Why is it not OK to say that Cervantes is superior to Oprah’s bestsellers and that Beethoven is superior to Cardi B? Why do people get invariably upset when I say that this or that book is art while another one isn’t?
Because most people are incapable of reading Cervantes and Trollope and listening to Beethoven. And it makes them feel bad to have this pointed out. We must not make anybody feel bad because that would be not inclusive and anti-democratic.
The idea that everything is equivalent to everything else and that every choice is equally valid and equally independent from anything traps us in a situation where we have no words to explain why Amanda Gorman is ridiculously talentless and why the empty churches of Europe are a tragedy.
Some intellects are stronger than others. Some sensibilities are more refined. Some creative work is vastly superior to other. Recognizing all this doesn’t immediately lead us to genociding those who can’t listen to anything beyond Megan Thee Stallion. It doesn’t lead to anything bad at all but we act like it would be the second coming of Hitler.
Clarissa's Blog 
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What the hell was that, I couldn’t understand a word she said. As someone who’s a big fan of Motown, Northern Soul and vintage R&B, I agree that black music was better in the 60s and 70s before white liberals started encouraging the worst aspects of black culture. Whenever I see old clips of Soul Train or people dancing to Northern Soul, I feel very happy and want to dance and just enjoy this terrific music.
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My comment got cut off, I am someone who loathes rap since I don’t think a lot of modern rap requires much talent and is lyrically gross, in some high school classes I’ve worked in, the teachers let the students listen to this junk to pacify them. I’ve heard some pretty wild punk and metal, but that’s not mainstream music so they can go all crazy. The problem is that young people aren’t exposed to good music and you have teachers being condescending and saying this garbage is as good as Beethoven or even the Beatles, when it’s just garbage
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While this is true, it skips over nearly a century of the history of criticism and doesn’t answer many of the important questions that were raised during this time.
You are, of course, the expert here. I’ll recount my own clumsy understanding of the history merely for the sake of discussion.
There was a time when it was indeed completely okay to claim that one work of art was superior to another. Then people started asking why, exactly it was so. Initially the idea was that this had something to do with the objective qualities of the work of art itself. People went forth to look for such objective qualities but none could be found that could unambiguously distinguish the superior from the inferior. This was the approach of modernism and it failed.
The next idea that people had was that if the quality of a work of art was not objective then it must be subjective. That is, it must depend upon how we interpret the work. The natural question then arises: whose interpretation is correct and for what reason? Different cultures hold different kinds of art to be superior/inferior. Even within the same culture, what is considered good and proper by the elites is not what is necessarily held in regard by the masses. This, of course, is the post-modern conundrum. Various (non-)solutions were proposed. That all works of art have ‘equal’ value. Or that value is correlated with power. Whichever group is in power imposes its values onto other groups.
Post-modern thought led to the kind of nihilism that you point out. However merely pointing out that it is nihilistic doesn’t help answer the very genuine questions that were raised. What basis do we have for saying Beethoven is superior to Cardi B, except taking your word for it. And what basis do we have for accepting your judgment besides your position of social power as a professor? (Not trying to make it personal. Being the expert, I think you know what I’m trying to get at.)
Post-modern thought conveniently aligns with the kind of ‘slave morality’ that you talk about – that no one should have to feel inferior to another and hence gains widespread acceptance. However, that is not the root of the issue, I think. Unless a suitable resolution can be provided for the post-modern conundrums, we might be doomed to repeat the arguments ad nauseam.
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In addition to objective qualities of the work as art (though those are important and play a role in what I’m about to say), I think what’s important is the literary and cultural role different works play. Some have deep influences stretching over centuries, like Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Even if you don’t like them, hell, even if you think they’re overrated in terms of artistry, they’re an important part of our cultural heritage and everyone in the West should know something of them.
I’ll put my money where my mouth is with someone harder to like than Shakespeare. I dislike the poetry of Walt Whitman. But if I taught a class on 19th century American literature, I don’t see any way I could avoid him. He’s just too important.
While artistic merit is maybe slightly more ineffable, this is fairly straightforward. Though of course writers who were influential for centuries go in and out of fashion. Don’t hear as much about Henry Fielding nowadays as you did even 50 years ago.
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I don’t believe that hierarchies are bad and that positions of social power are suspect. You go to a dentist and trust that he knows what he’s doing because of the diplomas on his wall. Why not trust that I know what I do based on the diplomas hanging on mine? How do we know that E = mc² means something and isn’t just a childish scribbling on a blackboard?
High culture has always been and will always be for the tiniest of minorities. Like Einstein’s physics. And like professional dentistry. We know what’s art because we have high IQs and refined sensibilities, which we got either by birth or by lifelong practice.
How do “we” know which heart valve is healthy and which isn’t? We clearly don’t until a qualified specialist tells us.
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I completely agree, there are standards when it comes to art and it’s crazy to say there shouldn’t be any standards or criteria. It doesn’t necessarily have to be high Art, a pop star who uses loads of Auto Tune and requires five songwriters and producers for a banal pop song is nowhere as talented as a rock band who writes and produces their own original music, plays their own instruments and performs over a hundred shows a year.
In addition, one has to be aware when they consume junk and realize it’s junk and be sensitive when people say it’s junk. One of my guilty pleasures is reading romance novels on Kindle Unlimited at the end of the day, I read them to unwind before bed. I know that it’s not literature and that most of them are dumb and formulaic, and I’m not offended when people say so. Or watching a dumb horror movie, I know they’re junk but they’re entertaining and I know it’s not art, it’s not offensive to say so
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I read a lot of junk and enjoy it thoroughly. Entertainment is important and wonderful. But it’s not art. This should not be controversial or hurtful.
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“Why do people get invariably upset when I say that this or that book is art while another one isn’t?”
For me, it’s a question of vocabulary….
Paradise Logic and the Return of the Native are both art, but they have different audiences and different aims and succeed differently. The latter survived the original audience (which understood it in a completely different way than modern audiences do) but it has a kind of timeless message that can still resonate across centuries and cultures. The former will seem hopelessly dated and tired in a year (if it takes that long) and might be incomprehensible in five.
I divide art into folk art, popular art, mass market art, fine art, niche art, etc partly by audience and partly by aim. Completely apart from that is the question of how well a work of art fulfills its aim, whether to entertain or make the receiver think. And apart from that is the question of whether it can survive its original audience, either in terms of time or language.
Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon both wrote popular art to entertain general audiences and both succeeded. But Simenon has an interesting social dimension that Christie really…. lacks. Simenon understood human nature and social relations in a way that Christie didn’t. While the Maigret novels don’t have the clever riddle structure that Christie excelled at but they give a kind of panoramic view of human nature and social class and how they (and other factors) influence each other that make them more memorable to a careful reader.
I don’t necessarily look down on people who can’t appreciate Hardy because I know I have my limits too. I don’t care how many people lecture me about how great Moby Dick is… after about the first twenty or thirty pages I hated every second of reading it until the last page or so. I also have extremely limited tolerance for Shakespeare (the plays, the sonnets are another question entirely). And I frankly don’t believe those who claim they are comprehensible without special study.
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“Paradise Logic is art” you’re a kinder and more generous man than me. Though of course I can’t truly judge a book I only read the Amazon preview of. I’m unwilling to read more though.
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“Paradise Logic is art”
Yeah. For me “art” doesn’t mean good or lasting or any of that. There’s lots of terrible and/or ephimeral art. I’m big into qualifiers…. so “Paradise Logic” is probably terrible transitory wannabe elite art that won’t be remembered within a few months…. (most likely I have no intention of investigating it further).
The Return of the Native (to stick to my original examples) is a higher form of art that has a kind of permanence as successive generations find meaning there (unless Hardy’s been cancelled… has he been cancelled?).
One interesting thing about youtube is that all sorts of obscure classical music (much of which was just names to me) is available and some of it is… just not memorable. Classical music isn’t all good…
Or take Le Cid (opera by Jules Massenet who did also write some really great, lasting works). The first time I heard it I was blown away and convinced it was a kind of forgotten masterpiece but… beneath the gleaming surface… there’s not much going on and I quickly forgot it. Apparently that has happened more than once, sensational debut and it’s quickly forgotten again…. Massenet was very prolific and very… uneven – for every Manon or Werther (great profound works) there is a Herodiade or Esclarmonde (shiny but empty).
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I love this topic. On one hand, I understand why what we consider superior culture may be considered irrelevant in 100 or 200 years, and then perhaps relevant again after that. Cultural hierarchy may be a construct. On the other, I will always ask myself why I was obsessed with Ingmar Bergman and jS Bach when I was twelve years old, when schoolmates liked Samantha Fox or New Kids on the Block. I like them too, but I liked Bergman and Bach more. Why, exactly, did I liked Bergman or Bach? Was it because I was capable of enjoying them? Was it because, somehow, I absorbed Bourdieu’s theories on culture and social classes as a kid?
Ol.
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Because you are high-IQ. At a certain level of IQ, consuming high culture becomes akin to a physical need.
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I don’t know about IQ, but I perfectly understand what you mean by physical need.
Ol.
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