Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [21]
This distinction between high and low art emerged for very practical reasons at the time Kant was writing. With the decline of aristocratic and ecclesiastical power and the emergence of the bourgeoisie brought by the advent of modern industrialism, the conditions of artistic production and consumption changed significantly. In a manner similar to what is happening now in higher education, medieval patronage collapsed and the artistic “tenure system” disappeared. With this unexpected turn of events, art was transformed into a commodity, and artists had to compete in the marketplace. Art no longer was produced exclusively for wealthy patrons who enjoyed leisure and were unburdened by the necessity to work, but now had to be marketed by effectively addressing consumers with different interests. The emergence of a market economy created the new class of the bourgeoisie, whose members were neither exactly producers (workers) nor nonproducers (aristocrats). Like today’s parents on the Upper West Side trying to get their three-year-olds into the “best” preschool programs, members of this emerging class needed cultural markers by which to establish their status and social identity. The interests of artists and consumers intersected in the search for cultural artifacts that were not supposed to be completely subject to market forces. The creation and possession of works of art came to serve as a means of securing social distinction. For art to serve no practical function, however, it had to be clearly distinguished from all commodities that could have a utilitarian end. Art, in the strict sense of the term, became “high art” or “pure art,” which was distinguished from crafts, mass art and popular art.
When the line between high and low is drawn in this way, it becomes clear that the conflict of the faculties involves two competing systems of value and economic logic. For the businessmen and technicians of learning, value and profitability are directly related to market forces (i.e., the more popular and profitable, the more valuable), and for intellectuals and artists, true value cannot be calculated by the market. To the contrary, value and utility or economic popularity and profitability are inversely related (i.e., the more popular and profitable, the less valuable). By the latter half of the twentieth century, the contrast between the useful or profitable and the useless or unprofitable had spread beyond the professional schools/arts and sciences divide to “taint” what once was believed to be the purity of the philosophical faculty. The persistence of this attitude still creates problems for students. On October 4, 2009, a few days after the unemployment rate in the United States hit 9.8 percent, Jennifer Williams published an article in The New York Times entitled “Hard Work, No Pay” reflecting on her experience as she looked for a job.
In my master’s program,3 we talked a lot about theory and personal vision. We could experiment with whatever we wanted and it was wonderful. We tried not to dwell on earthy, unpleasant topics like money, or how to make it.
In the Peace Corps, I taught art as a vocational skill. “Artists,” the headmistress at my school in Ghana told me in words that were less than prophetic, “can always make a living.”
If I were to make an artwork expressing this period of unemployment, I would make stacks and stacks of little box-shaped rooms wallpapered with résumés. Each room would have one little person inside and one window. That is what I felt like. Boundless possibilities, but hemmed in by the walls of an apartment where I spent every day looking for a way to afford all the things I wanted to do.
The worst thing was the feeling of uselessness—the fear that I was simply unskilled and unable to compete. Where had I miscalculated when I was planning out my life?
More and more young people are asking the same