| Title | : | What Good Are the Arts? |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 019530554X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780195305548 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2005 |
read" (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post).
What Good Are the Arts? Reviews
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Am I really a better person for having wandered around art museums, and having sat through symphonies, and having read a few classics? Does spending an afternoon staring at Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" give me character and depth? Or does it just make me feel superior to the people who prefer Archie comics and video games?
John Carey asks some really interesting questions. I don't agree with everything he says, but I like the questions. Why haven't more writers addressed this topic? I'd recommend this book to anyone wanting to challenge their perceptions about art. -
Zeki bir adam olduğu belli John Carey 'nin okurken yer yer sorduğu sorular ile çok zevk aldığım, verdiği alıntıları ve kitapları araştırma ihtiyacı duyduğum dolayısıyla maalesef bahsettiği bir çok şeyi bilmediğim sanat ile ilgili görüşlerin fikirlerin olduğu kitap.
Sanatla ilgili bir sürü bilgi ve hatırlatma içeren bir eser yazmış ama tek hatası bana göre konuyu çok dağıtıyor anlatmaya çalışırken ve kısmen beni sıktı okurken. Çok fazla detaylara inerek alakasız kitaplardan alıntılar ile konudan iyice uzaklaşarak kafa karıştıran ve okuma zevkini azaltan bir üslup tercih etmiş.. Gene de güzel referanslar ile bir çok şey öğreten okuduğuma memnun olduğum çalışma..
Vakıfbank Yayınlarına da değinmeden olmaz, çok kaliteli baskısı, sayfa kalitesi kapak tasarımı ve seçtikleri kitaplar ile çok başarılı işler yapıyor kutlamak takdir etmek lazım..
**
" Avustralyalı eleştirmen Robert Hughes, eşitsizlik ve sosyal adaletsizlik yüzünden deliren Ressam Van Gogh'un acı dolu tanıklığının ifadesini yansıtan bir tablosunu bir milyonerin misafir odasında asılı görmenin insanda tiksinti yarattığı söylerken genel bir rahatsızlığı dillendirmektedir. "
**
" Adam Philips in Houdini's box kitabında öne sürdüğü gbi, hepimiz kaçan sanatçılarız çünkü istediğimiz hayat istemediğimiz şeylerden kaçmaya bağlıdır. " -
This is a thought provoking book. It's the kind of book that I would recommend to a book club if I was in one and then we would have one of the best discussions we've had. I would encourage anyone who works in the arts or consumes high quantities of both "high" culture and "low" culture to read this. If you think that looking at a Monet is a fundamentally more valuable experience than watching an episode of Jersey Shore, prepare to have a debate with this man. I gave it four stars instead of five because certain points are elaborated on more than was necessary. Now I have to go write a paper about whether or not this book should change our approach to arts policy.
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Super interesting book about the importance of art and literature and how it benefits mankind. I really like John Carey’s writing style and have read a few of his books now.
Here are the best bits from the book:
The most excellent works of every art, the most noble productions of genius, Schopenhauer admonishes, must always remain sealed books to the dull majority of men, inaccessible to them, separated from them by a wide gulf, just as the society of princes is inaccessible to the common people.
The Catholic critic Jacques Maritain predicts that the Christian God will burn the Parthenon and Chartres cathedral and the Sistine Chapel and the Mass in C on the last day, so as to demonstrate that we should not seek eternal life in art. That is hardly the behaviour of an art-lover, and the biblical God's prohibition of all graven images and likenesses, recorded in Exodus 20:4, suggests a marked antipathy to the visual arts.
Whatever the particular circumstances, the argument of the high-art champions will be reducible to something like this: The experience I get when I look at a Rembrandt or listen to Mozart is more valuable than the experience you get when you look at or listen to whatever kitsch or sentimental outpourings you get pleasure from. The logical objection to this argument is that we have no means of knowing the inner experience of other people, and therefore no means of judging the kind of pleasure they get from whatever happens to give them pleasure. A very little self-examination will tell us that the sources of our own pleasures and preferences are by no means apparent, even to us. In each of us there is an undiscovered country. Writers have known this, and have been telling us about it, for a long time. Here, for example, is Virginia Woolf. 'We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each, a snowfield even when the print of birds’ feet is unknown.
Art is "enchantment', and true artists have the right of spells'. This is not, it seems, mere whimsy on Winterson's part. Her belief that she is surrounded by magical presences strikes the ordinary observer as barely sane. 'I move gingerly', she confides, 'around the paintings I own because I know that they are looking at me as closely as 1 am looking at them.
Anthropological evidence suggests that romantic love is virtually universal across cultures. In evolutionary terms it binds hominid parents and so increases the chance of offspring survival. What is new is not its existence but its enormous prominence in popular art, which functions to counteract modern solitude.
It is not necessary to descend to the level of the people and fabricate some special, rougher goods for them. If we are to talk about popular literature at all, it doesn't mean there should be popular literature on the one hand and high' on the other. I should like high literature to become popular. As Adam Phillips has argued in his book Houdini's Box, we are all escape artists, since the lives we want depend on our avoiding what we do not want. In this sense escapism is fundamental to our sense of ourselves, and to condemn it reveals curious priorities.
as the psychologist William James conceded when he wrote, of alcohol, that to the poor and unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and literature.
He asserts, for example, that film is such a rapid Medium that it leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience'.
Another evil of print-culture, as McLuhan saw it, was that it forced the whole of experience into a linear, standardized form. Whereas tribal cultures, innocent of literacy, had nurtured non-linear thought - metaphorical, mythic, imaginative - the tyranny of print, and the modes of attention inseparable from it, had paved the way to specialization, regimentation, mass production, nationalism and modern militarism.
modern life lacks authenticity. Bombarded with images by the media, we are unsure of our own existence. Videos, home movies, and the simulacra of television have produced a visceral feeling of identity-lack, of being a mere phantom, an 'android or replicant, rather than a real person.
Perhaps. The hijackers' motives are undiscoverable. But if, as Hartman supposes, they were driven by a quest for authenticity, for the spiritual and sacred, akin to that which he associates with high art, then they could also illustrate the disregard or contempt for other and lower' people, for their lives and meanings that high art fosters.
Van Gogh's sunflowers or Monet's water-lilies. They may be the equivalent 'in colour-space'
of the stick with the three stripes, in that they excite the visual neurons that represent colour memories of those flowers even more effectively than a real sunflower or water-lily might.
Other biologists have associated symmetry with sexual selection in a wide variety of species. The female sCorpion fly prefers males with symmetrical wings; the female barn swallow prefers males with a symmetrical wishbone pattern of feathers on their tails. Such preferences may, it is thought, have evolutionary value, since symmetry may be a sign that the male's immune system is resistant to parasites that would cause uneven growth.
The belief that art can make people better goes back to classical times. Aristotle taught that music was character-forming and should be introduced into the education of the young. In listening to music, he maintained, 'our souls undergo a change.
It arouses 'moral qualities'. However, it must be the right sort of music. The wrong sort of music, particularly that of the flute, which Aristotle considered 'too exciting, appeals to 'mechanics, labourers, and the like', as well as to slaves and children, and its influence is 'vulgarizing.
Plato, of course, thought that the arts make people worse.
Similarly absurd, Tolstoy insists, is the claim that Western art is real and 'true and the source of the 'highest spiritual enjoyment'. Two thirds of the human race (all the people of Asia and Africa) live and die knowing nothing of this sole and supreme art. And even in our Christian society hardly one per cent of the people make use of this art.
Half the world, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than $2 a day, and more than a billion live in what the UN classifies as absolute poverty. 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 2 billion no access to electricity; 3 billion no access to sanitation. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read or write. Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are chronically undernourished, and each year more than the entire population of Sweden, between 13 and 18 million, mostly children, die of starvation or the side-effects of malnutrition. Meanwhile the Western nations live in unprecedented luxury. The richest 20 per cent of the population of the developed countries consumes 86 per cent of the world's goods. Shopping for inessentials on which to off-load surplus wealth is a major Western occupation, as are programmes for countering the effects of over-eating. Annual expenditure on alcoholic drinks in Europe is $1o5 billion, whereas global expenditure on providing basic health and nutrition for the world's poorest is $13 billion.
Art as psychological therapy seems doubtful, then, and art as an improver of personality and morals appears even less promising. Gardner's suggestion that artistic proficiency based on body-thinking engenders a capacity for interpersonal relations looks susceptible to objective testing. But where tests have been attempted they do not yield encouraging results. He cites a study, published in Genetic Psychology Monographs, which reports on a psychological assessment of actors and others working in the theatrical profession. It concludes that such people have difficulty establishing normal family ties, and undergo a higher-than-average proportion of divorces. Also, they tend to be insensitive to other people's feelings, treating them as objects to be amused, teased or manipulated.
A crucial difference between them, so Lewis-Williams and some other anthropologists believe, was that the Neanderthals, because of the neurological structure of their brains, could not form or remember mental images, whereas the new men could.
Berlin Philharmonic in the closing days of the war. There was, apparently, an understanding that when the programme included Bruckner's Fourth Symphony, the final phase of the Third Reich would have come. The concert of 13 April included it, and as the audience left after the performance uniformed members of Hitler Youth at the exits handed out free cyanide capsules.
But, Dissanayake regrets,'our marvellous, long-evolved, specialized hands, which can weave baskets, fashion arrows, or mould vessels, are now chiefly used for pressing buttons on appliances and computer keyboards. This means that we lose the sense of competence for life that making and handling things gives. She cites Neil Postman's book Technopoly: The Sterender of Culture to Technology, which estimates that between the age of three and eighteen the average young American watches half a million TV commercials.
Bacon had said that men without goodness were 'vermin'.
Literature does not make you a better person, though it may help you to criticize what you are. But it enlarges your mind, and it gives you thoughts, words and rhythms that will last you for life. -
This book raised a lot of interesting views about art and aesthetics, but while the author was very keen on mocking other people's perspectives, he didn't take the same critical scrutiny to his own views. I'm glad I read it, but it still left me wanting a book whose definitions were not so broad they were meaningless, or claims that are painfully insulting to any art which isn't literature.
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An effective (& very amusing) read which leaves one with a clear head & confidence enough to see through the posturings about "art"--whether by "artists" or commentators. It cuts through the language used in the "art" industry, & makes stunningly simple & true points about what it's all about & how one can think about it.
Ever thought you're not qualified to think/write/speak publicly about "art"? Fear not! This book burns away the obfuscation with a flame-thrower & you'll be all the better for it.
Never quaver before critics & their multi-syllabic monographs again! You'll be able to spot the emperor's new clothes for yourself, & dismiss any high-handed "art" language (which normally uses words such as "investigate", "interrogate", "explore", "manufacture" "contemplate" etc to talk about, say, some pile of bricks in the middle of an "art" gallery floor).
Thanks John Carey! You've done the world a favour & none of us can thank you enough. -
When I’ve first put my hand on John Carey’s book What Good are the Arts?, I couldn’t dare asking why and how his views resulted in much controversy among art scholars in UK and Europe in general. At a glimpse, his views seemed so British-systemized to me, but when I started learning more about British culture I realized it was more than just that. I personally got more interested in Carey’s book when I discussed its contents with my teachers and colleagues. It’s inevitable to admit that Carey was funny, stimulating and witty throughout the whole book. Yet, he contradicted himself in few occasions. In his book, he pointed out literature as a good art and exemplified good art in prisoner’s moral benefit from reading Shakespeare. Before that, he made us believe that ‘good’ art is not necessarily ‘high’ and he concluded that it could not make us better. Carey, here, demolishes distinctions between 'high' and 'low' art, which he argues have their origins in social snobbery rather than aesthetic purism. Irrelatively but almost a fact, his cultural views introduced him as a New Labour apparatchik –or at least that’s how it sounded like.
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I badly wanted to like this book. I bought it because Nick Hornby raved about it in The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. I thought it was going to knock down all the phoneyness and bullshit, which plagues the arts. I was sure I would love it. But, I got halfway through and gave up because that was enough to convince me that he doesn't know what he's talking about. His definition of a work of art is 'anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art'. In other words anything, and correspondingly, nothing. If he were just condemning elitism that would be great, but condemning everything is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I prefer the approach taken by Robert Pirsig, who says we all agree that some things have value, we just don't agree on what those things are. Not exactly an answer, but an interesting place to start.
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This is the third book I've read from John Carey--I'm glad I waited for it, since his previous books built some trust in me that carried me through some potential difficulties. Carey does delight in dismantling. Imagine someone who delights in disassembling furniture rather than building it. And he uses phrases like "the precision of uncooked spaghetti," which make me chuckle.
One of Carey's most resonant points for me is that modernist art is elitist.
The Intellectuals and the Masses fleshed this out exceedingly well, but Carey carries the argument to art rather than literature here. He mentions the decline of painting, poetry, origami, and other forms of art with the rise of popular forms of art, like music and drama. What Good Are the Arts? was published in 2006, and I'd be interested to see some new commentary in our social-media driven world. Personally, I follow a lot of visual artists (digital and physical media) and poets on social media, and many of them are able to make livings through their platforms. We're in a different age from fourteen years ago. It's literally possible to provide for yourself by making videos of yourself doing what you love. The ephemerality of these professions notwithstanding, we're in a different place with art than we were in 2006.
Carey rings a death knell for "high" vs. "low" art, with the rather Lewisian argument that one's feelings cannot be considered more valuable than another's. Thus, a wealthy person's admiration for Van Gogh is not worth more than an average person's admiration for Bill Watterson. And what is art? "If you think it is art, then it is." While strikingly reminiscent of C. S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism, Carey does not reference Lewis here, despite his shared Oxonian credentials and overlap with Lewis. His pertinent example is Shakespeare's transition from low to high art over time. In his time, Shakespeare played for the masses and the royal court, but in the 17th century was considered lowbrow, but by the 19th century achieved his status as an undisputed great writer, renowned among speakers and readers of English. Who's to say whether Shakespeare is "high" or "low" art? For Carey, the only ones who need "high" and "low" art are the self-titled "intellectuals" who must feel superior to the "masses." In America, at least, I've heard some "lowbrow" people claim the title proudly, but in a sort of reverse-superiority complex way, saying that their preferences for "low" art make them superior to those who prefer "high" art.
Chapter 4, "Do the Arts Make Us Better?," makes the rather obvious argument that we can't prove that art makes us better people. Carey leans heavily on subjectivity--exposure to art doesn't mean an increase in morality as a rule. I think of all the class trips I've seen in art museums, where teachers still have to admonish their students, despite the presence of a nearby Greek sculpture. This chapter stirred up the most cognitive dissonance in me, because Carey and I operate from very different worldviews. He, an acknowledged secularist, simply has a different approach to morality, understanding oneself, and interacting with the world than I do. However, his point that exposure to art itself does not improve morality is one with which I agree. There is nothing intrinsic in exposure that makes one better. Art certainly can, and many times does, make one a better person. But it doesn't as a rule.
Carey's argument really shines in the final two chapters when he deals with literature, since he is a literary scholar. What Good Are the Arts? is a book, and Carey argues that literature is the only art that reasons. While music and visual art can respond and parody and provoke, those mediums cannot reason unless they borrow words from literature. Art criticism is usually disseminated as text, not visual art. He bears quoting at length:
"Literature gives you ideas to think with. It stocks your mind. It does not indoctrinate, because diversity, counter-argument, reappraisal and qualification are its essence. But it supplies the materials for thought. Also, because it is the only art capable of criticism, it encourages questioning, and self-questioning." (208)
Carey looks closely at the successes and failures of art used in prisons and therapies. Literature had a rather better success rate in the examples he cites than visual art. In prisons at least, part of this is due to the accessibility of literature vs. painting on the outside for those released from their sentences. Again, I think we're in a different world now. Art supplies are readily available, along with platforms for displaying and selling art. I can easily imagine an ex-con sharing his or her artwork online and going viral. Yet, Carey's point is well-taken. Though he is British and thus has a very different government and national history to contend with, I do agree that the arts should be better supported in public education and society at large. Yet, as an American, I've experienced art and culture in a different way. In high school and college, I realized that my first introduction to things like the opera Carmen and Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis came from the PBS show Arthur. "High" art introduced through "low" art. Who's to say what's what? Likes, dislikes, and taste are personal--subjective--and I'd rather see communities spring up around shared appreciations than rigid structures about what's "high" art and what's not.
"Literature does not make you a better person, though it may help you to criticize what you are. But it enlarges your mind, and it gives you thoughts, words and rhythms that will last you for life." (260) -
I'm not sure what to say about this. I mostly agree with the author on his first thesis, that art is art because someone thinks it's art and there are no value judgments to be made because of that fact. But his second thesis, I don't know. He certainly lays out a case that literature, after all that, is in fact the superior art. He's not saying WHICH literature is superior, simply that reading/writing holds different, better meaning than art or music. I suppose that might be the case. But I'm not convinced.
This is dense reading, though the book is short, so be warned, if you do decide to pick it up. -
After loving the first part of this book, in which Carey carefully examines the evidence behind the arts in general, I found myself totally hating the second party, in which Carey critical inquiry disintegrates into a rather boring interpretation of British literature. In his blind love and respect for classical literature, he falls prey to the exact vices that he critiques with such wit in other authors. He blindly presents his own opinions and elitist value judgements about literature as fact. What a disappointment.
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Best quote from the book (in my lit. major opinion):
"..My claim is different. It is that literature gives you ideas to think with. It stocks your mind. It does not indoctrinate, because diversity, counter-argument, reappraisal and qualification are its essence. But it supplies the materials for thought. Also , because it is the only art capable of criticism, it encourages questioning, and self-questioning." -
I'm abandoning this one because I feel like I've gotten his point and don't need it reiterated for the last half of the book. The first chapter is delightful and essential, arguing that traditional categorizations of high and low art or simply art and not-art are meaningless. Art is in the eye of the beholder and discussions of the relative value of various art is hooey. Apparently he spends the last part of the book talking about the importance of literature. But I'm done now.
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Dispels the self-righteous delusions about the power of Art an excellent book just for the critical thinking involved even if you don't have to agree with the author.
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Because I'm a classical pianist, there are certain elements of Carey's argument that I disagree with by default. But he does a very good job of defending it. I'll give him that.
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I have read The Unexpected Professor by John Carey and found him to be an excellent writer and insightful philosopher. After enjoying this first book by Carey, I searched for more of his work and found this title.
This book strikes me as an essay or even the result of a talk given by Carey. Carey’s thoughts are perceptive, and he backs up his thoughts with quotations from many other philosophers. He then presents his views either in agreement or opposition to their beliefs. If he were building a court case, this would be an effective approach, but in this essay, it was a little tedious. This reader accepted his viewpoint regarding the Arts yet found the combat with other philosophies beyond just making his point.
He starts by trying to define Art and concludes that it is very subjective and the appreciation of what is defined as Art is a personal decision. He brings the reader to the conclusion that Art is all around us and not just in a museum. His point is that the knowledge and appreciation of the Arts does not make a person more sophisticated, a better person or even a more moral person. He debunks all pretension that the Arts are reserved for the intellectually superior. The clarity of these points is easy to follow and appreciate, yet at times he goes deeper with his opinion about the irrational thoughts of writers and philosophers about the Arts.
Section two of his essay on the Arts states that literature is the highest standard in the field of the Arts. His point is that reading literature is transformative and opens the mind to broad concepts about life. Literature plants ideas in the mind that expand one’s critical thinking and therefore does make for a better person who thinks and evaluates the issues of life in a more rational way. He contrasts the works of other writers and their beliefs and values to illustrate his point on the value of literature. This reader found his comments easier to follow and appreciate and less abstract than his commentary on the Art of paintings and sculpture. His comments made this reader ponder how Dickens or Jane Austin or any other writer provides his characters with personalities that reflect their own opinions and taste, and I am sure this will have a positive influence on my readings in the future.
In this very interesting section, Carey introduced Samuel Johnsons. Arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history and it has been claimed that he is the one truly great critic of English literature. Carey's telling us about "The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia" was captivating. At the age of fifty, Johnson wrote the piece in only one week to help pay the costs of his mother's funeral. Rasselas, the fourth son of the King of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia), is shut up in a beautiful valley called The Happy Valley, "till the order of succession should call him to the throne". Rasselas grows weary of the factitious entertainments of the place and, after much brooding, escapes by digging under the wall of the valley. He is to see the world and search for happiness. After a sojourn in Egypt, where he encounters various classes of society and undergoes a few adventures, he perceived the futility of his search and returns to Abyssinia because none of his hopes for happiness are achieved, profound! Carey tells us that the ageing Johnson was reflecting on his lost youth in the character of Rasselas. In Johnson’s Rasselas, we feel Johnson’s melancholy and agree that happiness is a relative term and absolute happiness is not achievable. Rasselas has also been viewed as a reflection of Johnson's melancholia projected on to the wider world, particularly at the time of his mother's death. Some have interpreted the work as an expression of Johnson's Christian beliefs, arguing that the work expresses the impossibility of finding happiness in life on earth, and asks the reader to look to God for ultimate satisfaction. The Johnson essay makes Carey’s point of Literature having an impact on our brains by making us think about abstract thoughts like - happiness. It is of interest to me that Carey quotes people like the moralist Johnson who developed his own moral code by reading the literature that came before him. It says to me that western philosophy while drawing on the past even back as far as the Greeks continues to build a moral code and state of mind based on contributions to human thought by the likes of current day literature.
This book was thought provoking and caused me to look at Art in a different way; John Carey achieved his objective! So now if I could only attend one of his classes in literature or philosophy at Oxford, I would be quite happy. -
`The artistic practices of the human race throughout most of its history were communal and practical. The characteristics of popular or mass art that seem most objectionable to its high-art critics – violence, sensationalism, escapism, an obsession with romantic love, minister to human needs inherited from our remote ancestors over hundreds of thousands of years. Interests such as fashion, gardening and football can be shown to meet these needs in ways that high art does not.`
`Language is a relatively recent human acquisition and belongs to a much younger part of the brain. This may explain why linguistic description is a laborious matter. Whereas visually, we can take in an enormous amount of information in a fraction of a second`. – Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain by Semir Zeki.
To my mind, the issue of language is a major hindrance when attempting to discuss art or to determine what is and what is not a work of art. And as the author says, in the end it comes down to whether you as an individual consider something a work of art or not which is important, and many of us may not be able to make such a judgement. Consensus is a word Carey uses in the appendix. Where is the consensus as to what is a work of art? You might personally like a piece of work but does that mean it is a work of art? Perhaps it is the wrong question. A question which is impossible to answer. A substitution of the word Art with Creative seems to sit better and may be less demanding and less loaded with expectation or prejudice.
`We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each, a snowfield where even the print of birds` feet is unknown.` - Virginia Woolf
In the latter half of the book, Carey talks about literature and makes his case that it is through this medium that we may feed our imaginations to the highest degree. My own feeling is that, again, the language is getting in the way here. What is art? Should literature be called art? The attempts at categorisation or labelling is part of the problem. Carey talks of the indistinctness of creative literature and how the reader has to impart his or her own personal interpretation to a piece.
`How we read, and how we give meanings to the indistinctness of what we read, is affected by what we have read in the past. Our past reading becomes part of our imagination, and that is what we read with. Since every reader`s record of reading is different, this means that every reader brings a new imagination to each book or poem. It also means that every reader makes new connections between texts and puts together, in the course of time, personal networks of association.`
This idea appeals to me. The idea that everyone has a different psychological response to a given piece of literature is fascinating and reinforces the notion that we are all unique human beings.
One thing I like about John Carey, is that he mentions numerous other books in his work. This provides a welcome fount of new material to read. -
This spicy and provocative book is two-thirds lecture series with the final third a disquisition on the value of literature. The lectures are by far and away the better part of the book although the concluding two essays on literature are well worth reading. Carey asks four questions and gives (in my view) common-sense answers in an entertaining and pointed way. To that old chestnut, "What is a work of art?" Carey responds anything that anyone has ever declared to be a work of art. Which is admirably democratic and will cut short many a wine-fuelled late night undergraduate discussion. "Is 'high' art superior?" - No, because it is too subjective a subject to form such a judgement upon. "Can science help?" - Not really, for the reason just given. "Do the arts make us better?" - self-evidently not. "Can art be a religion?" - no, and it's dangerous when it seems to become one. In arguing his points Carey makes good use of a range of stimulating sources and anecdotes that challenges you even if you agree with the conclusions that he reaches.
The final two chapters are a bit more patchy. His argument that literature is the greatest of the arts relies on the ambiguity that language contains within itself forcing our imagination to work harder as a result. Again, I agree with him - just - although it would have been interesting had he explored mixed media such as films. I thought that some of his readings of his chosen texts were a bit too clever-clever and created ambiguity where there was none. For instance, his reading of Clarence's dream in Richard III where a shadow is described as like an angel does not seem to me to be transgressing metaphorical boundaries as shadow in this instant is simply another word for shade/ghost and therefore does not have to be grey and featureless (see Banquo's gory locks in MacBeth). A ghost looking angelic doesn't pose problems of interpretation for me. However Carey has got in before me because, he points out, that anyone who disagrees with him proves him point - literature is ambiguous and therefore encounters many different readings. -
The title is inappropriate. It should read "What Good Is Being a Snob?"
Carey spends most each chapter attempting to answer the question in that chapter's title. For example, Chapter 1 "What Is Art?" is answered with (I'm paraphrasing) "anything that has meaning to an individual".
Sure, I can get behind that.
But the rest of his so-called attack on the arts is really more of an attack on high art, and even then, less an attack on the art itself and more of an attack on how people use it to exalt themselves and create an air of superiority.
Again, I can get behind that. Art shouldn't be classist.
The book's real fault lies in the final two chapters, in which Carey tries to defend literature from his own assault in the first five chapters. It comes off as rather hypocritical (for lack of a better term) to build a fortress of snobbery in literature after having attacked visual arts, music, drama, etc.
Well, Carey. You tried. -
Un libro revelador que cuestiona muchos de las cualidades morales que, consciente o inconscientemente, se suelen atribuir al arte.
Carey relega los supuestos "beneficios", individuales y sociales, de la creación artística a una suerte de terapia ocupacional. Según argumenta, son los únicos que pueden probarse mediante estudios sistemáticos. Por lo demás, el aura que rodea al arte en la sociedad contemporánea es la misma que podría atribuirse a una religión (que tras el Romanticismo vino a suplantar) -
This was a fun read. It essentially skewers the pretensions and self importance of the art world. Recommended
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I have to admit that given all the hype, John Carey's book was slightly below my expectations. That is not to say that I disagree with his premise that that a work of art is 'anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, though it may be a work of art only for that one person.' Neither do I agree with it. (I try when I can to uphold John Donne's advice 'Doubt wisely'). I enjoy it - in that it makes me think and reconsider what I accept as 'art.' However, though I acknowledge that a rigorously self-questioning book on the subject would be impossible to read, I resent more than a few of John Carey's jumping conclusions and sweeping generalizations.
He suggests off-hand that our concept of art is an 18th century phenomenon - despite the fact that the existence of Folios of both Shakespeare and Jonson suggests that there was certainly a concept of both canonical literature and genius alive in their time. He does not seem to be interested in a historical approach. His treatment of scientific methods is surprisingly unnuanced, although I suppose this is done in order to strengthen his own case.
His chapter on whether the arts make us better also fails to make a balanced case: his argument is based mainly on the experience of the Holocaust. Shockingly, he suggests the equivalence between the government support of national galleries and Hitler's elitist taste. Sir Robert Peel's sentiments in founding the National Gallery 'to cement the bonds of union between the richer and poorer orders of the state' seem hypocritical to him. Instead, he argues for the popularization of the artistic activity rather than appreciation. Quite how Carey imagines artistic activity without funding being given for free art galleries is beyond me.
To do him justice, Carey does make a really good case for literature, which according to Carey, exploits 'indistinctness in language'. Truth be told, 'The Case for Literature' is the best argued part of his book. Literature is evidently John Carey's field. Perhaps a book by Carey entitled 'What good is literature?' would make a more balanced read. -
From Nick Hornby's favorite books:
http://theweek.com/article/index/2325.... "What Good Are the Arts? by John Carey (Oxford, $18). A brilliant and important little book — by an Oxford English professor, no less — about taste, high culture, objective artistic worth, and the absurd arguments made to prop the whole teetering edifice up. Carey has an extraordinary mind, and a wicked wit, and it's hard to read this book and end up feeling the same about what you value and why." -
Great but densely written. Very articulate man who has his view and wont be argued with. Makes many good points and provides ideas to ponder. It starts with chapters contemplating high vs. low- brow art, moving to whether science (can biology point to good art?) or if religions can provide an cohesive framework. Ending first part with the statement that art is something that affects us profoundly and placing art over people dehumanizes. Part two focuses on literature - which is a special case since it can critic and thus be moral.
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Stimulating and provocative, if sometimes a little annoying, Carey pricks holes in a number of theories regarding the purpose of art. The second section of the book, where are argues for the superiority of literature above all other art forms, lost my interest only in that it veered away too much from the overriding concept and seems shoehorned in just to allow himself a bit of indulgence. The postscript, where he challenges his critics, was also a bit cringeworthy and unnecessary. Overall though, worth reading for the questions it raises and a rather impressive bibliography.
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Very good. Takes the wind out of arts' pretensions' sails coolly and effectively. That's the first part; the second part urges that literature is the greatest art, while semi-acknowledging the semi-contradiction between the claim and the prior debunking. No bullshit; in fact anti-bullshit - at the same time (not "but") no philistinism. Best, for my money, demolishing the admittedly extremely soft target that is "conceptual" "art".
Quietly entertaining while serious. Buy it. Read it. "You will not be dissapointed", as they say on Amazon. -
A clearly argued, keenly felt, tidy, terse, and very valuable exploration of the questions aethetic philosophers and art-lovers have been asking themselves for a few centuries, followed by a brilliant explanation of the value of literature, uniquely of all the arts. I couldn't put it down, and really enjoyed the author's deft skewering of several famous critics, and several cliches still bandied about by art commentators everywhere. Really great close readings of Shakespeare to boot.
