Flex and Spex in Retrospect
Towards a Populist conception of art: Beyond the beating of brows--low, high and middle
Thanks to the work of Tolstoy, it is now possible for me to move forward on an idea that I’d been kicking around for awhile. I had been looking to make the needed distinction between popular art and populist art, and Tolstoy’s communitarian-based critique allows me to do that. By in effect recognizing community to be the fount of individual character, Tolstoy is insisting that individual aesthetic preferences are the derivation of community aesthetic preferences. It is only when community breaks down that individual aesthetic preferences become distinct from those of the community. That breakdown is the result of market and nation-building forces’ penetration of both the public and private spheres of social life. As this occurs, the individual is less influenced by the cultural tradition of his community — its symbols, ideals, and ways of life — and thus is enabled to adopt what he believes to be his own self-wrought aesthetic preferences. Unfortunately, self-wrought aesthetic taste generally ends up being corporate-wrought aesthetic taste. For what might be termed populist culture has been usurped by pseudo-culture (popular culture) — mass-marketed products generated by the culture industries. Art once conceived as the language of tradition is transformed into a medium of exchange-value-driven manipulation — the voice of profits, not prophets. Art becomes another commodity, a tool of instrumental reason, divested of all autonomy.
Populist art would in effect be a retrieval of non-commodified tradition--culture left untrammeled by state and corporate forces. Shoring up those traditions entails a rehabilitation of community, thus allowing tradition to do its work. In doing so, the end result would be the reconstitution of true, community-embodied selves and the delimiting of manipulation. To apply Tolstoyan terminology, one might say that taste would be henceforth not perverted by counterfeit art, and the likelihood of infection enhanced.
Arnheim’s work on perception could also be incorporated into a populist conception of art. As Arnheim has noted, an observer’s wishes and tastes influence their perception (24–25). This is an allusion, I believe, to culture, which would shape those hopes and fears. A fundamental component of culture is religious belief or tradition. Given this, I’d argue that the unspoken perception that preoccupies Arnheim is a religious perception, which according to Tolstoy is relative to a given “age.” One might then conclude that cultural changes produce changes in an individual’s perception. Tolstoy wants to argue, however, that modern art does not reflect the religious perception of its age. While changes have indeed occurred, they have happened at a level that has not destroyed the potentiality of infection. The assumption of change is what produces counterfeit art. Modern art thus lacks sincerity.
Hume, it seems to me, provides the foundational logic for the “anything goes” approach to art. Hume’s “common sense” theory lacks common sense. For common sense assumes a standard that the individual brings into an aesthetic experience. Hume' would like us to believe that we arrive at this experience free of any cultural “baggage,” and thus the experience is the “all” of what we derive. There is no interplay between an already-constituted self and the art form. The experience, according to Hume, informs the self. Since, according to Hume, we all experience art in the same way (provided we speak the same language and are free of deformed sense organs), our standards of appreciation are likely to be the same. What differences we do have are only “humours” and not impediments to the universality that Hume seeks. Ignored are the differences that exist among a people of even the same language. These differences often prove to be substantial, viz. the American Civil War and current culture wars. Tolstoy’s “out” is religious perception that demands standards and submits criteria. Hume' in effect dodges both. Both men, however, are wrong-headed in their attempts to subsume particularity — the very essence of culture. Thus even Tolstoy’s religious perception must be regarded as culturally-specific.
Taylor’s acknowledgment of the tension that exists between the individual subject as artist and the object relations that he lives within is a welcome innoculation against Hume’s empirical approach to art. The art-historical context is given its due. While I would agree with Tolstoy that one need not be an expert to appreciate art — to be infected, as he puts it — understanding our present dilemma does require a study of art history--even of what Tolstoy might refer to as “counterfeit-art history.” The study of art may not necessarily enhance one’s aesthetic experience, but it does abet a situating of the self, as does the study of any aspect of history. This sort of understanding of ourselves and where we are located within our communities may in fact heighten one’s perception, which could then potentially impact one’s appreciation, albeit indirectly.
