On Mon, 21 Nov 2011, Charles Turner wrote:
> Varoufakis' comments connect well to the "war on poverty" components of
> the Great Society, but I'm less clear how his Global Plan makes sense of
> promoting an art/culture policy that's in essence elite.... So how does
> all this stuff connect up in your mind?
I think your fundamental intuitions are entirely right:
1) This was not about spreading the wealth
2) It was much more about a nouveau world ruling class decking itself out in what it considered the appropriate high cultural trappings
3) It was more complicated than that.
(3) seems to be he part you are most interested in; it could of course go on forever; and from the sound of things, you probably know as much about it as anyone.
But before saying a few words about that, I think we should note in passing that (1) severs it from Varoufakis's argument. It was, in part, a side effect of America being suddenly much richer and more powerful. But it wasn't about finding creative solutions to the the economic recycling problems that derived therefrom, which is his beat.
As for the "more complicated" part, you probably know the main things that make the US distinctive on the culture front in this period:
1) A 200 year old case of cultural cringe, i.e., the idea that all high art came from Europe. Which leads simultanously to two sort of opposite desires: to show that there is distinctively American art & that it is more vital; and yet at the same time to show that we are fully capable of appreciating the European heritage.
Showing off Warhol at the World's Fair plays to the first; honoring Malraux and Casals (and behind them the Mona Lisa and Bach) speaks to the second.
The first (the assertion that there was an American art that was original and NEW) had been around at least since James Fennimore Cooper and Washington Irving. But as I'm sure you knew, it really took off in the 1940s and 1950s with the idea that the world's capital center of modern art had moved from Paris to New York (to be near the new world centers of finance and military power. Pop art, minimalism, conceptual art etc. in the 1960s just continued that show off, self satisfied trend. Mass market magazines celebrated it because it was a sign of how great America was in everything.
2) A strong belief on the part of the educated elite that the masses could and would embrace high culture if it was made affordable and accessable -- and that affordability and accessibility could be achieved without sacrificing the qualities that made it high culture.
The historical roots of this are wide and fascinating and kind of unique to the US (at least when compared with Europe). But I think it's a fair assertion that the feeling that this was possible, and the feeling that it was necessary, crested in the 1950s with the rise of television and the rise of the Mass Culture thesis. And it was widely shared across the political spectrum.
This is what is primarily behind the NEA/NEH stuff: the attempt to raise the tone of the people.
But it dovetails perfectly with the "America is a new and unique and vital and especially modern power in arts;" and with the "rising power seeks suitable cultural furnishings;" and with the flush of cash: the rising power would show the world that it could have the most widely cultivated and educated population in the world. That it wasn't merely goods that capitalism produced but enlightenment.
And lastly, to go back to your examples, Lenny Bernstein was the guy where all of these threads met.
Michael