The last ten pages or so of Guilbaut’s second chapter were the most exciting part of this reading for me. I mean, the idea of people going out and consuming from among this glut of post-WPA American art in order to decorate their postwar Levittown homes is a striking image. But after I set the book down on my kitchen table, I asked myself, “Wait, was that a good thing?” What I’m concerned about here is democratization of culture on one hand and commodification of culture on the other hand. When I read through Guilbaut’s discussion of people enjoying art who had never been able to enjoy art before, I was happy, but then, the fact that what made that new trend possible was the consumer marketplace and the new commodity character of art doesn’t make me so happy. It’s kind of like we’ve joked about with Oprah’s book club. People reading Faulkner = good. People reading Faulkner because it’s the hot new project promoted by a media titaness = not that good.
So here’s the question: is the fact that more people can enjoy culture worth the fact that culture has been made into a commodity? Guilbaut expresses neither joy nor disgust, so let’s take this up ourselves.
I first started thinking about this issue with Rubin and her discussion of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Like we talked about, the marketing gimmicks that Rubin describes are staggeringly distasteful: many of their advertising messages seem to be saying that consuming books will help you to impress people and achieve upward mobility. Rubin mentions an ad from the Literary Guild that suggests you impress visitors to your house by putting “The Guild Book on Your Table,” and she notes that the ad included “no suggestion that the book would also be “in Your Mind” (105). This is not only cultural snobbery and pretention at its worst, but it has made books commodities—means for an end—instead of real cultural objects. Isn’t that terrible? Or, should we just be happy that more people were buying books during this time?
While Rubin is pretty clear in expressing her distaste for the idea of books being used to impress your friends, Guilbaut doesn’t say boo about people’s buying commodity art. He explains the background: WPA ended, WWII ended, there was an economic boom, and then there was an art boom. In the midst of the art boom, the marketing for art changed and the clientele for art expanded. According to Guilbaut, “these changes helped to desanctify the art object by displaying it as an ordinary consumer good” (92). Here’s where my conflicting emotions begin: desanctifying the stuffy, snobby art world sounds great, but treating art as an ordinary consumer good sounds unfortunate. Later Guilbaut says that “Art became a commodity and the gallery a supermarket” (92). Again, this sounds unfortunate, and unless he’s using the subtlety that the French are famous for, I couldn’t see any critical commend from Guilbaut regarding this development.
Pretty soon we’ve got art sales happening at Macy’s and Gimbel’s, and as a result “art became a part of everyday life, a part of the environment, a decoration in middle-class homes” (96). Guilbaut reports these developments without saying whether or not that’s a good thing. Some person named Eurenia Lea Whitridge is our sole voice of dissent here, and Guilbaut tells us that she was worried that the commodification of art might result in the loss of “traditional masterpiece and traditional values without which hierarchy is impossible” (92). Now, I like that Whitridge doesn’t like commodification of art, but I’m also turned off by her snobbiness and heirarchy love.
So here’s the question: how do we disapprove of the commodification of culture without being accused of being stuffy, snobby, or conservative? I love the idea of more people enjoying culture than ever before, but I’m not sure it’s worth it if that comes about only because suddenly a cultural object has the same position as a stick of deodorant.
I think that you nicely hit on what I would call a narrative of paradoxes, Kurt. Though I do like art, I would not consider myself an expert by any means, so I'll admit the story that Guilbaut tells is often confusing. Many conflicts reoccur but sometimes it's difficult to remember what camp each author/critic comes from. Individual v. society, market v. WPA, abstract expressionism v.surrealism, Popular front v. Communist v. individualism, nationalist v. internationalist are just some of the the battles, and they are a bit hard to keep straight as clear as Guilbaut tries to tell this convoluted story.
ReplyDeleteI also had a bit of difficulty pinning down where Guilbaut falls on all of these debates, but in terms of what you classify as "Guilbaut not saying boo" I would agree that his argument comes off as rather objective, but I think that we also need to remember the way he explains his project early on in the book as a re-writing the heroic history of modern art. So, in a way, just by writing this history, he is coming down against the apotheosis of painters like Pollock that occurred due the ridiculous commodification of their work.
You main question is a great one, but I think its also the hardest question to answer as a materialist critic, or someone who does cultural studies. I feel like we need to remain loyal to the heritage of our profession as, primarily, critics and defenders of taste, while still being open to a burgeoning middle-brow. So I don't think I can answer that for you, but I think it's the question we must constantly ask of our work if we want to classify it as cultural studies. The best answer I can give is that what we, as educators and critics, is give "readers" (sic) of culture as much information about the things they do consume. Consumption is inevitable, sadly, but ignorant consumption is not.
While I think you highlight some really important points that we've tried to tackle in this class, and--really--that people have been debating since technological/mass/mechanical reproduction (I couldn't help but think of Benjamin while reading your post) came into being, I think that we seem to be limiting ourselves to an "either/or" situation: people either get culture by seeking out the Arnoldian best-yada yada, or we devalue culture by making it is accessible as "deodorant." I guess my question is what do we want from "art." Is art supposed to elevate people to a common level, or shut them out? If a "lowbrow" person were to take an interest in having a print of Starry Night hanging in his or her house, or read Faulkner because Oprah said to, does it necessarily mean that their experience with it was any less profound than someone who studies original works or texts? Can't someone read something and make meaning from it without having to understand every textual nuance, the entire history, etc.? Those facts may enrich the experience, but they aren't necessarily vital to aesthetic experience. I may not necessarily want to buy my artwork next to the deodorant at the market, but at the end of the day, both are necessary--regardless of where they come from.
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