Is C.S. Lewis one of your favorite Christian writers? Do you think Schindler’s List is a great movie? Do you like Impressionist paintings more than contemporary art? Is Robert Frost your idea of a good poet? Does a cathedral impress you more than Bauhaus minimalism? Does seeing the St. Louis Gateway Arch up close and personal give you goose bumps?If you answer yes to more than one of these questions, then your taste is decidedly Middlebrow.
Welcome to Middlebrow world. Welcome to my world.
What is Middlebrow? I’m not exactly sure, but for starters it means neither Highbrow nor Lowbrow. What is Highbrow? Here’s my stab at it: Highbrow aims at art for its own sake, art that transcends (and often offends) cultural sensibilities, art that provides something original, something shockingly new to the viewer. For that reason alone Highbrow art is likely to be rejected by most people as either useless or immoral. The reward of Highbrow art is, first, the art itself, but, second, the status it confers on its followers as elites who live in the rarified air far above the maddening crowd. Lowbrow art, very much like high art, also aims at art that is its own reward, but this art taps into the most common (and therefore vulgar) tastes of a culture’s sensibilities. Rather than challenging the culture, lowbrow completely gives in to its lowest inclinations and at some point becomes indistinguishable from entertainment.
So what is Middlebrow? Middlebrow art is art that attempts to create something beautiful and challenging but that challenges us without rejecting our cultural sensibilities—or, at least, not all of them. Middlebrow art attempts to serve as a source of moral edification that is drawn, to paraphrase Lincoln, from the better angels of our culture. Middlebrow Art often wants to teach us something and not merely exist for its own aesthetic warrant—unless that aesthetic warrant is beauty.
The Middlebrow audience is scorned by elites for not being transgressive enough, for being too wedded to vulgar, bourgeoisie values. It is mocked by lowbrow fans for being pretentious. Both charges may be correct. I somehow suspect, however, that the single best measure of the health of a civilization is the size and intellectual vigor of its Middlebrow audience, the audience that seeks pleasures of the mind but that also understands itself as having been given a cultural heritage worthy of moral defense and protection.
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7 comments:
Thanks. What a tremendous achievement for your grandfather. It's my favorite piece of architecture in the U.S.
Your answer to the questions could have also been "Welcome to the Midwest".
I like this picture for a variety of reasons. One is that I marvel at the engineering needed not only to create it on paper but also to build it. For me that adds to the beauty and the "art" of the picture (and the original structure).
The arch is just short of a miracle, isn't it? Simply tremendous!
And very funny (and true) about the "midwest". Nice.
I am certain my wife, the noted literary scholar Christina Bieber Lake, would agree with your sensibilities about art and moral education.
I, on the other end, just relish being offensive for its own sake.
Take this question, for instance. Inquiring minds want to know more, Michael: is middle brow the one you have to pluck? That is, the brow between the left and the right, like my 7th grade teacher with his monobrow so thick it caught dandruff?
P.S. See you in KC at the reunion.
I would have to be convinced that the “best measure of the health of a civilization is the size and intellectual vigor of its Middlebrow audience.” I would argue that it’s the prevalence of Highbrow and Lowbrow art and their dynamic interaction with the mainstream that attests to the health of a civilization. When you think about it, with the exception of Andrew Lloyd Weber musicals (tongue firmly in cheek), most art that become Middlebrow in the sense of appealing to the masses usually start out by being either Highbrow or Lowbrow in the sense of affronting the masses, rebelling against the status quo. For example, the Impressionists were pretty transgressive when they first appeared on the scene. They were dissenting from the established Salon painters. After their first exhibition, they were ridiculed. With time and exposure, Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow all become fluid. After the initial shock, yesterday’s guerilla theater becomes tomorrow’s dinner theater. Mozart, Shakespeare and Dickens become Highbrow. And you can buy Bauhaus inspired home décor at Target, Walmart even.
However it’s categorized, a healthy society needs art that moves us forward - art that pushes us, take us out of our comfort zone, disorients us enough to force us to seek new perspectives, find new ground. Highbrow and Lowbrow art does not damage a cultural heritage – they are off shoots of, responses to, cultural heritage. They force us to re-examine our values, re-evaluate our assumptions, to recognize and face our shortcomings, hopefully so we can let go of what weakens us as well as reaffirm what’s worth defending and protecting. They are often co-opted and become an integral part of a cultural heritage.
Really I'm not sure in our post-modern era, insofar that word has any meaning, that these distinctions carry any weight with them. But I'm not so sure that this is a good thing. And it seems to me the always-progressing nature of art is a relatively new development, accelerating in the 19th century that, on balance, has been disastrous to art in general. I mean, really, who listens to contempory post-Schoenberg or Stravinsky-inspired classical music. They killed the genre. Same argument can be made about post-Picasso art. Still, see my post from October on art "But what is it?"
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