What Good are the Arts?, by John Carey
A book which sets out to puncture what Carey sees as the pretensions of the
Arts establishment, and which is likely to upset those who feel that there is
something special about art, and "high art" in particular. But after pouring
a fair amount of scorn, he uses the second half of the book to argue the case
(which he admits is a personal one) for literature being the most worthwhile
of the arts, and has some interesting points to make.
Bits I thought worth highlighting:
- on the "universal appeal" of the golden section: D.E. Berlyne found
that Japanese high school girls did not react favourably to a 'golden section'
rectangle, but preferred one closer to a square [p15]
- Carey says that over the last hundred years or so, the masses...would
take posession of an art of their own that would eclipse elitest
art...classicalk music now occupies a tiny corner of the multi-million dollar
recorded music industry. Poetry-readers and theatre-goers are as rare as
practitioners of origami compared with the global hordes who live their
imaginative lives through TV soaps. Painting has virtually died out..
[p29]
- Carey's definition: My answer to the question 'What is a work of art?'
is 'A work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work or art,
though it may be a work of art for only that one person' [p29]
- In answer to the question "Is high art superior?" Carey answers no. He
sees the distinction between "high" and "low" art as one that is used to
reinforce class boundaries: certain intellectuals claim that they have
superior artistic sensibilities by deriding the taste of those in society who
they look down on
- In the chapter "Can Science Help?" he's got some interesting stuff about
experiments that have been done to analyse the effect of aesthetic experience
on brain states etc.. But he concludes that science is not able to explain
empirically what's special about art (as opposed to other experiences which
affect the way we feel).
- In "Do the Arts Make Us Better?" he criticises those who claim that
aesthetic experience improves our moral character, citing examples of various
cases where it appears moral character appears not to correlate with
artistic sensibility.
- In November 1943 [Goebbels] altered the German
strategic plan, giving orders that Florence should not be defended. 'Florence
is too beautiful a city to destroy', he insisted. By contrast 'I do not feel
a thing about levelling Kiev, Moscow and Petersburg to the ground...In
comparison with Russia even Poland is a cultured country' [p 144]
- Referring to Bourdieu's research: His conclusion was that taste has
nothing to do with intrinsic aesthetic values in the objects it chooses. It
is a marker of class, reflecting educational level, social origin and economic
power [p118]
- The religion or art makes people worse, because it encourages contempt
for those considered inartistic [p167]
- One of the things that makes literature special is that unlike the
other arts, it can criticize itself [p174]
- I am not suggesting that reading literature makes you more moral...My
claim is different. It is that literature gives you ideas to think with. It
stocks yourmind. It does not indoctrinate, because diversity,
counter-argument, reappraisal and qualification are its essence
[p208]
- When you talk to other readers you soon find that networks of this kind
are commonplace. 'What it reminds me of...', they will say, and you are given
a glimpse of some quite new set of connections....it is precisley because
these networks are arbitrary and personal...that they can play such a vital
role in strengthening our sense of self [p244]
- Poetic ideas do not tell you what the truth is, they make you feel what
it would be like to know it [p246]
- A good dig at conceptual arts is had when he quotes from the catalogue for
an exhibition held in 2004. We are told, for example, that a stack of
plastic recycling boxes 'explores the idea of the self-organizing power of the
city'. A collection of hotel bills and travel tickets 'explores the
relationship between the symbolic and the real'... Their use of 'explores'
could, at best, mean only 'might possibly stir some vague thoughts
about'. [p257]
- Another exhibit... was a maze made out of cotton. It occupied a whole
gallery, and was said to 'evoke the historical suffering of slavery'. In
fact, reading even a short article on the subject of Liverpool and the slave
trade would tell you more about the historical suffering of slavery than a
cotton maze. But reading is comparitively arduous, whereas wandering round a
cotton maze is just the kind of slipshod, superficial substitute for knowledge
and understanding that conceptual art's advocates imagine themselves
struggling against [p258]
Quite entertaining.
Completed : 3-Nov-2006
[nickoh]
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