Do you think that culture lies in having access to books, high art and classical music matters?

@ArishMell My no came from the thought that aboriginal tribes with their clothes, stories, religion and songs have their culture despite that they might not even be able to write and read.

@CrazyMusicLover I agree and their cultures must be respected, but the question specifically questioned the importance of so-called "high art" literature and "classical" (including Classical) music.

I view all as important.

It is a very peculiar question. It would be interesting to know what inspired SW's managers to pose it.

@ArishMell I'm actually surprised this is how people define culture in this day and age because this is a view rather from 19th century in Europe where the Academy was presented as the only institution worthy of being called as cultural which Impressionists and later other art movement disproved by their acclaimed fame. It was early 20th century Modern art movements that brought the idea of seeing so called primitive cultures as worthy of attention and they got directly influenced by their visual language. For example Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were known for collecting African statuettes and they clearly derived inspiration from it. Sure, the reason we know about this is that they eventually became acclaimed by institutions and their art was presented to the masses as worthy through galleries and museums but it was the first step to even admit that art can be valuable even if it doesn't come from the long training and various rules applied that were set by people who have studied the theory around it for centuries. They found value in how different it was from everything we knew in Europe.

So I would say that it's been a long time ago since we agreed that the definition of a culture is based rather on some unique traits than a degree of industrial advancement or institutionalization of art in society. We might throw around words like subculture because it was created outside acclaimed institutions but that doesn't mean that they aren't real culture for people who see subcultures as more valuable than music produced by classically trained musicians because it's something new and unique. What I want to say is that many people don't see institutions as such authority that it could dictate and gatekeep what art is more or less valuable. They have the power to slap a price on it but people can no longer be convinced about the cultural value.

@CrazyMusicLover Interesting point.

I think the problem in the 18-19C was that Europeans generally thought the residents of the America, Africa, the Antopodes etc. of somehow inferior culture by not being so technically advanced. So that rubbed off onto attitudes towards arts.

However, there was awful snobbery by the European commercial art world towards fwellow-Europeans. Even Beethoven was derided by contemporary critics; the Impressionist painters insulted by stick-in-the-mud Academies.

This still happens of course. Many people cannot distinguish between taste and quality, as shown on SW and supermarket "Best Of" compilations what become no more than a list of personal tastes without considering artistic merit. People will like something whether of top-range creative and technical skill or really very sloppy.

So how to even define "High Art". Even that rather strange world does not always know taste from quality: I recall the critic Brian Sewell once dismissing a painting as "It's a pretty picture, but of course it's not art"; but he inhabited circles that laud to the skies anything the Great Outsiders deride as, "My four-year-old could do better!".

The point there being that the more avant-garde the work the less it shows technical ability; and that evidence of ability is what the non-"artist" viewer wants. You don't need like a Renaissance painting to appreciate its artist's skill; but it is hard to see any skill in things like stacks of bricks or untidy beds even if you like them. Especially when the avant-garde's flowery "explanation" is ripe for Private Eye's "Pseuds' Corner" column.

Similarly in music. The really avant-garde work being written and performed now is often totally impenetrable even if you can follow a Classical or Romantic symphony. You don't need like any of those styles to appreciate the earlier two having clear melodies and structures, and needing real skill to perform. It's hard to define much ability in electronic noises and so-called "field recordings".

Yet if the arts did not experiment, they would stagnate. We see this happening even in the, err, "Low??" Arts, from generation to generation in popular music. One reason for the 1950s rise of Rock-&-Roll was that popular music had stagnated in the Big Bands and crooners. Now, some 70 years on from Bill Haley, I am not sure pop music is in similar stasis, with commerce and tastes demanding low ability and originality, and uniformity of sound.


Incidentally, though the true Classical style is of the 18C - 19C, a huge amount of brand-new, high-grade, loosely-called "classical", music is being written now: instrumental or vocal, sacred and secular; solo, chamber, operas, concerti, symphonies.

The orchestral includes film and video-game scores - in the same mould, really, and to the same instrinsic quality, as Mendelssohn's 19C suite for performances of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.



Maybe the fault is the very term "High Arts".

Some art demands great skill to create, perform, even enjoy fully. Indeed, the challenge in understanding it as viewer or listener can be part of the enjoyment.

Some can be thrown together in a few hours, looks rough, unfinished, even celebrating poor artistry. Yet we might still like it purely aesthetically!

In the end it is purely taste. Can we like an ephemeral charts-hit as well as a Wagner opera? Admire an arcane abstract as well as a Rubens or Constable? Read an "airport novel" as well as one by Dickens or Attwood?

And better, admire the indigenous or the Neolithic art as well as "our own"?

Who is to say which is "better" other than on pure technical grounds?