Is Art only for the Elite?

[PeterL]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art

definition of ART
1 : skill acquired by experience, study, or observation <the art of making friends>
2 a : a branch of learning: (1) : one of the humanities (2) plural : liberal arts b archaic : learning, scholarship
3 : an occupation requiring knowledge or skill <the art of organ building>
4 a : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced b (1) : fine arts (2) : one of the fine arts (3) : a graphic art
5 a archaic : a skillful plan b : the quality or state of being artful
6 : decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter


Origin of ART
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin art-, ars — more at arm
First Known Use: 13th century

Synonyms: craft, handcraft, handicraft, trade

[Patrick_Bateman]

I have a print of Kandinsky's 'Blue Circle' on my bedroom wall, and I can't help looking at it every night before I go to sleep and when I wake up and whenever I'm in my room. There's just so many possibilities with that work (like most Expressionist pieces) I find when it's dark a multitude of other possibilities come out over the painting. That's something I love about that particular movement (as well as Surrealism)
I see the beauty in art during the Renaissance and up until Impressionism but
I'm not one of those pretentious dandies who walks around art galleries talking about tremendous use of light, contours, the texture or of brushstrokes.(although i did study some Paul Cezanne and Impressionism during my degree course) And I admit I know very little about them.

[Scheherazade]

Well, I enjoy some art too so it cannot be all for "the Elite"!

[OrphanPip]

Views on what is high art can differ, evidently
Personally i do not consider them as such.

While I disagree with Alex's high assessment of The Lion King (Which I think was only a so-so example of animation, some of its best scenes borrow heavily from other movies), Disney's early output stands at the top of early 20th century animation. Disney cared too, he cared about pushing the boundaries of his medium to the limits, I would personally consider Fantasia his best work though, and better than everything the studio has produced since his death, even if it has less stellar moments. Current Disney Studios are much less impressive.

There are better animators though, certainly those with much less popular appeal. Disney was a trailblazer, and most of all the studio has produced some of the most technically brilliant animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmcp4XNCWRY

[Alexander III]

While I disagree with Alex's high assessment of The Lion King (Which I think was only a so-so example of animation, some of its best scenes borrow heavily from other movies), Disney's early output stands at the top of early 20th century animation. Disney cared too, he cared about pushing the boundaries of his medium to the limits, I would personally consider Fantasia his best work though, and better than everything the studio has produced since his death, even if it has less stellar moments. Current Disney Studios are much less impressive.

There are better animators though, certainly those with much less popular appeal. Disney was a trailblazer, and most of all the studio has produced some of the most technically brilliant animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmcp4XNCWRY

I do agree Fantasia would have to be Disney's greatest

[JCamilo]

Well, I enjoy some art too so it cannot be all for "the Elite"!

Scheharazade is the daughter of the vizir, a princess. This is elite

While I disagree with Alex's high assessment of The Lion King (Which I think was only a so-so example of animation, some of its best scenes borrow heavily from other movies), Disney's early output stands at the top of early 20th century animation. Disney cared too, he cared about pushing the boundaries of his medium to the limits, I would personally consider Fantasia his best work though, and better than everything the studio has produced since his death, even if it has less stellar moments. Current Disney Studios are much less impressive.

There are better animators though, certainly those with much less popular appeal. Disney was a trailblazer, and most of all the studio has produced some of the most technically brilliant animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmcp4XNCWRY

Borrowing from other is far from a problem to define a good movie, a medium born inside industry and repetition. I would say Beauty and the Beast is superior to Lion King and Sleeping Beauty is remarkable. Of course, Disney is an inovator of animation, but we are talking about Movies, Hollywood, hardly a High Art, but something popular (Lets not be tricked by MTV, Pop art is not Michael Jackson and he is hardly the popular mass industry art inventor, it was nothing that likes of Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens did with the novel). But it is highly stilized form of narrative, high quality there.

Fantasy is not the only example of Disney using classical music to help his animation - which is the elite trying to popularize their "taste".

[OrphanPip]

Fantasy is not the only example of Disney using classical music to help his animation - which is the elite trying to popularize their "taste".

It's actually where Disney started, with the Silly Symphonies series being his bulwark of Disney while they worked on the longer and much more expensive features. Fantasia stands out as one of the rare occasions in mainstream animation where there was an attempt to break away form the "Naturalist" vein of animation, which still dominates contemporary Japanese and American animation. There was actually some attempt at the abstract. It also features one of the most brilliant innovations in animation, it's the first appearance of the current model of Mickey mouse without the black circle eyes and instead has the much more expressive large white eyes with pupils, now a staple in cartoon character design. The fact that each section was directed by a different director also gives us a showcase of the individual work of some of finest animation directors of the period. I don't know what Disney using classical music has to do with the elite trying to popularize their taste. Disney was enamored of European 19th century culture, borrowing from fairy tales and the like, and personally liked music. Music set to animation was popular at the time as well, and had been a success for Disney financially prior to Fantasia, that's the reason for undertaking the film, which itself was a huge financial flop at theaters and nearly ruined the studio.

No, borrowing itself is not going to make Lion King a bad movie, which it isn't, but it does lower the impact if you see something like the fight between Scar and Simba, which is practically animated identical to the silhouette fight from Bambi, or the mere fact that certain settings, like pride rock, were lifted from Kimba the White Lion without any alteration. That's just plagiarism.

The Lion King did nothing innovative, better, or more interesting than past Disney films. It was a competent and entertaining movie, just nothing extraordinary. Beauty and The Beast is OK as well, but mostly a throwback to older Disney princess movies. Disney, I feel, after Bambi loses much of the spark of innovation, they turned to recycling old tropes from their earlier movies with "new" plots.

I also don't think you can really say Disney isn't comparable to other innovators, at least when it comes to the medium of animation he is the figure that most animators set themselves up in opposition to, or drawing from, his legacy. He isn't the originator of the form, with many earlier interesting work being done in France and Germany, or in the US by Winsor McKay, but he is the first animator to make it a mainstream form, to bring it to the attention of the movie going public at large. He's pretty important for contemporary American culture too, how many children are raised in the USA without being exposed to any Disney film? How many people's impression of animation is based entirely on Disneyesque Naturalism in animation? Most people will never bother to expose themselves to avant-garde animation, just like most people won't watch experimental or avant-garde regular films. Hell, Japanese popular animation, which is often held up as being in opposition to Disney, draws heavily on them for inspiration. Osamu Tezuka, the most important figure in the development of Japanese animation, was heavily influenced by Disney. If you had to identify any animation director as the most important maker of animation in the world, it is Disney.

[Petrarch's Love]

What happened to this thread?

Don't worry. This thread never actually dies. It merely gets reincarnated every few weeks.

As someone who has now been through multiple reincarnations, I have become very interested in the the source of the undying nature of these threads. I wonder if it would be helpful for us to ask ourselves why we are fascinated by the topic of art and elitism and the reasons we get so enthusiastic and heated up about the topic. The question, "Is art for the elite?" is a rather complicated one to answer, and it's important to sort out what is meant by the question--what motivated the asker to ask it and what the respondent perceives that motivation to be.

What, for example, is meant by the word "for" in this question? Do we mean "for" in reference to the audience whom a work was originally created for? What does that mean? Does it mean the person or persons whom the artist had in mind? The person(s) who commissioned the work? The original reading or viewing audience for a work? Or, does "for" refer to who the work is for today? Is it asking whether this is something available for only a certain group as opposed to the general population? Or does "for" connote a matter of taste or interest, in the way we sometimes say something is "not for me" when we just don't like it. The answer to this question will very much depend upon whether the person asking it and the person answering it think they are discussing whether art is, historically speaking, often created for an elite group, or whether it is more generally liked and appreciated by an elite group, or whether it is closed off to any but those who belong to an elite group.

Of course, the big term is the term "elite," which could refer to social, elite, economic elite, intellectual elite or, as St. Luke's often defines it, an elected elite, meaning those who have decided to put forth a certain amount of effort in order to gain the knowledge and awareness to appreciate and enjoy certain complex works of art.

The thing is that these different kinds of elite are often tangled up in some pretty complicated ways because a single work of art has been received and used and enjoyed and condemned as being elite or not. Edmund Spenser, for example, certainly wrote works that were explicitly "for" the very top of the social elite, aimed at patrons and royalty, but was not one of the elite himself. Even if looked at historically, then, should we view his poetic work as something associated more with the elite he wrote for or associated with the young man who rose up from modest means via a scholarship and a humanist education? Should Shakespeare's work be considered "for" the elite because of the image cultivated across the 19th and 20th centuries that the well off people with the expensive education are the ones who read Shakespeare, or should he be viewed as the glover's son who wrote for the public theatre and whose work is widely read and performed by people of all classes today? Does the fact that writers of the past wrote for patrons of an elite socio-economic class because the wanted money mean that their work can only then be appreciated by someone of a similar class today? Or does the fact that someone like Shakespeare or Dickens wrote for a broad general audience in their own time because they wanted money mean that they are exactly the same as anything written for a general audience, such as the latest best selling novel or TV sitcom?

Similarly, trying to define who enjoys art according to a certain "elite" group is difficult. There very clearly can be a socio-economic factor. Well off people with lots of money have the leisure time to cultivate a love of art and the funds to finance the kind of education for themselves and their children that will give them the opportunity to enjoy art They can also afford to be patrons of the arts, and all of these factors lead to an association of the arts with the economic and social elite. However, there are certainly plenty of rich people who have no appreciation whatsoever for the arts, and there are also plenty of people who come from very economically poor backgrounds who have a deep love for art. Sometimes intellectual and artistic interests and talents can elevate a person socially and economically speaking. In other cases--says a graduate student--pursuing artistic and intellectual interests can mean making economic sacrifices in either the long or short term.

Or, leaving the economic elite aside for a moment, what of the "intellectual elite." This category is just as complex. As an academic at an institution filled with people who could easily lay claim to being members of the intellectual elite, I've encountered a large range of people on that front. Some also belong to the economic elite and embrace their intellectual pursuits as a part of that status. Others come from impoverished economic and social backgrounds and embrace their status as intellectual elites because it puts them on a par with those in the socio-economic elite or can help launch them into that group. Some aren't paying any attention to the economic aspect at all but enjoy feeling smarter and superior to others. Others actively avoid the term "intellectual elite" because they feel it has become conflated in a negative way with some of the categories just mentioned and connotes a sense of exclusivity that just gets in the way of communicating about art with their students and community. Still, others embrace the term in the way St. Luke's does, to mean that they are a group who are elite in that they have worked hard to acquire a specialized knowledge about certain things that most other people do not possess. I would add to this, though, that for very few professional intellectuals is the idea of belonging to an elite their primary motivation for being interested in art.

This brings us back, then, to the question of why we are so interested in whether art is for the elite or not. Partly it may have to do with assumptions or anxieties about exclusivity of some kind. Some people here may be worried that saying art is for the elite means that art is something that is exclusive to that elite group, whatever that elite group might be, and so excludes them. Others may be worried that saying art is not for some sort of elite group means reducing the appreciation and production of art to only things that are completely and easily understandable to absolutely everyone without the need for any additional knowledge or effort of any kind and that this excludes the kind of artistic expression that provides such complexity and challenge. What really seems to be at the heart of all this debate, is not so much the question of whether art is for the elite or not, but at least three other very big questions:

What is art? What different kinds of art are there? What is the value of art in general or of different sorts of art? How does art relate to me?

Rather than framing another discussion in terms of whether art belongs to various types of elite groups, perhaps these are some of the questions we should be addressing more directly.

I am out of break time now. I'll leave off by posting some lyrics from the song "Make 'em Laugh":

Now you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite
And you can charm the critics and have nothin' to eat
Just slip on a banana peel
The world's at your feet
Make 'em laugh
Make 'em laugh
Make 'em laugh

For those who haven't watched Singing in the Rain recently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW02c5UNGl0

Well, I enjoy some art too so it cannot be all for "the Elite"!

[Seasider]

Thank God for a rational and relevant contribution to this thread. I had almost decided to leave the forum after Peter L's ravings about the Holocaust being Art going unchallenged by moderators and other posters.

A couple of points from the previous contribution:-
The system of Patronage was an important one because it was the main, if not the only route for an artist to recognition and remuneration. Spenser is a very good example of what a gifted poet could become in association with a rich and powerful patron who had himself an interest in the arts. Samuel Johnson showed the limitations of Patronage, but that was much later and he eventually achieved the fame and fortune he deserved without it.

Well off people with lots of money have the leisure time to cultivate a love of art and the funds to finance the kind of education for themselves and their children that will give them the opportunity to enjoy art They can also afford to be patrons of the arts,

I cant help thinking about our (British) Royal Family who, with the exception of the dilettante Prince of Wales, have shown no interest whatever in The Arts and if the performers that they request for the charitable Concerts and Shows that are arranged for them are anything to go by, deserve the description of Philistines rather than Patrons of the Arts.

In a forum such as this the questions that Petrarch's Love raises will always be the foundation of debates and discussions. And I'm happy to be in such a forum.

[Mudkip]

Art that appeals ONLY to an elite is shoddy art. It should be layered, with at least one layer that is accessible (whether aesthetically or emotionally) even to people with no artistic background. For instance, Dickinson's poetry often has strong symbolism... but even people who are crap at analyzing poetry can appreciate the meter and rhymes she employs.

I do not have the art history background to understand the full depth of Titian's work... but I can appreciate its beauty.

I don't know enough about atonal chord progressions to understand Stravinsky, but his music still elicits an emotional response from me.

[Kyriakos]

I would tend to agree that high art should have the effect to make even people who are not familiar with it, realise they are next to something important.
But in reality this is not the case. People have used high art as doors (paintings) for their chicken farms. Notable books recieve a myriad different interpetations, something which would have been revealing of the book's high quality, if only it was not the case that of these the vast majority is trivial in comparisson to the few that differ.
And such notes go on and on.

Sometimes high art indeed does become popular, but probably for all the wrong (and largely, if not entirely unconscious) reasons. Take Kafka for example. I have seen in bookstores examinations of his work that present it as near-communist propaganda. This means that the person writing this appreciation of Kafka believed in what he was writing, and one should expect that his ideas of him, and his joy of reading him was coloured by this rather base understanding, which says nothing of symbolism, allegory, esoterism etc.

Edit: And nowdays i tend to think that, although different views on a work of high art can reveal different high and real aspects of it, we should perhaps remember Nietzsche, who, when discussing the analogous polyphony on any given subject in philosophy, noted that "these people all want to say something different, and be all correct: they do not want philosophy, they want religion!"

[Mallorie]

Natural functions, urination, etc., are not art; they are nature.

Might I point out that human sex (love making) is a natural function however certainly ought not be divorced from the concept or title of "art".

[JCamilo]

Sometimes high art indeed does become popular, but probably for all the wrong (and largely, if not entirely unconscious) reasons. Take Kafka for example. I have seen in bookstores examinations of his work that present it as near-communist propaganda. This means that the person writing this appreciation of Kafka believed in what he was writing, and one should expect that his ideas of him, and his joy of reading him was coloured by this rather base understanding, which says nothing of symbolism, allegory, esoterism etc.

Kafka interpretation as communist propaganda is not a problem of popularization, his vision as "prophet of upcoming Nazism" was made by academic elite and most likely, as wrong as thinking Kafka as something beyond as a man who liked parables.

[PeterL]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art

definition of ART
1 : skill acquired by experience, study, or observation <the art of making friends>
2 a : a branch of learning: (1) : one of the humanities (2) plural : liberal arts b archaic : learning, scholarship
3 : an occupation requiring knowledge or skill <the art of organ building>
4 a : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced b (1) : fine arts (2) : one of the fine arts (3) : a graphic art
5 a archaic : a skillful plan b : the quality or state of being artful
6 : decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter


Origin of ART
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin art-, ars — more at arm
First Known Use: 13th century

Synonyms: craft, handcraft, handicraft, trade

[Mallorie]

There are arguments on both sides of that. I think that it might be best to consider a portion of that activity as a natural function, while it can become an art.

As long as you concede its potential for art, because your previous statement sounded like an absolute.