1 Popular Art Aaron Smuts Introduction It is widely assumed that there is an important difference between the music of Mozart and that of Michael Jackson, or between the films of Ingmar Berman and those of Michael Bay. Mozart's symphonies are high art, whereas Michael Jackson's songs are works of popular art, if they are art at all. The label "popular art" carries strong negative connotations. Often it is often applied with a sneer. The common assumption is that works of popular are less serious, less artistically valuable. Popular art is driven by a profit motive; real art, high art, is produced for loftier goals, such as aesthetic appreciation. Further, popular art is formulaic and gravitates toward the lowest common denominator. High art is innovative. It enriches, elevates, and inspires; popular art just entertains. Worse, popular art inculcates cultural biases. It is a corporate tool of ideological indoctrination, making contingent social and economic arrangements seem necessary. Or so the common view holds. In light of these common assumptions, we must ask just what marks the distinction between high art and popular art? Is there really any important difference at all? Is there reason to think that popular is by its very nature aesthetically inferior to high art? In what follows, I will consider some of the prominent answers to these questions. The discussion is organized around questions concerning two general topics: (1) the nature of popular art, and (2) the putative aesthetic deficiencies of popular art.1

Question 1: Is there a difference? Although it may seem obvious that there are essential differences between works of high art and works of popular art, a clear distinction is very hard to draw. Indeed it is so difficult that we might be tempted to think that there is not a real difference after all, at least not an intrinsic difference. Before we consider the skeptical position, we should consider a few ways in which one might try to mark the divide. I will consider three options: popularity, profit, and entertainment. Popularity, Profit, and Entertainment The very name "popular art" immediately suggests a characterizing distinction, namely, popular art is popular. What marks the distinction, according to this suggestion, is the 1

There are many other important questions in the literature on popular art that cannot be addressed here. For instance: Is there anything politically liberating about popular art? Art video games art? What is interactivity? Are comics art? What is the work of rock music? How do works of popular art engage the emotions? How can we evaluate works of popular art on moral and ideological grounds? Is popular art essentially politically repressive? By far the best introduction to the area is Noel Carroll's book A Philosophy of Mass Art (Oxford UP, 1998).

2 sheer number of people who like the work. Consider the difference between the films of Ingmar Bergman and those of Michael Bay: Bergman enjoys far fewer fans. "Transformers" (Bay 2007) is a work of popular art because it has far more fans than does "The Passion of Anna" (Bergman 1969). That is why we call "Transformers" a work of popular art and not "The Passion of Anna." Bay's movies are popular; Bergman's are not. Although this method of drawing the distinction is implied in the label, it clearly will not do. Mere popularity does not suffice to make a work an instance of popular art. This is because there are indisputable works of high art that have extremely wide appeal, such as: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Michelangelo's "David," and Shakespeare's "Hamlet." As the preceding list makes clear, there are widely adored works in nearly every artform, works that are decidedly not popular art, at least not in the sense at issue. Conversely, there are works of popular art that are flops. These works fail to secure large audiences. Hence, although works of popular art tend to be more popular than works of high art, mere popularity will not do to mark the divide. Accordingly, it is fair to conclude that the name "popular art" is misleading. For this reason, some reject the label in favor of derisive terms such as "kitsch" and "mass art."2 I will evaluate some alternative labels in the next section, but for now, let us consider a few alternative ways of drawing the distinction. As we have seen, mere popularity cannot draw the appropriate distinction. Part of the problem is that popularity is purely an extrinsic feature. It seems that nearly any work can become popular. But we want to know if there is any intrinsic difference between the works that we call "popular art" and those of high art. Why do works of popular art tend to be so much more popular? Although it is unclear if the intentions of artists are intrinsic features of their works, it might be more profitable to draw the distinction between popular art and high art based on the goals of the artist. What is it that the makers of popular intend to achieve? Why did Michael Bay make "Armageddon" (1988)? What was his ultimate goal? It seems clear: He was out to make money. We thus have an obvious second candidate for the distinction: profit. Real art, high art, is made to afford aesthetic experience; in contrast, popular art is made with an eye towards generating profit. Mozart, we like to think, did not compose the "Marriage of Figaro" to make a few bucks. No, he created the opera with aesthetic goals in mind. He wanted to make a beautiful work of art. His goals were aesthetic, not economic. Following this line of thought, the second candidate holds that the difference between high art and popular art is that the production of high art has nothing to do with money, whereas, popular art has everything to do with making money.

2

Greenberg prefer "kitsch". McDonald proposes "mass art". Noel Carroll adopts McDonald's label, but in a non pejorative sense. I discuss Carroll's suggestion in the next section. See: Clement Greenberg, "Avantgarde and Kitsch," in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. i., ed. John O'Brien (U Chicago P, 1986); and, Dwight McDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture," in Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White (Free Press, 1957).

3 The second candidate certainly tracks a widely shared view that popular art is a purely commercial enterprise. But the suggestion that an eye towards profit is sufficient to make a work an instance of popular art is far too crude. To return to the previous example, one should not forget that Mozart worked as a court composer. He produced dozens of works on commission. Similarly, the history of Western portrait painting is largely one of work-for-pay. The suggestion that any considerations of profit make a work one of popular art has the absurd consequence that most of what we think of as high art is in fact popular art. Hence, the profit motive will not work as a plausible criterion of popular art either. In reply, the defender of the profit motive distinction might try to refine the view. The difference cannot be drawn by a miniscule amount of for-profit considerations, but when the profit motive is primary, or perhaps just prominent, then the work is one of popular art. The revised suggestion holds that high art can be produced with profit in mind, but if profit is a significant motivating factor, then the work is one of popular art. Unfortunately, this fuzzy revision fares no better. If Mozart was primarily concerned with paying his bills when we composed "The Clemency of Titus," this would not make the opera an instance of popular art. Primary or incidental, it does not matter. The strength of the profit motive does not help make the distinction between high art and popular art. Once again, the defender of the profit motive distinction might make a refinement. Merely being concerned with making money from a work is not enough to make a work an instance of popular art. This is clear. But when considerations of profit enter into decisions of how the artwork should be made, when artistic choices are governed by profit considerations, then the work is one of popular art. Mozart may have composed "The Clemency of Titus" in order to put food on the table, but this had nothing to do with his aesthetic choices. Sure, one must compose a work to fit an occasion, or produce a painting that will fit in a normal size room, but apart from such generic considerations, the aesthetic choices in the production of high art are not made with an eye towards profit. When they are, the defender of the refined profit distinction holds, the work is an instance of popular art. This revised version of the profit distinction fares better, but like its predecessors it too has fatal problems. For starters, it is hopelessly naïve. The distinction reflects a silly romantic ideal of the starving artist working to create a genuine expression of his or her passion. But few artworks are created in flurries of uncompromising expressivity. Put aside these teenage fantasies and consider portrait painters once again: A successful portrait painter must flatter her patron, else she will quickly go out of business. Surely a portrait painter must make some important aesthetic considerations with an eye towards getting paid. The patron must look dignified and attractive. But aesthetically relevant for-profit consideration could not make Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" a work of popular art. In consideration of these difficulties, it is safe to conclude that there is no clean distinction to be found here; we will have to find another way to mark the divide between popular and high art.

4 The preceding discussion of the problems with the profit motive distinction suggests yet a third way to draw the contrast. Rather than the profit motive cutting a sharp divide, perhaps we can appeal to a related goal: entertainment. Popular art seeks to entertain. High art does more. The defender of the entertainment distinction cannot say that merely intending to entertain makes a work one of popular art. This is too crude. It would be ridiculous to suggest that Shakespeare did not intend to entertain his audiences with "A Midsummer Night's Dream." So the claim has to be that high art does more than merely entertain. Works of high art are also about matters of importance. For instance, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is not merely entertaining; it also contains profound reflections on the nature of romantic love. Works of popular art do nothing more than merely entertain. Once again, this distinction fails to mark the desired division. It is too permissive. It allows far too much into the category of high art. Indisputable works of popular, such as the "screwball" comedies of the 1930's, contain profound reflections on romantic love.3 "Bringing up Baby" (Hawks 1932) is not a mere vehicle of entertainment, whatever that might mean. Nor are popular television shows, such as "Mad Men" (ABC). But Hollywood comedies and ABC mini-series are popular art if anything is. The entertainment criterion is also too restrictive. It rules out absolute music—music without words. Although absolute music can be profoundly moving, profoundly sad, or profoundly uplifting, it cannot be profound. Pure non-linguistic sonic structures cannot be about anything. And a work cannot be profound unless it is about something. Hence, absolute music can do little more than provide aesthetic experiences.4 But works that merely afford aesthetic experience are mere vehicles of entertainment, albeit of an aesthetic sort. Hence, the entertainment criterion entails an absurdity—it suggests that absolute music is popular art. Since this is clearly false, we should reject the criterion. Further, the criterion gets the distinction backwards. The majority of popular music is in the form of song, which contain words. Not just random words, songs often tell small stories. Hence, any given popular love song is likely to provide more commentary on the nature of love than the entire tradition of symphonic music. Sad songs do not try to entertain audiences, if by entertain we mean provide an enjoyable experience. No, sad songs can be emotionally devastating, a far cry from entertainment.5 Hence, sad pop songs would be excluded and absolute music would be included in the category "popular art" according to the third way of drawing the distinction. But that gets things backwards. The entertainment criterion appears to offer no help at all.

3

See: Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (Harvard UP, 1981). For further defense of this claim, see: Peter Kivy, Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on Purely Musical Experience (Cornell UP, 1990), ch. 10; and Peter Kivy, "Another Go at Musical Profundity" Stephen Davies and the Game of Chess," British Journal of Aesthetics 43.4 (2003): 401-411. 5 For a discussion of sad songs, see: Aaron Smuts, "'Rubber Ring': Why Do We Listen to Sad Songs"," in Narrative, Emotion, and Insight, eds. John Gibson and Noel Carroll (Penn State UP, 2010). 4

5 Difficulties such as these have lead some to think that there is no clear way to differentiate between high art and popular art based on intrinsic features of the works. Instead, the difference between high art and popular art must come from outside.6 What is the most likely candidate? Consider the audiences: Who goes to the symphony? Who goes to avant-garde dance performances? It's not Joe the Plumber; It's the educated and the well-to-do. Accordingly, one might argue that the distinction is merely marked by social class.7 Works of popular art are those enjoyed by the masses, whereas high art is that which is enjoyed by the upper-classes. There is no intrinsic difference between the two kinds of art, only an extrinsic class association.8 Although the suggestion that there is no intrinsic difference between popular art and high art is prima facie plausible, it runs into two serious problems. The first problem for any class-based distinction is that artistic tastes do not cleanly track economic and social class. For instance, in America there appears to be nearly universal preference for popular art. Perhaps only the well to do can afford tickets to the opera, but amongst this class only a few prefer opera to other forms of popular music. George Bush, for instance, preferred country to classical music. The second problem is more serious. If there is only an extrinsic class-based distinction, how is it that members of the relevant classes can pick out the appropriate works? Without any intrinsic differences, it is something of a mystery how we can classify various works into the appropriate categories. There must be some intrinsic differences, else the works could not be sorted by the appropriate social classes. The class associations must be dependent on some intrinsic differences, not the other way around.

Mass Art I have been discussing popular art as if it were synonymous with "low" art, contrasting it with "high" art. But perhaps the most illuminating contrast is not with high art, but with avant-garde art. Rather than attempting to account for all of what falls under the crude concept of popular art, some argue that it is more instructive to think of a sub species of the popular, a species that has become increasingly prominent in the last century, that of mass art. Prior to the twentieth century, the question of interest is what differentiates folk art from high art. Folk art includes various crafts as well local traditions of music and dance. But with the rise of mass communication technologies, folk art was eclipsed by music on the radio, films in theaters, and shows on television. Local traditions were replaced by works enjoyed across nations and the globe—works with mass appeal.

6

Novitz and Levine provide alternate accounts of the distinction. David Novitz, The Boundaries of Art (Temple UP, 1992). Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Harvard UP, 1988). 7 This style of eliminativism can be found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. See: Pierre Bourdieu, Dinstinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Harvard UP, 1984). 8 A further way to draw the distinction might be on modes of aesthetic appreciation. See: Ted Cohen, "High Art and Low Art, and High and Low Audiences," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 (1999): 137-43.

6 Accordingly, Noël Carroll argues that the bulk of contemporary popular art is what he calls mass art.9 He argues that many TV shows, films, songs, comic books, video games, and other kinds of popular art share a couple important features. First, they are massproduced and can be delivered to multiple reception sites simultaneously. Second, they are designed so that they will be readily comprehensible to the largest number of people possible. They are mass-produced for the masses. Hence, we should call them "mass art," in a non-pejorative, purely descriptive sense. The second feature of mass art, that it be designed for near universal accessibility, is most important. It helps mark a clear distinction between popular art and avant-garde art. Audiences require very little training in order to understand "Transformers" or to appreciate Michael Jackson's "Thriller." However, the same cannot be said of avantgarde painting, dance, music, or film. The avant-garde targets an audience of those well versed in the contemporary theoretical landscape and knowledgeable about the history of art. As we saw earlier, those who deny that there are intrinsic differences between popular art and avant-garde art have difficulty explaining how we can effectively sort works into the proper category. But the defender of mass art has a clear explanation. We can effectively sort works of mass art from avant-garde works by assessing their accessibility. The accessibility condition draws a nice distinction between avant-garde art and mass art. And it tracks what seemed right about the "popular" in "popular art." Mass art is designed so that it can be popular. This feature of mass art has important implications. Most importantly, it places restrictions on mass artists. Radical formal experimentation will be impossible if the work must be widely accessible. This explains, for instance, why classical continuity editing is ubiquitous among popular films worldwide.10 Since it takes very little training to understand eye-line matches we would expect to find popular filmmakers using the editing pattern. And we do. One worry about this characterization of mass art is that it misdescribes much of what we find on television, the radio, and in movie theaters. Whether the second criterion is apt depends on what exactly one means by "accessible." Popular music and television programs are not produced for undifferentiated masses. No, they are targeted to particular audiences, to particular demographics. The worry for the second criterion is that much mass art is accessible in some ways, but not others. It is true that we should not expect to find atonal music in the top 40 charts. But many works of popular art are inaccessible in other, less radical ways. Although it does not require much tutoring, Heavy Metal music is largely emotionally inaccessible to those who prefer easy listening. Even the humor in television programs designed for niche demographics is largely inaccessible to those outside. Hence, the worry is that the second criterion of mass art excludes much of what should be included. If Heavy Metal is not designed for maximum accessibility, then it is not mass 9

Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art. For a good overview of the conventions of continuity editing, see: David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson, Film Art (McGraw-Hill, 1997), ch. 8. 10

7 art. If so, then the concept of mass art encompasses little of the domain of popular art. Since we are looking for a concept that can account for the bulk of popular art, we will have to look elsewhere. The defender of the second criterion of mass art has a plausible defense: restrict the notion of accessibility. Clearly the fans of easy listening can understand what emotions Heavy Metal music is designed to elicit. They can comprehend the work. They just do not like it. However, even if we accept a more restricted notion of accessibility, say, as comprehensible, a related worry arises. Mere accessibility is not enough for success. To be successful, people need to like the work. The problem is that tastes vary. Popular music, movies, and television shows are designed to appeal to particular demographics. Sure, there are globally successful action movies such as "Avatar" (Cameron, 2009). And stories of love, loss, and redemption are universal. But there is also a great deal of popular art that has far more limited appeal. One does not tell a love story, but a particular love story set in a particular place with particular people. Much supernatural horror, for instance, does not have appeal outside of the relevant religious group. Perhaps this does not so much as count as an objection to the characterization of mass art, as much as it is an extension to the view. The need for a work to be comprehensible to untutored audiences has great explanatory power. It does a good job of accounting for the commonality of core structural features of popular art. But when it comes to the particular content, we often need to take into account the demographic designs. Much of what we call popular art is not designed to appeal to the largest number of people possible. This fact has important implications for philosophical arguments concerning the aesthetic and political nature of mass art. Although we can draw a clear distinction between mass art and avant-garde art, it is not so clear if there is a principled way to demarcate popular art from high art. Further, it is not entirely clear that such a distinction is helpful for any theoretical or practical purposes. What purpose does it server to classify a genre, such as melodrama, or an artform, such as that of video games, as belonging to popular art? What do we know about any particular work when we learn that it is an instance of popular art? What does this imply about its nature? It seems very little. It appears that we would be better off finding new ways to talk about art. The label "art cinema" might be crude and largely uninformative, but the label "popular art" certainly is.

Question 2: Is popular art aesthetically inferior? Why is so much popular art bad? In the preceding discussion of the nature of popular art, I used the films of Michael Bay as examples. The problem is that he makes, what any self-respecting critic would say are, awful movies. By any credible standard of taste, "Bad Boys" and "Transformers" are terrible. They may have done well at the box office, but they fall short of any artistic value. These are not isolated examples. When one looks around at the array of popular art, one finds a nearly endless array of drek. Just

8 turn on the radio or TV. What do you find? Bad music and bad shows. Certainly there must be some explanation. It must have to do with the nature of popular art. In what follows, I will consider the two most important arguments against the aesthetic value of popular art: (1) the argument from the appeal to the lowest common denominator, and (2) the argument from entertainment.11 Both of these arguments proceed from assumptions about the nature of popular art. They are philosophical arguments. They hold that the very nature of popular art makes it inferior to high art and the avant-garde.

The Lowest Common Denominator The overwhelming majority of contemporary popular art is what, based on the preceding discussion, we might call mass art. It is plausible to think that works of mass art are created so that they will be accessible to large numbers of people. The purveyors of mass art hope that their works will draw huge audiences. This much is clear. The larger the audience, the more money there is to be made in sales and advertising. It is this very goal, some argue, that accounts for the aesthetic desert of mass art. In order to appeal to the largest number of people, works of mass art must be carefully designed so as not to exclude anyone.12 The operative maxim is this: alienate no one. Hence, works of mass art should be designed to be assessable to the widest possible group—that is, they should be designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It is only by appealing to the lowest common denominator that a work can have the widest possible audience. Hence, this is why we find so much bad mass art. Intellectually challenging, politically progressive, aesthetically innovative work would alienate or just downright confuse mass audiences. Mass art is by its very nature artistically inferior. There is certainly something to the argument from the lowest common denominator. Mass art is indeed designed to be intelligible by large groups of people. Makers of mass art certainly do not want to alienate significant portions of their audience. But, one might reply, this fact does not push mass artworks toward bad taste. Quite the contrary: mass art gravitates toward the middle. Artworks featuring pure mindless nonsense would alienate most viewers. There is no good reason to think otherwise. A film simply featuring a nude bottom will ever win an Oscar, despite the hilarious prediction of the dystopic future provided by "Idiocracy" (Judge 2006). Not only is such inanity discouraged by the general intelligence of the market, but aesthetic innovation is encouraged. Of course, network TV is not avant-garde, but in just the last two decades we have seen several innovative series, from "Twin Peaks" to "Mad Men," not to mention the excellent offerings from HBO such as "The Sopranos" and "Deadwood".

11

There are other arguments against the aesthetic value of popular art. The two most important are the passivity argument and the formul argument. Since neither of these appeals to the nature of popular art, I decided to focus on two more philosophical charges. For an overview of the others, see the first chapter of Carroll's Mass Art. 12 McDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture."

9 Although popular art is not pulled towards some dismal lowest common denominator, it would be disingenuous to deny how much of what we find on the TV, radio, and in the cinema is devoid of artistic value. If the taste and intelligence of the population is distributed in a bell curve, then we would expect to find more shows like "The Sopranos," but we do not. Perhaps, the critic might hold, society is divided into a couple of humps, with the largest on the left-side—the side of bad taste. If so, mass art that designed to appeal to the largest possible audience will move left, toward the lower end of the taste spectrum. Perhaps this is indeed the case, but the defender of mass art need not fear. Mass art is not necessarily bad; it will just create lots of bad works to appeal to the fans of Michael Bay. But we would also expect to find shows like the "Sopranos" designed for an evergrowing market. Again, it is crucial to remember that not all popular art is designed for the largest possible audience. Much of what we find on the TV is created for a particular demographic and for particular communities of taste. It is hard to imagine that there is much overlap between those who watch the Lifetime channel and those who watch professional wrestling. Rather than gravitating toward the lowest common denominator, we should expect to find mass art gravitating toward the tastes of various audiences. As the channels of delivery multiply and where there is an audience of a substantial size, we will find artworks designed for their pleasure. Hence, we should expect to find a variety of works of differing quality. And, if one takes the time to look this is indeed what one will find. It is equally important to highlight a contravening tendency against over-specialization. It is simply this: people like to talk about art—movies, music, and TV shows. Sure, the internet has made is possible to form a fan club for almost any curiosity, but people also interact with coworkers, friends, and strangers waiting for buses. Without a common array of reference, we become isolated. Mere sociability creates a common audience, or at least large clusters of commonality.

The Argument from Entertainment Earlier we considered a few unsuccessful ways that one might try to make a clean distinction between popular art and high art. One of the more plausible attempts concerns the goals of popular art. Unlike high art and unlike the avant-garde, popular art seeks to entertain. As noted above, this distinction is far too crude. Surely, Shakespeare intended to entertain audiences with "A Midsummer Night's Dream." So, the refined suggestion holds, popular art merely seeks to entertain, whereas high art and avant-garde art have other goals. There is no need to rehearse the reply, but a similar charge can be made against the aesthetic value of popular art. To be successful, works of popular art must not merely be accessible to untutored audiences, they must be appealing. People need to like the works. And people tend to like what they find entertaining. Hence, to be successful popular art must primarily be designed to provide entertainment. Since entertainment is inferior to

10 the goals that the creators of high art and avant-garde art are free to pursue, popular art will tend to be inferior. It will tend to be inferior because of its very nature. This argument does not hold that popular art will necessarily be inferior. It allows for exceptions that prove the rule. There are certainly many failed avant-garde works that achieve few of their ambitious, putatively superior goals. Compared to these, a highly entertaining work of popular art will be superior. But these are exceptions. Further, as we noted in the preceding discussion, popular art can do more than merely entertain. Although many works of popular art are designed to entertain audiences, they can also be aesthetically innovative, within certain limits, and offer social criticism. The objection takes this under consideration. Again, it allows for instances of popular art that will be aesthetically superior to failed instances of high art. But, once again, these are exceptions. Popular art will tend to be inferior, or so the thinking goes. To be even remotely plausible, the argument from entertainment has to admit of major qualifications. It is implausible to claim that any given instance of popular art will be inferior to any instance of high art or avant-garde art. But in allowing for exceptions, the conclusion of the argument proves to be very weak. If we acknowledge that some works of popular art can do more than merely entertain, and that some will be aesthetic successes, then we cannot infer much about any given work from its classification. That is, we cannot reason from the fact that something is a work of popular to the conclusion that it is therefore bad. We cannot even conclude that it is inferior to all high art and avant-garde art. Assuming that entertainment is indeed inferior to the goals of avantgarde art, all we could conclude is that any given work of popular art is inferior to the very best avant-garde art—a hollow victory for the critic. Given the qualifications, when evaluating works of popular art, we cannot reason that they are necessarily defective. We have to consider the individual works, one by one. Hence, the argument from entertainment does very little theoretical work. At most it might help explain why there is so much bad popular art. But here too, the argument runs into problems. The central issue concerns the putative inferiority of entertainment to the relatively unspecified loftier goals of high art and avant-garde art. Consider aesthetic goals: As noted earlier, affording aesthetic experience is just one form of entertainment. Perhaps aesthetic experience is superior to other forms of entertainment, but this tells us little about the value of popular art; popular artworks, too, frequently afford aesthetic experiences. And if aesthetic value is what is at issue, most avant-garde conceptual art is far inferior to rock music, since much conceptual art eschews aesthetic value for theoretical panache. In order to make the case against popular art, the critic needs to identify a set of superior goals that popular art is incapable of pursuing. Lacking such a list, we have no good reason to think that popular art tends to be inferior in any way to the avant-garde. The

11 burden of proof is on the critic. As is, we have no reason to think that a video game, for instance, will be of little artistic value merely because video games are popular art.13 The argument from entertainment is closely related to concerns about profit considerations. As indicated in the preceding discussion, much of what is considered high art is not immune from the world of commerce (think Sotherby's or Christie's). Even the aesthetic choices of portrait painters are influenced by for-profit considerations. If anything, the influence of the market is even more pronounced in today's art world. But what we did not consider earlier is whether profit considerations necessarily adversely affect the aesthetic value of works of art. Although it seems obvious that profit and art do not mix, upon further consideration, there does not seem to be any reason why not. Consider the problem from the opposite angle: What is it that draws audiences to action movies? In part, it is clearly the aesthetic experience that the works provide through both spectacular explosions and engrossing narrative complications. John McTiernan could not have profited from "Die Hard" (1988) if no one went to the movie. Similarly, Michael Jackson would not have earned billions if people had not enjoyed his music. You make more money if more people like your work. In so far as people prefer aesthetically superior works of art, it pays to make better art. And it certainly does appear that many people appreciate aesthetic value. Hence, there is no reason to think that profit concerns necessarily adversely affect the value of an artwork. In fact, profit consideration might even be conducive to excellence by motivating artists to make good works.

Conclusion It is likely the case that most of what we consider high art may be better than the bulk of popular art, but this is not a result of the nature of popular art. Rather it is a product of how something becomes high art. Much of what now falls into the category of high art, such as Shakespeare's plays, was the popular art of the day. Our category of high art is more honorific than classificatory. That is, it includes what has been deemed excellent. The high art that we find collected in literary anthologies and gathered into museums are typically works of recognized excellence. The popular often becomes canonized through the test of time. Hence, it is plausible that what differentiates the popular from high art is simply recognized excellence. Contemporary artists working in artforms and genres closely tied to a history of recognized excellence tend to be classified as high art. But as we have seen, no clear, principled distinction can be made that will track common classificatory practice, not popularity, profit, or entertainment. Further, pre-theoretical practice seems to be based on a series of mistakes concerning the putative purity of high art.

13

For a defense of the claim that video games can be art, see: Aaron Smuts, "Are Video Games Art?," Contemporary Aesthetics 3 (2001): 1-15.

12 The distinction between high and popular art is a hodgepodge of tradition and prejudice. However, a more precise distinction can be drawn between mass art and avant-garde art. This distinction does some productive theoretical work. It can, for instance, account for the commonality of structural features that make narratives accessible. But based on a mere classification, we can conclude next to nothing about the aesthetic value of a work of art. In closing, one thing more needs to be said in defense of mass art. It is not fair to merely highlight all the bad mass art and to pretend that there is a special problem concerning the dearth of excellence. Mass art is not alone here; it is not as if most avant-garde art is good. Take a walk through any random art gallery. Most of what you see will be awful. Does this have to do with the nature of the avant-garde, or is there a more general explanation? I suspect that what we might find at work is Sturgeon's Law: "ninety percent of everything is crud." Since we are surrounded by mass art, we see a lot more awful mass art than avant-garde art. But that gives us no reason to think that popular art is necessarily or even typically inferior to the avant-garde.