Politics and the Imagination

I'm reading Politics and the Imagination by Raymond Geuss at the moment. It's a collection of essays, so I don't feel too bad about saying something about it now, before I've finished all of them. His essay "On Museums" is the most intriguing thus far. He describes museums, along with other institutions, as things that can enlighten taste by freeing it from prejudice. He writes, "A sophisticated taste prefers the complex, the novel, and the subtle over the garish, the routine, and the excessively direct" (108). And, in fact, the cultivation of this taste may lead rather to unhappiness than to happiness (as such tastes are more difficult to satisfy).

He notes a position that opposes his own: "The divergence between calls for criticism and enlightenment and calls for the reenforcement or creation of bonds of communal 'belonging' is one of the many unresolved tensions which virtually all of our social and political institutions ... must face" (111).

I think that it is this very tension between art as innovative and new, on the one hand, and art as carrying past traditions to us, on the other, that is what is so wonderful about art. Which is to say, I think it's only a tension in a minimal sense; mostly, it's just two aspects of art.

And I think that Geuss's emphasis on art as expansive and enlightening over art as uniting is skewed. Another way to say this is to defend both high and low art. Perhaps I'm moved to do this because I like the songs that play on the radio. Perhaps I'm moved to do this because it annoys me when people participate in low culture as if it's a culture outside of their own, which intrigues them only insofar as it's exotic or helps them to "mix with the masses." Perhaps it's that I'm afraid that a too close acquaintance with high culture will ruin me for anything that I can actually afford to enjoy. Perhaps I'm afraid that if all artistic energy is focused on fine art, the rest of culture, including pop culture, will go to hell in a handbag (is that a saying?).

But really, why does being able to enjoy fine wine mean you can no longer stand Trader Joe's two-buck chuck (which I must note was $3.29, last time I checked)? And why does enjoying very fine cheese mean that you can no longer eat what's wrapped in plastic at Safeway? Etc. I like trying fondue in Switzerland, for instance, and I like my mother's chili (which is actually nothing like chili, but rather a combination of ground beef, elbow macaronis and kidney beans, and it's wonderful).


BUT: One of the great things in Geuss's essay (he's complaining about museums that try hard to impose a narrative on their collection): "One of the main points of having a museum in a modern sense at all is that the individual object has some kind of stubborn independence, radical otherness, and it is good for us to be confronted with this" (115). While I don't think it's all radically other, I do think that there's a good bit of truth in this. This point made me remember overhearing some very silly tour guide at the Philip's Collection: "If there's one thing that unifies this museum, it's color." Problems: a) Can you really think of anything more vague than color? b) If there's one thing that unifies any museum, it's color. c) Actually, I thought that the Phillip's collection was a little monochromatic!