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A question of discrimination 

High culture is seen by some as the product of a hidebound establishment
bent on excluding outsiders. Is it possible to believe in social equality
yet defend elitism in the arts? By AC Grayling 

Saturday July 13, 2002
The Guardian 

Think, wrote the cultural critic Eunice Lipton, "about Michelangelo, van
Gogh, Rodin, Picasso, Pollock. Could these artists be lesbians, Asian
Americans, Native Americans?" Her point was that if they had been any of
these things, they would not have been recognised as "artist-geniuses" (her
term); and this by implication shows that the notion of high culture in the
western tradition embodies everything that is exclusive of other cultures
and elitist within its own. 
To writers such as Lipton, quality is not a distinguishing feature of the
objects and activities which the term "high culture" standardly denotes. The
art critic Robert Hughes explains why: "Quality, the argument goes, is a
plot. It is the result of a conspiracy of white males to marginalise the
work of other races and cultures. To invoke its presence in works of art is
somehow inherently repressive." 

Can people of left-liberal political sympathies believe that high culture
has special and superior value which justifies state support for theatre and
grand opera, but not for pop concerts or darts competitions? On the face of
it the answer is surely "Yes"; even if, after the characteristic British
manner, left-leaning votaries of high culture - of opera, Shakespeare,
Rembrandt exhibitions, Beethoven concerts, contemporary art and dance,
"serious" literature whether contemporary or classical - occasionally mask
their interest under an appearance of irony, given the risk that such
interests run of being branded affected or pretentious. 

Undoubtedly, aspects of high culture lend themselves to such branding,
especially when access to them becomes restricted by cost to a privileged
stratum of society, as with all but the worst seats at the opera; for wealth
and taste are not automatic bedfellows, and some go to the opera not so much
to see it as to be seen at it. But pretension aside, the very idea of people
who enjoy Renaissance painting or classical music irritates those who place
all consumption of high culture in the same basket, if not as the
affectation of the conceited (the low-brow rightwing complaint, opposed to
what it brands as Islington trendiness in such things as the championing of
contemporary art and music) then as the recreation of the privileged (the
anti-highbrow leftwing complaint, opposed to the spending of public money on
the Royal Opera House instead of on grants to ethnic dance groups in
deprived areas) - both of which in their different ways explain why
questions of culture have a political edge. 

To see this more clearly in connection with the relation between
liberal-left sentiments and high culture, put the original question another
way. Is there a difference in intrinsic artistic merit between a Rembrandt
and an Australian aboriginal painting? Suddenly other thoughts press. If a
European or American says "Yes" to this too, is he or she being guilty of
ethnocentrism, of privileging the culturally parochial productions of Dead
White Western Men, and thus of cultural, racial and gender bias? Or bring
the question closer to home: if one says that Iris Murdoch's novels are
literature and Agatha Christie's novels are not, is one making an unjust and
unjustifiable comparison on the grounds that to presume to rank these
authors is in fact to rank their readers in a way that is snobbish in one
direction and condescending in the other: for if the latter's readers enjoy
her work, and find the former's novels a trial to read, who has the right to
say they are choosing the worse? 

In Matthew Arnold's definition, culture is "the best that has been said and
thought" - and, it should be added, done - in respect of all that matters in
intellectual and artistic life. The term's second and broader
anthropological meaning is very different; it neutrally embraces everything
about the way things are done in a society, among which its most highbrow
interests are only a small part. These latter have accordingly come to be
called "high" culture to differentiate what is most valued and esteemed by
those supposed to be in a position to judge; and the term is therefore
expressly discriminatory. 

The question therefore becomes: does an enjoyment of high culture involve a
justifiable form of discrimination? I think most would still think that the
answer is "Yes", but it no longer suffices to say so without comment. Since
the 1960s the politics of culture have been embodied in the debate about
standards and relativism. This debate, acerbic and ill-tempered, is one
corner of the larger contemporary battle over "political correctness", whose
primary concerns are gender, ethnicity, oppressive language, "cultural
imperialism" and elitism. 

The PC battle has made it harder for people of leftwing and liberal views to
be votaries of high culture without feeling the need to defend the
preference. One good result of that, at least, is that it obliges them to
think more carefully when they do so. The larger PC argument is a triangular
one, between the political Right and two versions of the Left. The Right
attacks a leftwing orientation which aims to valorise all cultural
activities, no matter whose they are, privileging no endeavour, and no
gender or ethnicity, above any other, in the interests of giving everything
and everyone a place in the sun. A different leftwing orientation, agreeing
with this determination to universalise justice and mutual respect, sees
with dismay that the multicultural egalitarians have made themselves easy
targets for rightwingers by being guilty themselves of a kind of oppression,
hounding those who fail to adopt scrupulously undiscriminatory attitudes and
language in pursuit of their otherwise admirable aims. 

A good deal of silliness and name-calling has resulted, especially in
America, where what have mattered most to the combatants are, on the left,
the multicultural imperatives, while on the right this is seen, in alarmist
and sometimes hysterical fashion, as a threat to the political and moral
fabric of the nation. In The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
summarised the Right's view by saying that the Left's principal belief is
that all truth is relative and all cultures of equal value, and that the
Left's opposition to the attitudes and language involved in racism, sexism
and the privileging of western culture, amount to attacks on free speech. 

Observers of this fracas can be forgiven for wishing a plague on both
houses, because the occasional shrill absurdities of one side are more than
well matched by the other form of "PC" - what Robert Hughes called
"Patriotic Correctness" - which a well-funded and well-organised rightwing
lobby in the US has concerted, not just against these occasional
absurdities, but in opposition to a largely imaginary
Marxist-lesbian-multicultural "antifamily" coalition allegedly taking over
America's universities and spending millions of National Endowment for the
Arts dollars on obscenity and irreligion. Vociferous lobbying from this
quarter nearly persuaded the US Congress to close the National Endowment of
the Arts, citing among other things the fact that it had given money to the
artist Andres Serrano, who made the controversial Piss Christ, consisting of
a crucifix immersed in a jar of his own urine. 

In one corner of this fight lies the question of high culture in literature
and the arts, automatically defended by the Right - who, it is clear,
sometimes do not know what they are talking about, since much in high
culture is profoundly subversive of what they cherish: think of the
anticlerical Voltaire, the adulteresses Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina,
Madame Butterfly living in sin with Pinkerton, the liar Odysseus, the
communistic New Testament, and endless examples besides, which, if they knew
of it, would certainly affright America's gun-and-family-loving right. 

Nevertheless they defend high culture by reflex; it is they who raised an
outcry when a rumour was started that Shakespeare was to be dropped from
school syllabuses and the literature curricula of universities such as
Stanford - the rumour was false, and almost certainly a canard of the Right
itself, who by the same token vigorously defend the notion that culture is
fundamentally a matter of the canonical great books (and by extension great
art and great music) of the western tradition. 

Their defence, whatever its sincerity, of high culture poses a somewhat
awkward problem for those on the left who do not wish to be seen, like them,
as elitist, Eurocentric, or committed to aesthetic notions which appear to
demote by comparison the value of arts and literatures in non-western
cultures, or indeed in demotic western traditions either - chiefly folk and
working-class cultures. 

But there is an important difference between questions of the intrinsic
value of literary or artistic works in any culture and their social
significance to the people who produce them. A cairn of stones, or a
figurine of a goat or a goddess might have religious meaning for a
community, and be venerated by it, without having or pretending to have
artistic merit. But an attentive eye can see the difference between a rough
carving and a fine one, whatever its social or religious significance. The
latter typically shows more observation and care, and evinces more skill or
painstakingness in the working; in short, manifests the marks of quality. A
difference in social or religious significance does not affect, still less
negate, differences in quality. Those concerned to respect the productions
of other cultures are apt not to distinguish these things, thinking that
social significance is enough to confer artistic merit, and therefore
refusing to allow comparisons on the mistaken ground that doing so implies
disrespect. 

Take, for example, crucifixes as objects of veneration and subjects of art.
Most representations of Christ on the cross are repugnant things, depicting
as they do a blood-covered dead or dying body nailed to an execution
scaffold. Anyone would be thought bizarre who liked to have on his walls
depictions of hanged criminals or corpses sagging from an electric chair,
even if the victim in question had done him a good turn; but Christianity
being what it is, depictions of an executed man represent one of the chief
icons of its faith. Sometimes, in the work of great artists, the figure of
the crucified Christ can have dignity, pathos or beauty, despite rather than
because of its sanguinary character. But if one tossed a crucifix into a
rubbish bin on the aesthetic grounds that it was a crude and displeasing
lump of extruded plastic of the kind sold in Catholic shops, one would be
sure to offend someone. 

Defenders of multiculturalism who are sensitive about giving that kind of
offence are keen to promote the adoption of undiscriminatory language and
attitudes in order to avoid it. Their motives are admirable. But adopting
undiscriminatory attitudes and language does not mean having
undiscriminating tastes and standards. This is the key: a sense of the
quality of any work, of fineness of observation, of skill in production, of
wit, insight, and psychological acuity, of inventiveness and discernment, is
not the special endowment of any class, or ethnicity, or of either gender. A
capacity to see these qualities in human cultural productions, especially a
developed or (which is the same thing) critical capacity, does not
automatically amount to an offensive and exclusive cultural snobbery. It
simply means a heightened awareness, and a concomitantly increased enjoyment
of what it encounters when it encounters quality; and when quality is at
issue, the capacity in question tends to be general and inclusive. 

This last point is demonstrated by the multiple roots and catholic embrace
of western culture, which is very far from being monolithic despite
currently being the only culture that blames itself for excluding and
disvaluing other cultures. The example of literature is apt to mislead in
this regard, because literature is more annexed to a particular place and
people than other art forms, given that something is always lost in
translation. But almost all other art forms are capable of transcending
barriers, and appreciators of the high culture of their own tradition are
for that very reason well placed to appreciate that of other traditions.
Consider the enjoyment of Chinese porcelains, textiles and ink paintings in
the west, and the Chinese passion for Dickens and European and American
music in return. Consider western relish for Mughal miniatures, Indian
dance, African carving, and Japanese netsuke. Consider the excellent
practitioners of western classical music who come from China and Japan; and
consider the admiration felt by western visitors to the exquisite Forbidden
City treasures displayed in the National Museum in Taipei. 

The belief that high aesthetic standards are somehow culturally exclusive is
readily refuted by the existence of the institution, which any reflective
society has to have for the sake of its own cultural health: a serious
museum. A truly great museum, such as the British Museum or the Louvre, is a
beacon offering light and insight to the society it serves. If one wished to
learn about Roman antiquity, Chinese bronzes, cuneiform brick inscriptions,
near-eastern seals, sculptures on the south west palace of Sennacherib,
Gandharan figures, pre-telescopic astronomy, German Renaissance prints,
early Islamic glass stamps, medieval embroidery, Burmese lacquer, Iznik
pottery, excavations in the metropolis of the Kingdom of Alwa, Javanese
magic coins, music in Peru, Attic red-painted ware, Egyptian funerary
practices, or any other of the riches in its purview, one need only visit
the British Museum. 

There are of course those who see in the museum not a magnificent
institution containing one of the world's great collections, together with a
first-class staff of scholars to interpret its rich holdings, but a monument
to imperial robbery and insensitivity, as controversy over the Elgin Marbles
is standardly invoked to show. But the fact is that the British Museum and
institutions like it express by their existence an important truth: that a
mature culture is one which wishes to know more about other cultures, and
which values the best examples of what it has of them, and which is better
able to appreciate them because it has standards and insights developed in
appreciation of its own. 

It was the African figures in the Louvre that inspired Picasso. That one
fact alone could serve to remind us how porous high culture is, in both
directions, and how symbiotic the existence of all cultures is, especially
in the globalised world. When receptive sensibilities engage with the
artefacts of the past and other civilisations, they are nourished by them
and learn from them, not least how to be discerning. "It is only the
dullness of the eye that makes any two things seem alike," Walter Pater
said, and the idea of the uniqueness, particularity and value of things
carries over from objects to the circumstances of life. In that way art and
education civilise those who, intelligently addressed, respond
intelligently: an interaction one can see any day of the week in museums,
galleries, bookshops and concert halls. 

These considerations should be enough to dispel the impression that valuing
the high culture of the west is somehow tantamount to disparaging other
cultures by comparison. The remaining problem is the belief - more
accurately, a usually unstated instinct - held by some on the left that
cultural aspiration is itself a form of betrayal, either of working-class
roots or the battle for equal respect in one's own society. This view is at
curious odds with an important phase in the history of lefwing politics in
the west, for there were many among those whom the left championed - the
disadvantaged - who discovered books and the arts for themselves, a heroic
army of men and women who refused the state of ignorance and by
self-cultivation put themselves in a position to help the rest of the
educationally and culturally disenfranchised from whose ranks they had come,
at last thereby winning the argument that no one should be discriminated
against in this most fundamental of ways. 

The children of bourgeois parents, with educational opportunities
commensurate with the kind of home environments where cultural familiarity
is readily absorbed, might sometimes fail to appreciate the extraordinary
delight felt by the self-taught when first stumbling across Ruskin or Marx,
Beethoven or Rembrandt. One imagines the eager glance of an intelligent eye,
unblinkered by conventional education, seeing the value in things without
having been told to expect them there - and therefore seeing them truly. 

Ruskin was a great influence on MPs in the early Labour party, almost all of
them men from working-class backgrounds who were substantially, if not
wholly, self-educated. An Oldham millworker who became Lord Privy Seal, JR
Clynes, encountered Ruskin when young, having bought The Seven Lamps of
Architecture for a shilling he could ill afford. "For many weeks," he later
wrote, "I read and re-read this one book, and so illumining was the love I
held for it that, before I had perused it the third time, its every subtlety
of meaning was as much my own intimate possession as a young lover's memory
of his virgin kiss." 

It did not matter that the subject in that case was architecture. One book
leads to another, breeding a consciousness of debate, of ideas unfolding
into further ideas, inviting agreement or controversy, raising questions
which further books are needed to answer. Working people in this way learned
of their oppression and their rights, and formed new hopes accordingly.
Women learned about their own bodies, and how to control their fertility. A
worker in the Swindon railway factory taught himself Greek and Latin and
thereafter published translations of Ovid, Pindar, Sappho, Plato, Menander
and Horace; this was Alfred Williams. 

But after 1945 the culture of self-improvement declined, partly because of
increased formal schooling, partly because of television and other
distractions, and partly because increasingly rapid changes in cultural
fashion have made self-taught classicism look conservative. In any case, it
was always an avocation for a minority, and remained so even as the working
class grew in prosperity and political confidence, taking with it a long
ingrained mistrust of high culture and a natural loyalty to its own tastes,
transfigured by the new medium of television (itself subserved by the
tabloids) into a now familiar and characteristic demotic view of the world. 

But although the masses do not choose to be interested in high culture, it
is not undemocratic to promote it at the public expense. Nor should one
regard it as somehow inimical to the interests of the majority on the
grounds that it is elitist and exclusive. The autodidact's tale is just one
example of how, on the contrary, it is neither of these things, being
readily permeable to anyone who acquires an interest in it. The paternalist
remit of the BBC's great Lord Reith was premised on just this view; he
thought that if you took horses to water, many of them would find how good
it is to drink. Although the paternalism is no longer acceptable, he was
otherwise right. 

It cannot be expected that high culture will soon, if ever, become a
majority interest. But as populations increase, so do the numbers in
minorities. As a result, more people than ever before in history now enjoy
literature and the arts. Exhibitions are crowded, concerts fully booked,
literary festivals multiply, which means that in absolute terms more people
have the pleasure and insight that cultural avocations bring. Most would
agree that instead of opposing or deriding such avocations, the right thing
to do is to make them even more accessible. 

Viewed from that angle, quarrels over PC-ness, putative canons of Great
Books and Art, and multiculturalism, are a mere distraction, and no one on
the left should therefore think that a taste for high culture - which means,
in short, a taste for the best things in all arts - is anything but as
conducive to the general good as it is to their own.