When an artist is in the strict sense working, he of course takes into account the existing taste, interests, and capacity of his audience. ... Haughty indifference to them is not genius nor integrity; it is laziness and incompetence.
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.
American popular culture does not embrace this certification of art as work. Indeed the word ‘art’ is rarely used at all. The preferred signifier is the word ‘entertainment’, which correctly conveys that the aspirations are generally escapist, nostalgic, or anodyne. Entertainment promises to make you feel better, to help you forget your troubles, to liberate you from having to think. Even when entertainment touches deep feelings, it does so as a gesture of reassurance, a combination of sentiment and sloganeering. This is what most people say they want, and the market lets them have it without anyone in a position of intellectual or social leadership telling them that they should ask more of themselves--and might benefit thereby.
... until the latter part of the [19th] century--it was taken for granted that the business of the artist was to delight and instruct his public. ... an artist might lead his public on to appreciate finer things than they had wanted at first; but he could do this only by being, from the first, if not merely entertaining, yet entertaining, and if not completely intelligible, yet very largely intelligible.
To attract and keep an audience, art must entertain, but the significance of any art lies in its ability to express truths--to reveal and help us understand our world.
- C.S. Lewis, from his essay, “Good Work And Good Works” published in: “The World's Last Night & Other Essays”
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.
- C.S. Lewis, “The Great Divorce”
American popular culture does not embrace this certification of art as work. Indeed the word ‘art’ is rarely used at all. The preferred signifier is the word ‘entertainment’, which correctly conveys that the aspirations are generally escapist, nostalgic, or anodyne. Entertainment promises to make you feel better, to help you forget your troubles, to liberate you from having to think. Even when entertainment touches deep feelings, it does so as a gesture of reassurance, a combination of sentiment and sloganeering. This is what most people say they want, and the market lets them have it without anyone in a position of intellectual or social leadership telling them that they should ask more of themselves--and might benefit thereby.
- William A. Henry III, “In Defense of Elitism”
... until the latter part of the [19th] century--it was taken for granted that the business of the artist was to delight and instruct his public. ... an artist might lead his public on to appreciate finer things than they had wanted at first; but he could do this only by being, from the first, if not merely entertaining, yet entertaining, and if not completely intelligible, yet very largely intelligible.
- C.S. Lewis, from his essay, “Good Work And Good Works” published in: “The World's Last Night & Other Essays”
To attract and keep an audience, art must entertain, but the significance of any art lies in its ability to express truths--to reveal and help us understand our world.
- Bill Watterson