George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 218  George & Demos' Alleged Failure to Appreciate The Arts.

The Agony In The Car Park by Grayson Perry 2012

George was of the opinion that the only 'culture' of any merit was the stuff appreciated by the middle and above classes. or those exposed to the influence of the Greeks - though where he stood on the cultural sensibility of the working class Greeks is unknown haha, except we know he considered that Italian 'peasants' were innately much better than their British equivalents. This is an odd point of view, for, as in the case of the visual Arts before his own time, as now, many artists came from humble beginnings, yet made stonking work. In fact, during the Renaissance, the production of painting and sculpture was considered as part of the realm of crafts and artisan services, much as wheelwrighting, shepherding, and straw thatching, and so those who practiced it were not generally assumed to be from wealthy, 'aristocratic' beginnings.

Lais of Corinth by Hans Holbein 1526

It was only with the rise of a nouveau riche middle class, with its greater disposable income, and with more bare walls to fill (and more social peers to impress), that Art fell victim to those with snobbish, reactionary tendencies who see things in terms of sorting culture into high and low, good and bad, worthy and vile. In reality, it became a sheep and goats division into worth money or not; only hardcore aficionados realised or admitted we all either like a work of Art, or we don't, we appreciate what it does to us, or we don't, and any other division is largely bullshit. I can admire the work of certain Artists, without liking their work and so never seek it out - Cezanne, for example, leaves me cold, but I admire his craft and value his contribution to Modern Art. However, I would never have a Cezanne print on my wall. But I would have a Tretchikoff to accompany my Flandrin, Warhol, Hockney, Corbet, Rodchenko, Kahlo, Blake, Paul Nash, Chapman Brothers, Van Gogh, Beuys, Turner, Grant Wood and Durer posters. If there was wall space.

Chinese Girl aka The Green Lady
by Vladimir Tretchikoff 1952-3

This insistence that we have to apply a monetary value to Art is a form of cultural fascism, and has reduced most of us to only appreciating Art that is promoted as 'good' by the likes of dealers who price the work, or whoever it is that decides what should be allotted gallery space in the latest blockbuster mega exhibition at the Tate Gallery (or whatever equivalent capital city's main gallery). Sadly, the general public rarely gets to see works that are truly representative of what is 'Art', now, and don't have a say in what shows are mounted at major galleries. Anything challenging or revolutionarily new is frozen out and kept marginalised, for fear it won't put bums on seats and make money for the gallery. This sort of excluded Art is then assumed to be unpopular and that's how the Catch 22 justification for not putting on shows that are mainly about making money comes into play. But how can it become popular if no-one gets to view it? Anyhoo, Art is further commodified by those who choose what sponsorship underpins all large Art shows, ensuring Art becomes nothing more than a master-stroke of advertising copy for Big Corporations. Shame on us all.

Of course, this is another way of separating a group of people into 'them' and 'us' - a necessary thing to do only for those usually insecure types with a need to manifest their social status. To some, having a refined sensibility for Art is dubiously seen as a marker of 'aristocracy' in the sense that George meant it (as in superior to his fellows), but the fact is the producers of Art rarely see themselves as anything like aristocratic. In fact, most Artists want to be democratically available to the widest possible audience, and shudder at the sort of elitism George championed. But George used his affection for Art as a cloak to mask his less than refined credentials - his very humble beginnings could not be exculpated by wealth (he never made much money) and his lack of literary success could not be addressed by his own talents, neither could he demonstrate any superior attributes (not having any!) so the only place he could make a stand was in proclaiming himself to be an Artist, above the ordinary and commonplace, with special talents only a few could appreciate. As it turned out, very few haha. But the ego is a very diligent Jiminy Cricket on our shoulders, and so he couldn't help himself out of this world view, once he was in it. Poor George seems to have missed out on all the modern Art he might have viewed in his travels, presumably because it was radical and challenging and required the viewer to form new patterns of thinking about all things creative - ideas being one of the modern concepts inherent in the new work. George was not one to stick his neck out and pronounce an opinion, for fear of being wrong. But, old masters/mistresses of Art were universally acclaimed and so George just hitched himself to their wagon, knowing his opinion was not expected to be original or intrinsically his own point of view. In fact, to deviate from the received wisdom amounted to cultural heresy, and George would never have sanctioned that.

Boy and Dog by Jean Michel Basquiat 1982

To hijack culture and introduce artificial parameters and boundaries and to make hard and fast rules about what is accepted as good/bad, or valuable/worthless, is a thought crime. I can't think of a single Artist I have ever read about who is made or is making work for the enjoyment of a few rich toffs, no matter how 'cultured' these toffs be. Yes, they want to make a living from Art, but few want to appeal to people who don't genuinely 'get' them and their work. And, as aesthetic sensibility is cultural and not genetic, anyone can be a receptive and appreciative audience for Art, as long as they are exposed to it, and get to see a lot of it - and from an early age - and providing no-one puts them off by criticising their personal preferences. Most ordinary folk don't 'get' Art because no-one has ever talked them through an Artwork, and opened up its possibilities, perhaps because the self-proclaimed 'aristocrats' want to keep it all for themselves.

Portrait of Peter Higgs (he of the boson and shared winner with Francois Englert of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics) by Ken Currie 2008 click

And, so, the bottom line is, you either like Art, or you don't; liking it is not a sign of special skills or uncanny capabilities, inborn nobility or intellectual insights, just as not liking Greek poetry or football or oysters is not a sign you are a numbskull dingbat. Because, what we are really talking about here is TASTE - which means preference.

Laying Down the Law by Sir Edwin Landseer 1840

However there is one group who probably find Art quite a challenge to truly understand, and that is your sociopath. These are the outlaws from society who find it difficult to empathise and identify with their peers, and who have to struggle to make emotional life compute; the sort of people who make unsuccessful petty thieves, occasional wife beaters, some-time adulterers, habitual liars, who are self-centred and secretive and who are generally incapable of holding down a steady job. Hmm... does that remind you of anybody???