'Good' and 'bad'[or should that be average] art.
I howl and decry standards with the best of them.
But which is better?
A football field covered in the finest cut diamonds or a field covered in gravel with a single beautifull cut diamond in the centre.
which diamond is going to be more noticed and elicit more attention thought etc?
We have [on the most part in the money rich world] a huge amount of Quality 'stuff'.
Endless choice.
Little real appreciation or understanding, things just taken for granted.
Audio equipment for example, 40 years ago a lot of modern average stuff would have been high end.
To decry as average , static or even retrograde modern mass
'artistic' work,products or standards assumes man,s tastes or
sensibilitys are supposed to advance independent of the whole.
I do not think art as an introspective media can necessarily do
this.
As art in the past has often[mostly] been adjunct to religious or
spiritual matters,and it has been those core things that have tempered
or advanced[?] mans nature,with the artistic component to help
focus the mind.
Without some shared language art [high art!] becomes meaningless except to an elite few who are in on the joke[or studied the peculiarities of a particular artistic language].
Hence the common simple[shared] language of mass art.
Driven by a modern consumer ethic and in an attempt to sell more
product this language becomes ever simplified to quickly reach
the target emotions and presto! people are guided into a simplified social emotional culture.
This repression of a complete range of expression I believe can
create the same social unrest that a repressive religion can!
So..those little diamonds in the gravel have more purpose than ever.
But the moment there are more diamonds than gravel,it should
then again be those little plain stones we should aspire to!
Bit simplistic I guess..but there you go..
Setmenu