Elitist Art
Elitist Art

Elitist Art

I’m listen­ing to CBC Radio One, as usu­al. Q just ended, wherein Jian Ghomeshi was speak­ing to a pro­du­cer of a doc­u­ment­ary about a couple who col­lec­ted art over the years and recently donated the entire col­lec­tion to an art museum. The pro­du­cer said she struggled at first with the mak­ing of the film, because she would ask Herb and Dorothy why they pur­chased a par­tic­u­lar paint­ing, and the response was inev­it­ably, “I liked it. It’s beau­ti­ful.” The film­maker was at first hor­ri­fied that these people could not artic­u­late their reas­ons for lik­ing the art. I got worried.

 

This atti­tude that one must be able to wax pseudo-intel­lec­tu­al about art, or music, or, yes, lit­er­at­ure! per­petu­ates the notion that art is elit­ist. This is the wrong way to think about it! All forms of art should be access­ible to every­one! I can­’t ima­gine an artist, or a musi­cian or a writer claim­ing that they don’t want their mater­i­al to be enjoyed (or pur­chased!) by someone who does not have a vocab­u­lary the size of North Amer­ica to dis­cuss it. It seems to me that artists cre­ate because it’s in their souls. They hope to build an appre­ci­at­ive audi­ence and likely aren’t going to be snob­bish about who is per­mit­ted to make it up.

The film­maker redeemed her­self by com­ing to this con­clu­sion her­self, and recog­nising that part of Herb and Dorothy’s charm is just that: they love art, they love the pieces they chose, and don’t give a damn wheth­er they “fit in” with all the art intellectuals.

I make no apo­logy for the fact that I did­n’t like The Great Gatsby. I did­n’t fin­ish Jonath­an Strange and Mr. Nor­rell because it was BORING. Sal­man Rush­die uses too many damn words such that once I fin­ish a sen­tence I can­’t remem­ber how it began.

There you go. I’m not wrong. I just don’t pre­tend to be any­thing I’m not.