I'm an elitist. I believe in the elite for all. We're allowed elite
footballers because they're the best at sticking the ball in the net.
We're allowed elite surgeons, and elite scientists. These people pursue
their various careers according to the highest accomplishments and the
results are superb. Scottish sculptor Alexander Stoddard in an interesting interview:
Does the idea of having surgeons, oppress and exclude all the people who are not surgeons, don't want to be surgeons, but may need them at some stage in their life? No.... but in the arts, high-quality achievement is often considered that way, especially within modernism, be it in the visual arts or in music. It explains the populism of concept art (everybody can make it and it is made for anybody without aesthetic 'Bildung') and the state-subsidized nonsense at new music festivals in Europe. It is the idea that skills, which are hard to learn and for which one needs to have a natural talent, are exclusive, denigrating people without such talents, while it is assumed that every person has the right to share the assets of the world, of the community, and its riches, and has the right to have and to exercise his/her creative ideas. It is, basically, a socialist idea, which is entirely justified in material terms but stops at the arts, where having creative ideas is not the end but merely the very beginning of any artistic undertaking. Excellence in whatever profession is exclusive, but it is needed for and dedicated to the entire community, and that also counts for the arts, which require excellent skills like any other endeavor of importance.
Acquiring the necessary skills is the basis of an artist's work, if he/she is serious about it. Artistic quality and expression, as well as the artist's personal signature, cannot exist without it. But in modernism, it is the idea, the creativity of having an idea, that is often enough, and that makes it populist: talent and skills are not necessary for having creative ideas; these are considered authoritarian and elitist.
Alexander Gorlizki is an up-and-coming artist… [whose] work
has been displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Denver
Art Museum and Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, among others, and sells for up
to $10,000. Mr. Gorlizki
lives in New York City. The paintings are done by seven artists who work for
him in Jaipur, India. “I prefer not to be involved in actually painting,” says
Mr. Gorlizki, who adds that it would take him 20 years to develop the skills of his chief Indian
painter, Riyaz Uddin. “It liberates me not being encumbered by the technical
proficiency,” he says. Stan Sesser, “The Art Assembly Line” in The Wall Street Journal (June 3, 2011). www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303745304576357681741418282.
About Me
- The Subterranean Review
- Education: Rotterdam Conservatory, Cambridge University // Activities: composition, writing
I think you've really nailed the issues here. It's a cultural marxist concept to denigrate 'elitism' in art precisely for economic reasons. High art and the rigorous training needed to be done to achieve this (Bildung, you called it?) has historically been fostered through expensive infrastructure. The art academy, the music concert hall and all the expensive instruments are glories of affluence and affordability. That automatically excludes the guy or girl on the street who will have to endure a severe test to see whether he or she meets the criteria for training.
ReplyDeleteThe infrastructure needed for art music is significant and only those who wish to see that nexus destroyed would promulgate the notion that anything can be regarded as art. Ergo, Tracy Emin's "Unmade Bed". It won't do!!