This is the English translation of La menace culturelle
Translated by Paul Leroux
Any remarks should be directed to marhple@yahoo.ca
In this day and age, culture poses a threat to art.
For some time now, this observation has dogged my thoughts. Indeed, it has been an obsession since my chance meeting with an old friend in a park two years ago. He had no doubt had his fill of my talking endlessly about Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, which I had just finished reading after two years of arduous but rewarding effort. He himself is proud of keeping up to date with modern-day creative works. He fulminated against my literary choices of recent years, especially the classics, branding me with that hated epithet, "conservative". In response to my disdain for "popular" culture, he called me an elitist. Finally, when I stood firm in justifying my choices, he labelled me "dogmatic".
How could I defend myself against these serious accusations that I was conservative, elitist, and dogmatic? I could only reply that, these days, culture poses a threat to art and that, given the choice, I prefer artistic elitism to cultural populism.
Following this unexpected and unpleasant encounter, I engaged in a process of reflection that has culminated in this text. Of course, I no longer bear a grudge against my friend. What are we not willing to forgive old friends? I am even grateful to him for unwittingly causing me to embark on such a productive path.
But the relationship between art and culture is not a new concern for me. In 2007, I wrote an article for RG Magazine, Cracher dans la soupe [spitting in the soup], a critical review of an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, devoted to the animated-cartoon artwork produced by the Disney studios. My analysis at that time is entirely in line with my current way of thinking. Here is a lengthy excerpt from my article: [translation]
Apart from indifference and insignificance, culture and art face a number of other threats in the modern era. The elites that shape our cultural life are tempted to resort to popular taste to attract the public's interest, and thus the support of both private patrons and public officials responsible for awarding grants. ...
... The products of entertainment conglomerates, such as Disney, must not be regarded as popular culture simply because they appeal to a wide audience. Like other entertainment conglomerates, Disney carefully studies the market for any project, then allocates considerable budgets for production and promotion, all in the interest of a significant return on investment. Let us be quite clear: We are talking about mass-produced commercial culture, which -- unlike elite culture -- does not encourage creative enjoyment, but rather passive consumption. ... Alas, we must acknowledge the decline of the elite culture (and not elitist culture) of yesteryear, which some once denounced as bourgeois. Elite culture was largely founded on notions of quality, and designed to consider past history, that is, the canon of great works. Elite culture was also linked to popular culture, such as crafts, tales told aloud, and folklore in music and dance. Not so long ago, there was an honest give and take between artistic elites and a public that was not so wealthy and well-educated, but eager for "great art". The forms and content of popular art contributed, in turn, to elite art. This mutual feedback benefited all concerned.
In this text, I will add nothing very new to the substance of the debate. Moreover, recent decades have seen the development of an impressive body of cultural analyses by authors far more talented than myself. In writing this text, I have pursued more modest objectives. I wish to focus my attention on the threat that the surrounding culture poses, not to artists or writers, but to what is conventionally referred to as the public. Another objective is to conceive the possibility of an art of making art our own.
Before I tackle the heart of the matter, however, I must first dwell on the relationships that exist between artistic creation and culture.
A necessary tension
In this day and age, culture poses a threat to art. This statement will come as a surprise to those who regard these two notions – art and culture – if not as synonymous, then at least closely related. Yet, not only are they not synonymous, but rather they refer to conflicting realities. What lies hidden behind these words that appear to be so simple?
1
"You call that art?" "There's no art any more!" How often do we hear visitors to a museum or art gallery make this sort of deprecatory remark about the objects on display?
On the other hand, the fate of the term culture definitely seems to be assured. Now, everything is "culture", people glibly trumpet. Personally, I would be tempted to turn this astonishing paradox the other way around: Art exists, but where is culture to be found?
These two terms cover two different and yet related spheres of activity. Like oil and water, art and culture do not mix. Except…
A degree of vagueness seems to be allowed in speaking of culture, but not so in discussing art. Very often, when a specific phenomenon is described as art, the temptation then arises to define what is intended by this term, as if the viewer, listener or reader would have difficulty making up his or her own mind in this regard. The viewer, listener or reader thus requires a stamp of authenticity to legitimize his or her interest in, or passion for, this specific phenomenon, which has now been decreed to constitute art.
Let us steer clear of an anthropological approach to culture as a nebulous set of beliefs and behaviours shared by entire populations. It would also be wise to abstain from an essentialist, highly metaphysical definition of art, which seeks to establish a clear distinction between what is and is not proper to art. If we pursue this direction, I fear that our definition of art will be tantamount to plunging a scalpel into purulent flesh to save healthy tissue. I prefer to think that we are dealing with two spheres of activity which are of different natures and yet interwoven with each other.
First, let us consider art. This sphere of activity refers to the production of formal units of meaning that we call works of art. First, these units are distinct and independent, even if they remain fragmentary or incomplete. Next, these units are formal because they are associated with a discipline or tradition that has established itself through the course of its history. These disciplines reproduce, modify, and further develop specific artistic practices. Over time, a discipline undergoes changes in the form of simple variations on tradition or, on the contrary, undergoes profound transformations or breaks with tradition. The developing tradition thus never remains identical to its roots. Sometimes, new disciplines or traditions arise as a result of technological innovations, or from the imagination and creativity of artists. Finally, these formal units are meaningful because they transmit or convey a message or an interpretation, through an appeal to the senses, emotional content or an effort of intelligence.
Art exists! Indeed, these treasures manifest themselves to us in innumerable ways, like waves beating ceaselessly upon the shore. They manifest themselves in one or another of the disciplines that have been established from the dawn of time until the present day. It is only for the sake of convenience, or out of laziness, that we label them as art, a term far too narrow to encompass all their riches.
The sphere of activity named art thus refers to the individual or collaborative producer of the embodiment of a necessarily heterogeneous array of strengths and weaknesses, or virtues and vices in the parlance of a bygone age. Imagination, knowledge of a discipline, traditional knowledge, innovation, technical virtuosity, inspiration, flair and chance are added to and combined with cultural conditions and other external circumstances, and all of these are embodied in the initial power of the work. As a sphere of activity, art thus refers to the expression of power, in the sense of potential and conceived as the self-mastery that creative processes require, culminating in a work of art.
Fearing a metaphysical shift of meaning, I hesitate to assign any idealized notion of "humanity" to the concept of power. To describe power as an ideal principle, distinct from what can be observed empirically, would be to deny the diversity of configurations that have shaped a work that is more or less powerful, depending on the circumstances. In a manner of speaking, this power will always manifest itself actively, never virtually. Think of the body, which is always active even when we are asleep.
Whatever intrinsic value a work of art may have, mastery of the forces that result in its achievement is merely the logical consequence of the self-mastery that any person must exhibit to carry out a project. To fashion a work means to project power into it -- literally, to embody it in the work. To project means to transfer power from oneself to another. We may thus consider art to be the production of creation of a work into which power has been projected. By virtue of being circulated within society, the work becomes a cultural product. In short, art is the projection of power.
A few clarifications are in order:
- Art is essentially a sphere of activity pursued by individuals, but nothing precludes their working together in collaboration.
- My reflections are limited mainly to three major art forms: literature (in the broad sense of the word), the composition of music, and the visual arts (from drawing, painting and sculpture, to photography and video filmmaking). I leave aside the interpretive arts of music, theatre and dance. Similarly, I will not dwell on hybrid forms of creation, where art dovetails with industry (architecture, design, fashion and even cinema).
- Art literally projects the power of the creative act into the work. This result of this activity crystallizes this power. I stress, once again, that fragmentary or incomplete works are also works of art.
- Deploying a considerable amount of energy and using the most sophisticated strategies do not, in themselves, guarantee the value of creative effort. The immediate or subsequent success of a work will always entail an element of chance.
- For lack of a better word, I use the conventional term of "creation" to designate artistic activity. I would have preferred to replace it with a term less charged with religious or metaphysical connotations, such as "production". Alas, it was pointed out to me that the latter term has an industrial nuance.
- I will stress one final point. In everyday speech, we designate those who engage in such a practice as artists, writers or musicians. This must be understood as a statement of fact, and not as indicative of any special ontological character.
2
What is culture? When we discuss the concept of art, we require added precision in defining the term. When it comes to defining the concept of culture, we are referred to a nebulous array of anthropological or philosophical notions, encompassing all of a society's beliefs, discourse, practices and behaviours, outside of those attributable to biological characteristics. Thus, the polar opposite of culture is not art but nature, a concept that is even more difficult to grasp. Thus, everything that is not natural to humanity is cultural.
But these excessively broad concepts of culture distract us from the main focus of our concern, which is the relationship between culture and the sphere of activity which we call art. Art is a sphere of productive activity from which works emerge. However, the sphere of cultural activity merely arranges the dissemination and promotion of works of art. Art is reproduced in two stages, since the public is also involved, to use a very ambiguous term to which I shall return. This sphere of activity deals, not with the projection of power as into works of art, but rather the exercise of power (or powers, the conflictive plural of the singular term) over works of art that constitute formal units of meaning. Power over their dissemination through commercial intermediaries, power over their promotion by the various private and public stakeholders involved, and let us not forget the remaining power of the public, which is called upon to "choose" and interpret works of art.
This is the ontological nexus of formal units of meaning: A work of art is the locus into which the artist projects his or her energies, the receptacle of the power projected into it. As soon as a work of art leaves the creator's cocoon and is circulated publicly, it becomes a cultural product and a good on the market. Works of art and cultural products are thus the obverse and reverse sides of the same coin. The development of capitalism -- which has become, not merely the predominant but the sole economic system -- will only accentuate these trends in the 21st century.
This cultural power shares a feature in common with all forms of power, mainly governmental or political: domination over things, beings, nature. Cultural power is exercised through imposition, an avatar of domination which seeks to impose ideas, behaviours and works of art on the population at large. By its very nature, however, imposition differs from "simple" domination by a bureaucracy or a police state. To impose a given work, one must adopt strategies that are arrayed in the colours of freedom. All forms of domination seek the acquiescence or consent, whether partial or as complete as possible, of the subjugated population. In the particular case of cultural power, this acquiescence is of prime importance, since those on whom works are imposed must demand and even avidly seek them. This is the price that must be paid for the success of a cultural endeavour.
Cultural power bears no resemblance to some hazy notion that "everything is culture". Despite intense competition and its characteristic conflicting relationships, this power has many linkages. Political authorities manage their cultural power through departments and councils that promote successful applicants and award them generous grants. Cultural power is also exercised through a whole tightly interwoven network of private institutions: foundations, institutes, patrons. Some still believe that open competition governs the circulation of works that have become market goods. They overlook the persuasiveness of the mass media.
Art is characterized by its fragmentation into disciplines, bodies and individual works, whose flow is intermittent, since the give and take of artistic expression occurs in distinct units. Conversely, thanks to the technical conditions of our era, cultural power (taken as a whole) organizes an almost steady flow of cultural goods. This helps to create a kind of ongoing spectacle dominated by images, symbols, and writing of both an artistic and non-artistic nature.
Mass-media control over the imposition of cultural products goes well beyond mere promotion. A highly sophisticated network now exists between works that have become cultural products, mass-media technology and advertising. We are seeing artistic expression subjected to the needs of the capitalist system.
With its now highly globalized capacities, technology dazzles us as the new god of our societies, which believe in so little else. The architects of this triumph of technology adroitly conceal its nature as the extension of human intelligence, the result of projected power, as in the case of art, but projected here into a product at the service of a power or authority. If we are to think of technology as a form of ‘techno-world’ unto itself, we must no doubt forget this truth.
3
We have just seen that art and culture constitute very different spheres of activity. Artistic creation is due to the efforts of artists, composers and writers to channel the energies within themselves to produce a work. Meanwhile, culture adopts strategies that involve imposition. In the case of art, power is projected into an entity. In the case of culture, we are dealing with power that has many linkages, and seeks to derive benefits and profits from art. Thus, we should not be surprised that art and culture are so frequently in conflict. However, the tension between them cannot in any way be circumvented or simply overcome by favouring one over the other, since their mutual tension is essential to their common growth and development. Rather, let us say that a necessary tension governs their interrelationship.
The dual concepts of power do not exist as pure forms. We know and experience these notions empirically through their manifestations and effects in our lives. The two kinds of power remain interconnected in any type of behaviour, artistic or cultural, and cannot easily be disentangled. Moreover, this necessary tension remains subject to the vicissitudes of society over the course of history.
The twilight of modernity?
This is the paradox of art. Individuals who aspire to devote themselves to their art, in a given discipline that will enable them to express what they feel deep inside themselves, or to give free rein to their imagination, must nevertheless draw inspiration from the common fund of experience. Artists have always been subject to the dictates of the society in which they pursue their craft. But how many times, over the centuries, have artists nevertheless been able to innovate in the face of these imperatives!
For example, we might ask ourselves what kind of relationship might have existed in the Low Middle Ages of Western Europe, when the collective efforts of artists, architects and craftsmen were channeled into the building of Gothic cathedrals, magnificent monuments to legitimize the feudal system and the Church, its only cultural paradigm.
My purpose in referring to this distant era is to underscore the slow development from the old system that governed works of art, whose main characteristic was to stand as monuments to the prestige of a prince or prelate, their main (if not exclusive) public.
For a long time, the artist's status was akin to that of a lackey or a domestic servant. Now slowly, now suddenly, the old system gave way to a new regime, where artists, writers and composers carried out their projects as entrepreneurs. They circulated their works of art, which would also become cultural products, as they must when they are circulated within society, but this time they followed the dominant economic model of being market goods. Beethoven, Balzac, Goya -- three geniuses, to use a term that has virtually disappeared from the vocabulary of contemporary art -- forged the image of the artist as demiurge during the pivotal era from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, the century from the painter's birth in 1746 to the writer's death in 1850.
Recalling these remarkable figures allows me to draw attention to the model of "bourgeois culture" that, for a long time, dominated the relationship between art and culture.
Central to bourgeois culture is the generous but naive idea that writers, painters or composers are free and independent individuals who invest themselves in the creation of a work, following the usual rule of capitalism, then in full flower, and putting a marketable commodity up for sale as a result, for the greater common good.
The development of bourgeois culture had two consequences. On the one hand, it greatly helped to liberate artists and writers from the patronage of aristocrats and the Church, allowing them freedom of form and content in their works. On the other hand, bourgeois culture made art more "democratic", considerably more accessible to well-to-do and well-educated people. In the course of its history, many terrible things no doubt occurred under the cover of bourgeois culture: exploitation of workers, pillage of colonies, moral and sexual hypocrisy. Marxist writers turned "bourgeois culture" into a highly pejorative epithet. Nevertheless, this form of cultural power held sway during the 19th century, before it began a long, inexorable decline. We might even speak of its death and transfiguration. Bourgeois culture retreated from the rising tide of a triumphant populism to the high ground of "good taste".
2
When and under what circumstances did populist culture originate and predominate at the expense of bourgeois culture?
From its zenith just before the outbreak of the First World War, bourgeois culture gradually faded as a cultural power and a worldview. Like many things, from 1914 to 1945, bourgeois culture experienced an unprecedented existential crisis, resulting from an incredible series of circumstances: the First World War, the resulting social and political changes, the Great Depression, the rise of totalitarian regimes, and the Second World War. In 1945, Europe and the entire world sank to a cultural nadir, represented by names that echo down to us still today: Auschwitz, Gulag, Hiroshima.
Europe's brutal totalitarian regimes, both fascist and communist, developed a new model for the relationship between art and culture, founded on recruiting writers, musicians and artists from all disciplines for openly political purposes. In the post-war era, however, the main influence that was to define the new cultural environment came from the United States, which had been spared the devastation of armed conflict on its soil.
With the return of peace, it was understandable that people sought to forget the horrors of the years that had gone before. Over the next two decades, the post-war economic boom allowed the establishment of the affluent society, so highly acclaimed and so roundly criticized, first in North America, then in Europe as it rebuilt itself, and then gradually throughout the rest of the world.
I have heard this expression used by all and sundry since my adolescence during the 1960s. But if we wish to determine precisely when the new mass culture overturned the predominance of bourgeois culture, nothing serves our purpose better than the decreased artistic and cultural significance of the reality associated with the production of industrial goods in general, in favour of the increased significance of the act of consumption.
For lack of a better term, let us call this new mass culture "populist". I say populist and not popular, since this mass culture has nothing to do with artistic forms and ways of living that stem from segments of the population historically excluded from learned or refined artistic creation, and all the more so from cultural power. Entertainment conglomerates, created after the war or developed during the post-war era, such as Disney, saw very clearly that their fortune was no longer to be made by disseminating works by even the most recognized artists, writers and composers, which the general public would gradually find difficult to understand. Success now lay in developing products that could meet the entertainment needs of the now more prosperous masses of the population.
It is not surprising, then, that after more than half a century, workers, work and production are represented almost not at all in art or even the media. They have generally been replaced by the image of consumers with needs to be met. After several decades of de-industrialization and de-localization of the production of goods, and now services, from developed to "emerging" countries (to use a polite euphemism), what remains for us but consumption and its excesses?
3
But the greatest cultural changes occurred during the 1960s. In 2004, in RG Magazine, I published a critical review of an exhibition called Le Village global : les années soixante [Global Village: The 60s,] at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which was devoted to this cultural and artistic phenomenon. Allow me to quote a few excerpts from this article:
... How are we to conceptualize this prodigious decade? For, when we remember any era -- the 1960s are no exception to the rule -- we reconstitute two versions. The first is shaped for us by History, despite conflicting sources and interpretations. The second is shaped by mythology. Countless narratives make up the presence of the historical past in the here and now: personal memories, evidence from literature, strict accounts by historians, analyses by philosophers and essayists. But this history is often accompanied by a storied, mythic past, nurtured neither by personal memories nor by historical research. ... Apart from the conflicting interpretations inherent in the narration of History, two sentiments associated with the making a myth of the past will surely prevent visitors to this exhibition from properly assessing the art and culture of the 1960s. Those who did not experience the 1960s will weave fantasies about the new era they ushered in. Those who did experience the 1960s will always be prone to nostalgia.
To be able to think about the 1960s, like any other past, we must hazard an interpretation that attaches meaning to a human phenomenon. Otherwise, it will be merely a matter of raw data, without a code by which the data can be read. It remains for us to determine which interpretations best and most accurately enable us to understand, in this case, the global village of the 1960s. Having personally experienced the 1960s as a young man, I choose to conceptualize them as a cultural moment. By this, I mean the exceptional encounter between an era, social stakeholders, the force of ideas and emerging cultural forms, overturning beliefs, ways of seeing life and the world, and established patterns.
The 20th century had already experienced a similar cultural moment -- the 1920s. Alas, this incredible stirring of ideas and ways of life came to a sad end, its death throes caused by the Great Depression, the brunt of fascist and communist totalitarian regimes, the Second World War, and finally the Cold War. Thus, without any great difficulty, reality brought the dream crashing back down to earth, and necessity reasserted itself over desire. But dreams and desires resurface now and then, and they were the stuff of the next cultural moment -- the 1960s.
Unlike religious utopias, which surreptitiously seek to make a comeback today, the utopia of the 1960s was of a secular nature. It was no longer a belief in a radiant future, promised on earth by Communists or in heaven by Christians, conceptualized as the result of years of sacrifice and self-denial. Such a concept was the polar opposite of the joyous utopia of young people in the 1960s, who broke away from the spirit of sacrifice of previous generations, and thus were often accused of being ungrateful …
I remember very well how acutely aware we were of the present in those days. We wanted everything, here and now. Looking back, it seems clear to me that we rejected any future that owed too great a debt to a tragic past. Remember that the reinvention of life was the leitmotiv of the decade. People yearned for freedom, in tangible ways, such as the freedom to choose the clothes they wore, their sexuality, their beliefs, their goals in life. This should hardly come as a surprise. Ask anyone who experienced the 1950s how much freedom they had in this regard.
The utopia of the "golden sixties" was structured instead around a new individualism, far removed from the individualism reserved for a few exceptional beings, the heroism of "geniuses" and great men, the notoriety of cursed poets and criminal masterminds. The new brand of individualism was meant for little men such as ourselves, and would be concerned with the dreams and desires of mere mortals. Thus, like so many things, the 1960s made individualism more democratic.
The fate of this cultural moment -- a global moment, let us remember -- thus was not as tragic as that of the 1920s. Fierce repression did of course rear its head in the East and South. We shall never forget the images of Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague in 1968, and hundreds of dead students, their bodies littering the streets of Mexico City , two weeks before the Olympics. However, North America and Western Europe came back down to earth in a less brutal fashion. Artistic creation and aspirations were gradually co-opted for commercial purposes.
As a cultural moment, the 1960s had a lasting impact everywhere, not only on culture but on lifestyles and sexuality, and even in politics. The 1960s were, in a sense, the big bang of a cultural universe. To pursue this cosmic metaphor, this universe continues to expand, even though distance and time are causing its myriads of stars to grow cold. We may even say that we are still living in the 1960s, that is, in the cultural universe that they created.
As proof positive, let us recall the following themes: criticism of the affluent society, the omnipresence of the media, the invasion of advertising, the manipulation of public opinion, fear of scientific and technological discoveries, advocacy of the environment, activism and social involvement, focus on the inner self, the search for meaning in life, mysticism and the discovery of Eastern wisdom, psychedelic trips, often anguished enjoyment of sexual freedom, concern for bodily appearance, feminism and gay liberation ... All of these themes largely developed during that era. Thus, today, we clearly speak the language of the 1960s.
Apart from the tone of the last paragraph, which was perhaps a little too optimistic, I would alter only one aspect of this analysis. In the 1960s, a harmonious relationship largely existed between artists and writers and cultural power. Many musical, artistic or literary works made a deep impact on culture, and are disseminated and promoted as classics.
This may seem strange to us today, but the great art in the beginning of this prodigious decade, the latest avatar of the avant-garde proposals of the early 20th century, were light-years removed from popular taste: serial style in music, abstract art and the emergence of the ‘new novel’. The formalist trend even left its mark on that popular medium, the cinema. Alas, great art introduced these innovations without arousing the enthusiasm of the general public.
On the contrary, the new era was already associating itself with the artistic forms spread by the growing populism: pop art, pop music and cultural journalism. The following decades would reinforce these trends and widen the gap between great art and the general public.
The 1960s marked a high point of grass-roots culture, spearheaded by youth, which transformed society and politics, irreversibly in some respects. These changes extend even to the realm of art, which popular trends could now permeate. Cultural power took advantage of this to renew and rejuvenate itself, and learned a lesson. There was money to be made and prestige to be earned by making art forms more democratic. This became the watchword of both government and industry. As a result, the elite nature of art, conceived as the expression of appropriately trained individuals, has since been decried as elitist. Another legacy of the 1960s is the outlandish notion that we are all artists. From the democratization of art, we have shifted to the utopian democratization of the status of the artist, which is now within everyone's reach. The once clearly defined boundaries between creators and the public are now being erased. However, these lofty principles belie the elite reality of art, whose achievements are always subject to the judgment of an authority.
4
How, then, are we to characterize the art and culture of our time? Traditionally, on the basis of their inspiration and their craft, artists, composers or writers produced works, that is, proposed and submitted them to the judgment of society. Cultural authorities were to assess these proposed works of art based on their own criteria: financial profitability, religious or political prestige. If a proposed work of art met these criteria, cultural authorities imposed it on society or on the market. Art proposes, culture imposes: that is how we might describe the traditional dynamic of the relationship between art and culture.
The current environment, however, is marked by both an adversarial and a collaborative relationship between cultural authorities and producers of art. This relationship is obviously far removed from the traditional and natural mercantile relationship that held sway during the hegemony of bourgeois culture.
Within the framework of populist culture, this relationship is inverted: cultural authorities impose; artists provide the raw material.
In the new populist culture, public and private cultural authorities tend to organize what creators supply, instead of waiting very patiently for creators to come along with the fruit of their uncertain and fluctuating inspiration. The need to ensure financial profitability, and to justify the use of government funds, explains the preference given to works that appeal to the general public.
Apart from public authorities, whose involvement greatly varies depending on the country, cultural authority is based on a tightly interwoven network, in which the mass media, corporations producing goods and services, and the advertising industry, the engine of consumption, are linked closely together. This media-industrial complex has a voracious appetite. It turns on its head the nature of works of art, and the status of the artists who create them.
First, let us briefly examine what this changes where works of art are concerned. In the past, beyond any glory or gain they might thereby derive, artists proposed works of art as a generous gift to others. Any potential profitability was far too little to compensate for the travails and torments of artistic creation. This varied from one creator to another, of course, but the notion of gift remained the basis of artistic activity. How else are we to comprehend the "love's labour's lost" that the creation of a work requires, which is only rarely rewarded by success?
This notion of gift was perfectly in accordance with the intrinsic (and not the market) value of works of art. For art is, above all, a non-necessity. This does not, in any way, prevent art from being used to perform some function. But, in and of itself, I would dare to say that art is a non-necessity and thus, to some degree, will never have any currency. If we sought to restrict art to some specific usefulness, we would take away its ability to speak the language of each and every individual. We would thus reduce art to nothing more than a purveyor of meaning that can be tamed or domesticated.
This is precisely what is happening in the era of populist culture. Works of art are becoming useful as a way of making money or gaining prestige, or they are being used as vectors to promote some object that is often unnecessary. Art is being called upon to justify its existence by becoming useful and profitable, and waste no time about it!
While art was once a non-necessity, bourgeois culture, on the other hand, was highly useful in organizing society, that is, ensuring domination as determined by the circumstances of the moment. What, in our time, is the usefulness of the surrounding culture?
This brings us to the status of the artist. These days, it would be surprising to hear anyone, young or old, echoing the song lyric, J’aurais voulu être un artiste! [I wish I had been an artist.] In an era characterized by the overproduction of cultural products, they should be asking themselves, "Who needs another novel, another song, or some dauber to decorate their living room?" Moreover, intellectual and artistic effort has been greatly devalued in terms of compensation. The few who are successful, and strike it rich, should not cause us to forget the miserable fate that befalls the vast majority of those who, driven by some desire or obsession, undertake a creative project. What remains is resignation to being a useful work, one that finds acceptance within populist culture. Such a work will very likely be encultured art, if you will allow me to use this term. By this adjective, I mean a work that meets the standards of cultural authorities and no longer corresponds, wholly or in part, to the power that the artist should or might have projected into the work. We must, of course, consider individual works to determine the degree to which they have lost their power.
This also varies depending on the discipline. The arts that are likely to have the widest impact -- such as design, architecture, fashion and cinema -- will be subject to stricter control than the more personal arts, such as music, literature and the visual arts. Some visual artists build a highly successful career by inventing for themselves the profile of a celebrity. They themselves become their work. In an era of populist culture, artists seeking prestige and influence are called upon to adopt a suitable pose that will open the floodgates of media attention.
Moreover, there is a People-style trend in the media, which seek to reduce everything to a matter of personality. This greatly contributes to the fashion of making the creator's life the issue of a work, reversing the usual relationship between life and work. The circumstances of a writer's, musician's or artist's life should generally constitute no more than the anecdotal background of a work, which should be the real focus of interest. These days, one wonders if works have not become anecdotal, and the artist's glamorous life has become what he or she really has to offer.
5
I do not know if, in this era which clearly favours culture, we can expect to see a balance restored in the tension between art and culture. If such a balance is restored, I wonder if it will result from the efforts of current artists, many of whom have become purveyors of content for the media machine.
It is astonishing that we still encounter writers, composers or visual artists who resist the siren song of populist culture to any degree.
Oddly enough, art, music and literature continue to flourish and to escape the laws of the market, even though these forms of expression are under the radar of the media -- in short, underground. Moreover, those art forms that require the greatest effort will not entirely be shunted aside. As capitalism gradually becomes void of cultural content other than that which is marketable or related to advertising, limited funding will be provided, generally by governments or private foundations created for tax purposes. Thus, the great art of the past and cutting-edge contemporary art -- that is to say, elite art --will remain accessible to specialized niches or market segments, thanks mainly to the public purse.
But we also should not forget that the dominant cultures of bygone eras will not wholly disappear. We can see vestiges of ancient cultures in the midst of our alleged postmodernity: religious beliefs, various superstitions, millennial fever, ancestor worship and so on.
6
In the final section of this text, I would like to discuss the issue of greatest interest to me: the choices that the public makes. But first, I would briefly like to dwell on the overall problem facing this era, for which populist culture constitutes the context. Are we irreversibly heading toward the twilight of modernity? We feel that we are at the end of a historic process, the modern era that began five hundred years ago, whose ebb and flow, for better or for worse, changed the face of the earth. This era witnessed the modernization of politics and religion, the economy and technology, as well as art and culture. The often cruel progress of capitalism has stripped, clean away, values that were believed to be eternal. But capitalism also left several layers of veneer over what it stripped away, without restoring its lost lustre. This process must continue, this time stripping away populist culture's veneer of pseudo-culture.
Alas, to use another figure of speech, it seems to me that the art and culture of our time, so very necessary for our illumination, are akin to the cosmic phenomenon of a black hole, whose gravitational pull gradually compresses matter more and more, allowing no light to escape. This metaphor can help us to describe a phenomenon familiar to those who live in highly developed countries: an increasingly compact mass of objects and works, which gradually obscures our knowledge of the world in which we live, and of our animal species which rules as lord and master.
At the very least, it seems clear to us that even the art, music and literature of former ages shine less brightly than before in our cultural firmament. But let us not pursue this metaphor too far, lest we lose our way. And now, let us concern ourselves with the other aspect of this text.
The other face of Art
Sometimes, the way a letter is written can be very useful and instructive. For instance, the upper-case letter "A" resembles a mountain peak with two faces. This makes me think of Art, which also has two faces. We have discussed one of its faces, the production of works, at great length above. I shall now concern myself with the other face of art, which is known too summarily as the public.
What is the public? Nothing but a myth. This concept, seemingly innocent or no more than a statement of fact, swallows up individuals within an amorphous mass. Those who produce or disseminate art use this term as a general designation for the end users of the products they market, as if they were selling automobiles or refrigerators. These end users, who together are referred to as the general public, are then grouped into market segments, so that the cultural industry can meet their needs (real or otherwise) by providing information through advertising or publicity. What a strange idea -- that private individuals can become a public! It is as if our intimate selves were torn away from us to serve as targets for sales campaigns. I use "public" in this text for lack of a better term. We must understand the term to mean all end users of works of art, as well as a specific end user (you and me).
If a way of thinking -- based on the marketing strategies prevalent in our society -- is extended to art, it has many negative consequences. The implied premise is that individuals, undifferentiated except as market segments, are (at worst) passive consumers of cultural products, conceived as market goods like any other, such as home delivery of fresh hot pizza.
But what do we demand of art? Could we live without it? Theoretically, we could. Judging by the evidence we see around us, this appears to be the normal state of affairs. For example, one may choose not to read, listen to music, or visit museums and art galleries. On the other hand, we can unhesitatingly rule out the possibility of living without culture. From birth, people are continually subject to a particular form of culture. We have only to think of our first language. Far from being merely a linguistic code, a child's first language also teaches him or her a wide range of customs and practices, a specific way of understanding the world into which the child has had the good or ill fortune to be born.
Can we then choose to live without art? The culture to which we are subjected is nurtured by works of art, and conveys them to us, though often in a form far removed from the creators' intentions. This distortion of meaning is, of course, more frequent for the productions of the past, but it also occurs for more recent works. Whatever the case may be, these days the man in the street (or perhaps we should say "the man in the mall") comes into contact with art without realizing it, like Molière's bourgeois gentleman, who marvelled to learn that he spoke prose.
Current culture faces the following key issue. By disseminating and establishing a hierarchy among works of art (which thus become cultural products and, ergo, market goods), the various cultural authorities also shape the meaning we are to derive from these works as readers, listeners or viewers. In this regard, culture is not simply a vast distribution centre, which leaves it up to consumers to evaluate and choose goods with total freedom.
The meaning of a work is not immediately apparent. Rather, it is subject to the interpretation of the reader, listener or viewer. This is an often complex and uncertain process, in which the significance of a work is determined and its meanings are constructed. This, in short, is the intellectual process whereby the impact of a work may be extended by various means. As soon as it leaves the hands of the artist, writer or composer to be circulated within society, any work becomes a cultural product and is thus subject to a process of appropriation, that is, an act of power, first by the cultural authorities that disseminate the work, and then by the public.
2
There, I have said it. Art must be appropriated. Here, I will focus on the public, each individual who appropriates a work of art, who not only receives but welcomes it. Thus begins a process of appropriation, that is, making a work one's own. This is far from receiving it passively, like a communion wafer on the tongue. The appropriation of a work of art is an act that, in some cases, by extension, might be akin to artistic creation. For example, an act of appropriation will seek to identify what each genre, medium or discipline most specifically requires. When one listens to music, one determines, most of all, the emotions conveyed through sound, making the music more powerful. In the different visual arts, one finds those unexpected sensual delights that these arts are, better than others, able to provide. Writing -- in its various incarnations of poetry, theatre, the novel and the essay -- appeals to our intelligence, as indeed it should. However, all works of art appeal to our intelligence, emotion and sensuality to varying degrees, regardless of the discipline. Richard Wagner's utopian dream of creating a total work of art -- one that merges all of the arts (music, words, visual arts) into a coherent whole -- has long since been abandoned. But, without forcing such a unity, a work of art in a specific discipline and genre (whether a novel, painting or symphony) may appeal to all of our cognitive faculties: intellect, sensuality and emotion combined, albeit to various degrees, for the benefit of the fortunate lover of the arts.
Well beyond the habits encouraged by the cultural trade, this practice of appropriation, which varies in its intensity, occurs in four different ways. I will outline the first three such means briefly below, and then focus on the fourth mode, the one I favour.
The first two ways might be classified as interior modes of appropriation, in the sense that a work is incorporated into a person's inner being.
The first and possibly the most ancient mode of appropriation is the religious mode. Objects, gestures and texts are traditionally regarded as sacred: relics, fetishes, icons, liturgical chant, ritual dance, scripture. This mode of appropriation has borne the brunt of social change. Outward appearances to the contrary, religion has long been in definite decline in our developed societies. The days are long past when the religious spirit dominated the minds of men. In the world of yesteryear, the predominant cultural vector was the feeling of belonging to a clan, a tribe, a homeland or a faith. Belonging is the sign of a society whose authorities seek to establish their absolute power by marginalizing, excluding and even eradicating the Other, those who are different and thus rivals, allowing them no quarter. The feeling of belonging gradually yielded to the search for and affirmation of identity, which unquestionably characterizes our society as the chief cultural vector. These days, sacred art (or what is presented as such) has become bric-à-brac.
The other interior mode of appropriation is that in which works of art are committed to the service of a political or social cause. This may involve an artistic event specifically produced in support of some cause, with the artist's consent, or the promoters of a cause may co-opt the meaning of an existing work. This type of appropriation will vary depending on the circumstances from which it stems.
I will not dwell any further on these modes of appropriation, which I describe as interior, except to point out that, in their case, works are not subject to market demands, nor do they appear to be subject to a marketing process as intense as that which has currently become the norm. The sacred and committed forms of art thus seem to reflect religious or spiritual beliefs, or the needs of social or political activism. As such, they are only partially affected by the current ramping-up of the marketing of art.
This brings me quite naturally to the third mode of appropriation of art that I have identified. Unlike the first two, I designate this as an exterior mode. By this, I mean a mode of appropriation whereby an individual appropriates works as pleasurable objects, from which he or she always remains distant, in the sense of not conceiving them as integral to his or her inner self. Such detachment does not in any way prevent the individual from becoming passionate, for example, about a novel or film. The predominant mode of appropriation of present culture -- entertainment or the decorative arts -- is clearly seen to be exterior in nature. Those who love the products offered by populist culture may, of course, feel a legitimate passion for them. More often than not, however, the object of this enthusiasm will be encultured art, that is, a product commissioned and managed for commercial purposes. The entertainment industry is very effective in its constant ability to provide new products for the various niches and segments of the public, to help them to cope with the boredom of existence.
3
I would like to focus now on a final mode of appropriation, also exterior in nature, which I will designate as aesthetic. As in the case of the mode of appropriation marked by the demand for entertainment, the mode of aesthetic enjoyment does not in any way transform the social and biological reality of the individual who engages therein. While remaining aware that all utopias collapse into ruins, the individual seeks out the various effects of the art that he or she appropriates. For one, this will involve the stimulant that a work provides; for another, ways to compensate for the limitations of existence; for yet another, finally, consolation that makes life more serene. Stimulant, compensation, consolation: these are the effects that aesthetic appropriation has on an individual, provided he or she overcomes the impositions of cultural authorities. The success of aesthetic appropriation will be measured by the ability to rekindle the power projected into a work, that is, the sources of its power. This is what art offers us. Its fecundity allows us to capture and re-embody the effects of the power crystallized in the work. Culture is the realm where power (authority) is exercised, perceived and experienced as an imposition. Art remains the preserve of freedom, whereby the individual may overcome these effects of power (authority) through aesthetic appropriation, which liberates the effects of the power of a work.
By way of example, to allow a better understanding of my conception of works of art as reservoirs of power on which we may draw, let me tell you about my recent re-reading (after twenty years) of Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian, published in 1958. Sitting on my balcony during the dog days of summer, my mind travelled instead to the Roman empire in the second century of the common era. At the end of the novel, in the section very appropriately entitled Patientia, the emperor Hadrian, old, dying and on the threshold of the hereafter, undertakes an examination of conscience, to borrow a concept that nuns used to instill in Catholic children. Contemplating his life, the emperor has this to say to his future successor Marcus Aurelius. (This is the literary device that the author has chosen to use as a vehicle for her story.)
[translation] Life is atrocious; we know this. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, the periods of happiness, the partial progress, the efforts to start over and to ensure continuity, seem to me prodigies that almost compensate for the enormous mass of ills, failures, carelessness and error . (page 313 in the original French, Edition Folio, Gallimard)
Muttering to himself, Hadrian adds a last thought: [translation]
Gentle, fluttering little soul, guest of my body, which was your host, you will descend into those pale, harsh, naked places where you must renounce your former joys. A moment yet, let us gaze together , on those familiar shores, at the things we shall assuredly never see again ... Let us seek to enter death with our eyes open ... (ibid., page 316)
I must confess that I read these deeply felt lines with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. It was not the emperor's historical persona that elicited these tears. A detailed account of him would have left me as cold as stone. Rather, it was -- despite the author's typical modesty and restraint -- the texture of Yourcenar's retelling that fully allowed the emperor's pathos to emerge.
But, much more than this, reading may also be an artistic act when the reader is able to derive all of the marrow from a text. At the end of these apocryphal memoirs, Yourcenar "holds the mirror up to nature". In that mirror, if we but seize the opportunity that we are offered, we may, like Hadrian, contemplate with a lucid mind the approach of our own final moments of life.
This is an effect of the power of this text. Through the accomplished art of its writing, it makes us realize that there are two sacred moments in our lives, our birth and our death, if the sacred indeed exists and is not a comforting illusion. Between these two poles, is our life not an "enormous mass of ills, failures, carelessness and error" -- moments of profanation, to varying degrees?
4
As this text draws to a close, I must now discuss the central element of my argument against culture's threat to art, that is, the threat of populist culture to the aesthetic appropriation of art.
One of the most detrimental characteristics of culture in our era is undoubtedly the fickle nature of opinion and taste. The prevailing ideology of the populist democracy might very well be summarized by the following watchword: "Satisfy all tastes, respect all opinions." This way of thinking rebels against the dictatorship of judgment, that is, the collective effort of preceding generations, which gradually -- and often in conflicting fashion -- established a hierarchy of works, based on appropriate criteria for each artistic discipline. Such a hierarchy, known as a canon, must of course be questioned to reflect changing circumstances or the emergence of new productions. But in a context where the practices of cultural dissemination (through the cinema, television and on-line services) focus on maximizing the profit margin, any artistic production will be turned into a spectacle and an entertainment.
These days, cultural authority is precisely concentrated in a galaxy of media, advertising and marketing firms, and communications enterprises. For a century already, in successive waves that have increased its effectiveness, we have seen the establishment of a "media mindset", whose architects have been able to instill an attitude that predisposes the public to welcome the media's imposition of cultural products.
Another detrimental characteristic of populist culture, greatly encouraged by the existing media, and surely by those of the future, is the disproportionate weight assigned to current artistic creations, at the expense of those of the past. At the very most, the art of the past is a quarry whose lode may be mined and then transformed into a "historical work". Populist culture thus dissolves major works of the past into so many fragments, quotations and excerpts, to be used for sanitized and watered-down productions, made available to a public that, over the years, has ceased to experience the power that authentic works of art can exert.
We are witnessing a lessening of the experience of putting ourselves in another's place, which art makes available to us. Already, thanks precisely to the pre-eminence of the media in our society, the immediate, unmediated and, above all, bodily enjoyment of life is becoming less vigorous, as life becomes filtered through the media.
5
These detrimental characteristics of populist culture pose a threat to aesthetic appropriation, which does not necessarily result in the creation of new works, but nevertheless constitutes a form of art, that is, an artistic practice whose raw material is the individual’s own existence.
The art of appropriating art in this fashion would almost inevitably lead people to rise up against the imposition of the surrounding culture, and to resist and fight back against the dissolution of art in the acid bath of culture. For, these days, culture constantly contributes to the most disorienting of experiences: the breakdown of actual socializing in favour of virtual relationships favoured by the Internet's "social media", and the gradual dissolution of the self, or at least its fragmentation and disunity.
But, most importantly, aesthetic appropriation would strengthen the synthesis that occurs and ceaselessly renews itself, whether consciously or not. This synthesis allows individuals to integrate into a more general synthesis -- their world view or, to use a delightful Spanish equivalent, cosmovisión -- the plastic and visual arts, music or literature that have marked them. This synthesis continues to enable us to derive the effects of power, which I have previously discussed -- to write our life stories with the ink of art on the paper of culture.
By its very dynamic, populist culture continually promises something new, brand new, original and unexpected, but most often serves us warmed-up leftovers. This imprisons us in the eternal present of consuming our own lives. That is why it is important to maintain access to the works of the past, and even the distant past. By appropriating these works, taking them back for our pleasure or our reflection, we will make them current again.
There is nothing more deplorable than labelling the works of the past as "classics". This causes us to venerate and to forget them, like the God in Whom we no longer believe but make a semblance of adoring by visits to empty churches. The divine nature of the works of the past exists in a state of deep sleep -- the power that their creator has embodied in them, and that we can bring back to life.
Let us call this the ability of the art of previous eras to transcend time and history. We might claim that the ancients are our contemporaries, just as we will be the contemporaries of women and men in the year 2200. Obviously, we do not know what benefit these distant descendants might derive from our recent productions, but we have only to think of how we ourselves profit by our familiarity with the classics.
6
It is thus possible for us to "go on a diet" to combat cultural obesity. We must be leery of the countless products of industry, which the media complacently praise to the skies as soon as they are launched. How many of these products then plummet from the false paradise of a brief moment's adulation into the gehenna of oblivion? Would it not be better first to subject new works to the purgatory of time?
For individuals who feel inundated by a plethora of culture, making it impossible to examine things carefully or simply to try to stay abreast, the selection of a limited corpus of past or recent works holds the promise of a freeing-up of vital energy -- of liberation from a life too exposed to the media, bogus communication and the banality of Facebook. What could be better than to commune with art?
In this day and age, culture poses a threat to art.
In conclusion, I would remind my old friend, who launched me on the path of this meditation on art, that the conservatism for which he criticizes me is, in fact, nothing more than the expression of an art, the art of appropriating the treasures of the past. But this does not, in any way, prevent me from being interested in more recent works that may emerge. My so-called elitism is merely a desire to distance myself from the impoverishment of shared experience by cultural authorities. My so-called dogmatism is a desire to order and synthesize what is worthwhile in life, in my life.
As a coda, when I was most deeply immersed in these meditations, I dreamed a most instructive dream. I stood before a door that led to a room of oblong shape, shrouded in darkness. I entered the room but had difficulty seeing ahead of me. The room seemed to be the gateway to infinity. The ceiling was arched and, high above me, I could barely see pictures and paintings, without being able to distinguish their details. Everything remained eternally vague. This art would thus always be inaccessible to me! I felt a frustration and fear that lingered as I awakened. Was it only a dream, or a premonition of my absorption into the well of darkness?
