A Plea for Art

I

I’ve spent too many hours in my life fighting the art populism wars, impotently feuding against the dominant cultural impulse of our time, the infantilization of all culture. Consider the notion of a place for mature art, or serious art, or highbrow art, pick whatever term you like; you will find that the war was long ago lost, and the populists won. Comic book movies won. Music where late adolescent women sing autotuned over horrifically overproduced beats won. High art, art that seeks to inspire deeper, rarer, and more difficult experiences than momentary pleasure, art that takes as part of its sacred duty the work of discomforting its audience, is on life support. And, increasingly, acolytes of the old ways like me arrive pre-marginalized, assumed out of the conversation, congregants for a dead religion. The people have spoken.