In a comment on my blog post Art theory and my art theory rant Paul Bolton writes:
My disagreement with the stuckists stems from the approach to art as an invention. But an invention that stems from bourgeois ideologies.
This wouldn't mean that using paint as a material was inherently bourgeois but making beautiful objects would be, as they have been sustained and developed by the 'upper class'. In other words purely economic, political, social-rather than spiritual.
Firstly I would quibble with the conflation of 'upper class' with bourgeois. 'Bourgeois' usually means 'middle class,' not 'upper class.' I would grant that the upper class (now a dying breed) traditionally upheld the fine arts, largely because they had money to pay for them, and the middle class that arose out of the industrial revolution started to emulate them in this respect.
That is not to say that the working classes did not produce art, as for example rich traditions of folk music and folk art bear witness. Going further back in time, are we to assume that the finely wrought shields of the Saxons or the cave paintings of the Dordogne are also expressions of a bourgeois ideology?
Also, because the 'upper class' (however defined) sustains and develops something does not make it bad or even necessarily problematic, any more than eating healthy and well-prepared food necessarily tars one with the brush of a particular ideology.
One more argument: the medieval cathedrals were built by expert masons with the help of local labour. Do they not have the same awesome effect on the poor who go in to admire them or to pray as they do on the rich?
My disagreement with the stuckists stems from the approach to art as an invention. But an invention that stems from bourgeois ideologies.
This wouldn't mean that using paint as a material was inherently bourgeois but making beautiful objects would be, as they have been sustained and developed by the 'upper class'. In other words purely economic, political, social-rather than spiritual.
Firstly I would quibble with the conflation of 'upper class' with bourgeois. 'Bourgeois' usually means 'middle class,' not 'upper class.' I would grant that the upper class (now a dying breed) traditionally upheld the fine arts, largely because they had money to pay for them, and the middle class that arose out of the industrial revolution started to emulate them in this respect.
That is not to say that the working classes did not produce art, as for example rich traditions of folk music and folk art bear witness. Going further back in time, are we to assume that the finely wrought shields of the Saxons or the cave paintings of the Dordogne are also expressions of a bourgeois ideology?
Also, because the 'upper class' (however defined) sustains and develops something does not make it bad or even necessarily problematic, any more than eating healthy and well-prepared food necessarily tars one with the brush of a particular ideology.
One more argument: the medieval cathedrals were built by expert masons with the help of local labour. Do they not have the same awesome effect on the poor who go in to admire them or to pray as they do on the rich?
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