--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> consequence of that is that when artists working on
> a grand scale turn
> to what is now folk art (mass marketed commerical
> art) for insipiration,
> they do not find very fertile soil. Matisse anchored
> a high-art corpus
> on Romanian peasant blouses and french textiles;
> african sculpture
> influenced Giacometti and Brancusi and others;
> Oriental rugs gave Gaugin
> his palette; the folk music of eastern europe gave
> Bartok a new harmonic
> vocabulary....but what can a "classical" artist get
> out of rock and roll?
Our fearless lead... uhm... moderator would argue that we now have a greater variety of styles and generes than ever before. Perhaps, but that claim is difficult to verify. Pre-mass-culture genres are like that tree falling in a forest and nobody being able to hear it anymore - so it seems that it does not make a sound. I think that a more accurate view is that we now KNOW of more genres than we used thanks to the advances in recording and broadcasting technologies.
The adverse effect of corporate-produced "market culture" is not that it is "crowding out" genuine production, but that it sets standards that are hostile to non-commercial production. It is deTocquevillean "tyranny of the majority" if you will.
While the "market" does not force anyobody to abandon his/her own artistic style, it also makes sure that nothing but the style that it sets passes through its broadcasting channels. As a result, the market-defined lowest common denominator becomes the cultural standard, and everything that does not meet the "market test" is relegated to periphereal existence.
Stated diffefrently, the problem is not that "low culture" is more widely spread than the "high culture" - as this has probably always been the case. The problem is that under the "tyranny of the market" the "low culture" becomes the standard bearer, the role that used to be performed by the "high culture."
Wojtek
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