[Aiwendil]

Tar-Ancalime wrote:

I am a professional in the performing arts, and I really take issue with the whole idea that there is some discernable boundary between what is art and what is "just" entertainment. I expect the same respect for my craft regardless of the nature of the work I'm performing. I think that when we begin to talk about the "real art" vs. "the stuff that fills the bookshelves," we're setting up a false dichotomy.

I agree wholeheartedly. I asked about such a distinction only because I wondered whether it is part of Althusser's/Fordim's view. I still think we can make a qualitative distinction between what some would call "high" and "low" art (whether that is a good/bad distinction or merely a stylistic, thematic, cultural distinction). But I don't think we ought to make a fundamental distinction or judge them by different standards (as I said in the popularist vs. literati thread).

Lalwende wrote:

That's plainly going too far, but market forces these days all too often prevent the kind of experimentation which in the past has resulted in so much fantastic music!

I think I agree - though it's hard for me to say, since I dislike pretty much all music from after about 1973. Maybe this is why.

Estelyn wrote:

There is one very notable example in music history; J. S. Bach* was considered old-fashioned by his own sons and their generation. Had not Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy rediscovered him many years later and brought his Matthew's Passion to public performance, who knows if we would be familiar with him today?

Ah, but Mendelssohn did rediscover him. Bach is the perfect example, in fact, of the "test of time" theory working - he was vastly underappreciated in his own time but now he has the recognition he deserves. Further, it's quite unlikely that any future change in musical fashion will drive him back into oblivion (though of course there may be smaller scale fluctuations in his popularity).

Insofar as you're saying that without the happy accident of Mendelssohn championing Bach, Bach would be unknown today - I must say that I doubt it. It need not have been Mendelssohn. Given time, I think it was very probable that someone would have rediscovered him. As a matter of fact, he wasn't ever wholly forgotten. Mozart, for example, knew and thought very highly of his work in the 1780s. I would say that it was almost inevitable that, given time, he would achieve the popularity he now enjoys.

The Saucepan Man wrote:

And I thought that you were the master of quantification.

A time to quantify, a time to refrain from quantifying (even though you can).

And must "good art" necessarily reveal some truth as to the human condition (customarily, I avoid the dreaded capital 'T' )?

My answer is a resounding "NO" - and not just because I fear another "canonicity" argument. There are any number of criteria that might define "good art". Personally, I still say that good art is that which is most aesthetically pleasing.

Precisely the point that I was driving at. Isn't it all, ultimately, subjective?

This is exactly the question that I argued in that "Tolkien Template" thread I linked to. And I still think that either the quality of art is not in fact subjective or you get fairly strange results. I don't claim to know, with certainty, which of those options obtains - but I do think that a kind of objectivity can be derived from the relative invariance of the human mind, given a definition like "good art is that which is most aesthetically pleasing". A whole debate could be had of course concerning just how invariant aesthetic pleasure is from mind to mind - but I think that would be beside the point.

On the other hand, if you really want to say that art is subjective you cannot even claim that a Mozart symphony is superior to the noise I banged out of a piano when I was three. Now that's a coherent position, but I suspect that few people really agree with it deep down.

Like tar-ancalime, I would not exclude works such as these from the general definition of "art" simply because they are regarded as “mere entertainment” for the masses.

Another distinction ought to be made (I wish I could have a nickel for every time I've said that). One could (and I would) say that such works (those of Danielle Steele and the like) are in fact "true art", just the same as Tolkien or Joyce or Homer, and yet say that they are "bad art".