Democracy and the Arts - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801435412 ISBN 13: 9780801435416

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Politics has taken a cultural turn in America, and the arts are at the center of today's culture wars. In this book, some of our most prominent cultural critics explore the relationships between culture and politics as played out in the world of novels, television, museums, and even fashion. The authors―John Simon, Greil Marcus, Arthur C. Danto, and other well-known commentators from across the political spectrum―examine the arts in their relation to democracy and consider whether and how they serve one another.

The authors consider such topics as high and popular culture in democratic America; the relation of democracy to classical, jazz, and folk music; and the artistic potential of the most democratic of all arts, the movies. All of the essays are as entertaining as they are thoughtful.

With its roots in popular sentiment, democracy will forever be entwined with art, a force that powerfully molds popular taste. Democracy and the Arts speaks elegantly to that relationship and reminds readers of its enduring importance.

About this title

About the Author:

Arthur M. Melzer and Jerry Weinberger are professors of political science at Michigan State University. M. Richard Zinman is University Distinguished Professor at James Madison College, Michigan State University and coeditor of Politics and the Turn of the Century and The Public Intellectual. Melzer, Weinberg, and Zinman also edited Technology in the Western Political Tradition and History and the Idea of Progress, both from Cornell.

From Publishers Weekly:

This strikingly uneven collection of articles offers a Rashomon-like myriad of perspectives on a subject too broad to be treated in such a slim volume. Nonetheless, there are some local points of interest: A.B. Yehoshua provides a thoughtful rumination on the decline of the novel; Martha Bayles engages in a lively discussion of the refusal to grant television artistic status; Anne Hollander encapsulates the history of fashion, emphasizing its conflicting, dialogic impulses; and John Simon is, if nothing else, entertaining in his vitriolic indictment of contemporary movie culture. Some entries fall flat: Robert Brustein's contrarian essay on multiculturalism never questions the primacy of high culture; on the other hand, Arthur Danto covers his ground effectively, ranging from the 1897 opening of the Brooklyn Museum to Komar and Melamid's 1994 tongue-in-cheek survey-generated painting, America's Most Wanted in an intelligent consideration of the public function of museums. The music criticism stands out, highlighted by Stanley Crouch's casting of the U.S. Constitution as a "blues document" because it views "human beings as neither demons nor angels but some mysterious combination of both" and also because, like the blues, its survival depends on a constant renewal of interpretive improvisation. But essays on architecture, media and postmodernism are less convincing. Overall, the collection suffers from myopia: the strict segregation of artistic disciplines limits the authors, preventing them from drawing larger conclusions. Students and specialists may find individual essays of use, but this collection unfortunately seems to show that democracy and art is far too broad a topic, and whether or not that is really the case, here it is surely dealt with too narrowly. B&w photos.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0801435412
• ISBN 13: 9780801435416
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: Melzer Arthur M., Weinberger Jerry, Zinman M. Richard