite, does not imply economic eilite soley.
Unarguably so, beause some of the common mass join them by the mere virtue of their own great merits.

Your post reminded me of an incident in my past when one of the rich elite - a young chap who I was in the Officer TA with- claimed I could not have got the degree I did. He said "you can't have got that. You don't know what culture is".

I'm always suspicious of claims about who has, understands, contributes to, or who hasn't got culture, as if it is possible to make accurate sweeping generalisations about the great diversity of the populace.

[Alexander III]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]The masses have always been, are and shall always be ignorant. There was never a time when the common man was writing verse, philisophising and spent his entire nights in metaphisical debate. The common man is ignorant. The elite have always been the elite. Culture is theirs, not of the common man. The difference between now and the past is that the presentday common man is literate and has a basic grasp of culture. The common men before were not literate and had no grasp of culture.[/COLOR

The masses have always been, are and shall always be ignorant.
The common man is ignorant
The common men before were not literate

I always thought common meant ordinary, everyday and, in the main, poor. It's just a bit pejorative, and was a favourite insult of the common people where I lived. I'm only surprised you didn't call them the great unwashed.

You're right - being rich gives a person huge advantages.

But Elite, does not imply economic eilite soley.
Unarguably so, beause some of the common mass join them by the mere virtue of their own great merits.

Your post reminded me of an incident in my past when one of the rich elite - a young chap who I was in the Officer TA with- claimed I could not have got the degree I did. He said "you can't have got that. You don't know what culture is".

I'm always suspicious of claims about who has, understands, contributes to, or who hasn't got culture, as if it is possible to make accurate sweeping generalisations about the great diversity of the populace.

Like I said before, tell me anytime in history when culture was not dominated by the elite - art, literature, music ect..

[cafolini]

Like I said before, tell me anytime in history when culture was not dominated by the elite - art, literature, music ect..

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.

[mortalterror]

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.

[stlukesguild]

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.

[stlukesguild]

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.

[mortalterror]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.