I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Art is for the elite because it has a very high price-point of entry. And when one is in that social strata, they look down at illustrators because they just draw things directly for a few hundred dollars, and that's seen as being a bit grubby. Galleries allow artists to stay relatively divorced from the financial aspects of their trade.
We grew up in a very creative environment and were exposed to the arts at a very young age, so it's not a surprise that all of us are in some form of the arts.
What artists are doing, and what people who are receiving the arts are doing, is entering into this agreement to occupy a parallel world. The parallel world is ever-expanding. We used to think that it existed only for people who were wealthy, well-born, or educated. It isn't like that.
The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen.
I think art is not an ornament or refinement at the fringes of human intelligence, I think it's at the center. It's at the core.
The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.
The arts and humanities are vastly more important in troubled times.
I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.
It may well be, of course, that America's pop culture is on balance better than our high art. I don't think so, but you can certainly make a case that the best of it aspires to a degree of aesthetic and emotional seriousness that is directly comparable to all but the very greatest works of high art.
The art world is a very prissy little thing over in the corner, while the major cultural forces are being determined by techno science.