The Middlebrow
blissblogger
Well-known member
no, conceptronica is highbrow - structurally, in terms of its cultural economy, it's a sort of junior wing to official high culture. some of those festivals on the continent have funding from the EU.
blissblogger
Well-known member
there is something analogous - it's not the same thing, but it mirrors the structure - in the relationship between highbrow and lowbrow and the relationship between the aristocracy and the lower classes.
Which is that they get on better with each other than do with the bourgeoisie in the middle.
historically, the very posh and the peasant had similar passions, like gambling, drinking, hunting etc.
whereas your bourgeoisie was the class that invented puritanism, methodism, teetotalism,commerce, investment - a cautious, prudent, resources-conserving approach to life.
you see it with horse racing, that intermingling of the very posh and the lumpen at the race course
i've observed this is life too - intense friendships i've seen between actual nobs (as in the nobility) and people from very working class backgrounds. there's a similar attitude to pleasure, a live-for-the-moment recklessness - unlike your careful middle class types like myself who come from what i would characterise as an uncomfortably off background, where there's a background hum of financial uncertainty behind the bourgeois facade.
your aristos don't give a fuck because they have everything and were raised entitled; your proper proles don't give a fuck because long-term, providential thinking doesn't make sense, you live for the weekend
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
a musical counterpart to this aristo / peasant thing, would be composers like Bartok going out into the Hungarian countryside and notating folk songs and stealing ideas from them to invigorate their work.
Which is that they get on better with each other than do with the bourgeoisie in the middle.
historically, the very posh and the peasant had similar passions, like gambling, drinking, hunting etc.
whereas your bourgeoisie was the class that invented puritanism, methodism, teetotalism,commerce, investment - a cautious, prudent, resources-conserving approach to life.
you see it with horse racing, that intermingling of the very posh and the lumpen at the race course
i've observed this is life too - intense friendships i've seen between actual nobs (as in the nobility) and people from very working class backgrounds. there's a similar attitude to pleasure, a live-for-the-moment recklessness - unlike your careful middle class types like myself who come from what i would characterise as an uncomfortably off background, where there's a background hum of financial uncertainty behind the bourgeois facade.
your aristos don't give a fuck because they have everything and were raised entitled; your proper proles don't give a fuck because long-term, providential thinking doesn't make sense, you live for the weekend
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
a musical counterpart to this aristo / peasant thing, would be composers like Bartok going out into the Hungarian countryside and notating folk songs and stealing ideas from them to invigorate their work.
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Good point. I'm still thinking it as being neo-idm, and idm was nothing but middlebrow, but perhaps it's best to think of it as idm as an influence and not operating in the cultural economy of idm.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
peasants were, unlike the bourgeoisie, materially dependent on and/or under the direct control of the aristocracy
so there may be a confluence of tastes, but they're not shared as equals, nor the friendships (such as they are) friendships of equals
i.e. a lord's relationship with his gamekeepers, the aristocrat taste for/romanticization of things like boxing and horse racing, etc
whereas the bourgeoisie by definition had their own resources and thus existed outside the control, and tastes, of the lords
it's a tension throughout the 1700, 1800, early 1900s so common as to be cliche - penniless/declining gentility and nouveau riche merchants
the horror that someone like Lord Cardigan would have felt at having anything to do with "trade"
related to the idea that "taste" is something that ingrained rather than learned or - more to the point - created
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
this is a good insight on the aesthetic of middlebrow
add to it also a distaste for the extravagant, rococco, unnecessary, frivolous
it has to something to do with the rationalization of time - as you say, rather than not caring (highbrow) or living for the weekend (lowbrow)
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
there's also an omnipresent ersatz element - as corpsey said, that which strives to be but is not (highbrow) and highlights its falseness in doing so
the literal ersatz - mass reproductions of famous paintings, etc
there's definitely a relation between middlebrow and kitsch here but I would have to think on it to tease it out
perhaps kitsch as ironic, or sincere, or both, reclamation of the middlebrow aesthetic
the literal ersatz - mass reproductions of famous paintings, etc
there's definitely a relation between middlebrow and kitsch here but I would have to think on it to tease it out
perhaps kitsch as ironic, or sincere, or both, reclamation of the middlebrow aesthetic
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
the concept of "middlebrow" unsurprisingly arrives with modernism, the culmination of "art" becoming more accessible to the (bourgeoisie) masses
it's the ultimate pejorative dismissal, a means to distinguish between good and bad (or, meaningful and hollow) cultural expression
it's also a means of remystifying art that so that actual artists and appreciators of art can get on with making and appreciating Real Art
i.e. by definition no True Artist or consumer of art would ever self-identify as middlebrow, just as no cool person would self-identify as "hipster"
it's the ultimate pejorative dismissal, a means to distinguish between good and bad (or, meaningful and hollow) cultural expression
it's also a means of remystifying art that so that actual artists and appreciators of art can get on with making and appreciating Real Art
i.e. by definition no True Artist or consumer of art would ever self-identify as middlebrow, just as no cool person would self-identify as "hipster"
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
it's also intrinsically tied to technology - you can't have middlebrow without mass reproduction and distribution of art
(and to education (or perhaps, cultural penetration) - middlebrow also requires be mass ability to "appreciate" art, or at least belief in said ability)
it requires a level of cultural homogeneity that has been dismantled, possibly fatally, by the Internet
this idea of striving - all I see are a literally endless succession of YouTube ads
the only striving - at least of the dominant cultural paradigm - is to sell more, be it of products, ourselves, our dreams
middlebrow requires the space to have something that is appreciated solely for its cultural significance
(and to education (or perhaps, cultural penetration) - middlebrow also requires be mass ability to "appreciate" art, or at least belief in said ability)
it requires a level of cultural homogeneity that has been dismantled, possibly fatally, by the Internet
this idea of striving - all I see are a literally endless succession of YouTube ads
the only striving - at least of the dominant cultural paradigm - is to sell more, be it of products, ourselves, our dreams
middlebrow requires the space to have something that is appreciated solely for its cultural significance
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
it's true that the middlebrow, or any definition of art, is ultimately about audience perception
but that's a truism for all cultural expression
time inevitably sands off all rough edges of the immediately shocking
but that's a truism for all cultural expression
time inevitably sands off all rough edges of the immediately shocking
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
in case it wasn't clear, the word for this is "slumming"
Terry Farley being a fucking chelsea fan says it all though. archetypical middlebrow cultural gatekeeping. even that ruined paul oakenfold his family were guners. he rebelled against everything good, reggae, soul, garage and jungle, in life and went for nazi trance like a loyal Chelsea fan. twat.
loooooool.
entertainment
Well-known member
If you think that conceptronica pretends to be more that it is, then you could call it middle-brow.
I did some homework on the subject and Virginia Woolf's denunciation of middlebrow seem to hit some of the same points as the objections against conceptronica. She referred to as 'middle-brows' those who didn't care about the intrinsic value of art but used it to decorate their lives and as social currency.
The middlebrows don't care about the things they get from the art itself or the attributes that makes it highbrow, only that it appears highbrow. The market value. For something like conceptronica, that puts so much effort into appearing high-brow, a similar objection is def there for the making, and it has been made.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
let me just say - in re that tag - that while I'm not, never have been, nor ever will be a Marxist, I'm generally happy to be identified with Eric Hobsbawm
undoubtedly he never truly came to terms with failures of state communism, and even if he did, I wholeheartedly disagree with his ends justifies means arguments
he also wrote much great history, made the right people angry, and never backed down an inch to anyone; it's not a bad legacy, and it looks better the worse late capitalism gets
if I really wanted to Hobsbawm you I'd work in a very belabored metaphor for transgressive art as social banditry, or whatever
undoubtedly he never truly came to terms with failures of state communism, and even if he did, I wholeheartedly disagree with his ends justifies means arguments
he also wrote much great history, made the right people angry, and never backed down an inch to anyone; it's not a bad legacy, and it looks better the worse late capitalism gets
if I really wanted to Hobsbawm you I'd work in a very belabored metaphor for transgressive art as social banditry, or whatever
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
the problem then as now is there's no way to prove what people actually do or don't care about
further there's no way to separate caring about "art itself" from "market value"; they are parts of the same indivisible whole
the market may be for social rather than financial currency, as you say, or both, but there is always a market value
middlebrow in the Woolf sense strikes me as pure snobbery dressed up as defense of Real Art
look at these boors, appreciating art in the wrong way, making art with the wrong intent