`Elitism” has become one of the foulest words in an American’s vocabulary. It is used for identifying a belief system thought to be wrong in motive and reprehensible in effect. It is not considered good in any effort. And that people in the arts should even want to declare a consensus on the brightest and the best is a transgression almost beyond forgiving.
Almost 20 years ago, Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) had used the E-word like a club to strike the National Endowment for the Humanities. He said the organization was guilty of elitism for supporting the work of intellectuals instead of spending money for activities on a broader base. The endowment was bruised but not broken. It adroitly disavowed elitism at the same time as it renewed allegiance to high standards, and soon enough the senator went off in search of another political red herring.
Now, the NEH’s sister agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, defends itself less and joins in attacks by politicians. Having itself been flogged for elitism for the better part of a decade, an abused child has matured, and true to a common psychological pattern, has become an abuser. “American Canvas, an Arts Legacy for Our Communities,” the endowment’s report released on Oct. 15, castigates arts institutions for what is said to be their part in fostering elitism, our national wickedness and abiding shame.
Can anyone recall another word that has been so completely reversed in meaning? Less than a half-century ago, aspiring to the elite in any field was among the most honorable of life’s endeavors. An intellectual elite earned our trust for having surpassed everyone else in the uncompromised pursuit that is learning for its own sake. An artistic elite inspired our awe for having created on a level so far above the rest of us that only a word with magical associations — “genius,” which originally meant a guardian spirit — adequately described them.
How did a faith in the highest and most desirable come to be understood among Americans as something ugly and exclusionary?
Almost 150 years of American painting and sculpture grew out of an aspiration toward something higher — the cultural achievements of Europe. Nearly every American artist who became significant went to study in European ateliers and worship European masterpieces until the beginning of the 1930s. The very idea that some works stand out above others and are worth enshrining for emulation is itself based in elitism.
When museums were founded in the United States — the first, the Wadsworth Atheneum, was in 1842 — they operated on the same elitist principle. They were not built for visitation by the many. It was understood that few people at any time truly seek to perceive what challenging artists are up to. This was unfortunate for artists who during their lives did not enjoy such understanding. But it’s the way things were, are and will be. Many are called, few are chosen.
By the end of the 19th Century, art museums had started to become for an intellectual elite what churches and synagogues had long been. Having had their faith shaken by a theory of evolution and writings by contemporary philosophers, many of the world’s finest minds — American novelist Henry James among them — turned to a belief in aesthetics, speaking about a “religion of art” that raised up and ennobled the faithful.
This led to the misunderstanding that art, like diet or exercise, was a way toward mass self-improvement. People would somehow be “better” for moving through buildings filled with fine examples of wood, canvas and stone. A few people did have positive reactions, though only after repeating the experience several times, learning something about the artists, understanding the range of their outputs, perceiving its relation to that of other artists and grasping their relative mastery of techniques and styles. But even then, aesthetic pleasure being different from moral or intellectual betterment, the exact nature of a supplicant’s change remained unquantifiable, mysterious.
Americans desperately wanted the experience to be concrete, like a deep massage from which one might come not only refreshed but enlightened. It then could be undergone by ever-increasing numbers of the most passive people. And, eventually, the benefits — whatever they were — would be enjoyed by the entire society and not just elitists who spent fortunes in the pursuit of them.
There lies the late 20th Century myth that one of the most profound experiences in life, the meaningful perception of art, is an American birthright. The highest order of artistic experience is for everyone. This has been the message of museums in our time, though it is patently untrue. The art that can give such experience should be available for everyone, but that’s something different. Availability and understanding — one does not automatically lead to the other.
The bigger our museums were built, the more they propagated the myth, as they required more and more visitors to keep in business. If the click of the turnstile was not as quick as expected, something was wrong, but surely not the guiding principle. The highest order of artistic experience was supposed to be for everyone. Milk for the spirit and honey for the eye. We should have taken it in effortlessly. If we could not — or did not want to — perhaps it was the fault of artists who perversely played tricks or failed to address us on our own level.
That the majority of humankind always has failed to reach the artists’ level is a truth we prefer to ignore. Our own indifference and sloth are not part of the picture. Great art is supposed to uplift no matter what. But it has not made Americans “better” as a people. It does not excite us like sports or entertain us like movies. It does not titillate us like the Web or get us moving like rock music. And that makes some of those who have fought to sustain the myth awfully mad.
The highest order of artistic experience is not for everyone. But because for so long we said it was and still it has not turned out to be so — think of children who were given every educational and financial advantage yet as adults could not care less about high culture — we now say lower the order, it’s too elitist. Funders tell art museums to give people more of what they already know. Substitute what easily succeeds with the many for what arduously has succeeded with the few.
In that way, museums will assure their own continuance. But what for? So they can provide a cornucopia of fun experiences? The finest works of art, no matter their continent of origin, are not fun. They do not give themselves at once, by osmosis, as visitors stroll past as in a shopping mall, for diversion. The finest works of art lead away from the immediacy of fun to a more gradually achieved condition of pleasure — which calls for a process requiring work.
As critic Harold C. Schonberg has written: “It is a lifetime process, and not many are willing to make that effort. Just as there are relatively few geniuses at any time, so are there relatively few appreciators in the best sense of the word. On its highest level the appreciation of art is as elitist as the creation of art.”
This kind of elitism has nothing to do with class or race or gender. It is open to anyone who has particular needs of mind and spirit. People with such needs always will find a way to satisfy them. And museums must continue to be responsible to them, for they make up the most solid sustaining force of a culture.
