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Originally Posted by SpectralJulianIsNotDead
Is it possible for something to be unquestionably high art or unquestionably low art since the advent of post-modernism?
Even though we can never know for sure what the artist's true intention was?
John Cage could have been lying about his music just to make it more popular in the avant-garde community. Perhaps he really set out to make pop-music but failed miserably.
Perhaps Britney Spears whole persona is very high art on her part and she is really a genious making an avant-garde piece of art- herself, the annoying pop artist.
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The Cage assertion must be bunkum. He sets out his ideas incredibly lucidly - the question is not whether he was a 'secret fraud' but whether YOU consider him a fraud. If you consider him a fraud, then you've got an argument from my quarters, but if you don't, all is well.
The Britney question is difficult - I have a strong feeling that, while the structure of pop music is resolutely unsophisticated, having had only minor variations to verse/ chorus/ verse and the circle of fifths since the 40's, the 'subtlety' and 'nuance' that we find in Beethoven's composition is displaced (a postmodernist would say 'reborn') in the production. I'm pretty certain that 'production' isn't quite a criterion which defers structure, that is, the 'avant-garde' production of Justin Timberkins, Britters or the Beach Boys and the Beatles is not quite substantive enough to qualify it as an 'ars nova'.
I'm not entirely sure we've seen the advent of post-modernism, but that's an entirely different kettle of fish. Suffice it to say, I enjoy some post-modernist writers, but I rarely agree with their philosophies to any significant degree. In fact, I have been known to speel torrents of venom at the mere mention of Baudriallard.
Hello, faintly inarticulate post.
*Edit: Didn't actually answer the question - the qualia of high and low art haven't really changed that much. It's not really a question for me, I don't have a problem enjoying high or low art. I think the division is troubled but ineffably there, but I don't have a problem enjoying Schoenberg or, say, Happy Hardcore. The division exists as a conversational shortcut for me, each side has its implications and suppositions, namely that 'high' is generally more cerebral, and is enjoyed by the criteria that that invokes, whereas 'low' is somewhat more base, more visceral. There is only really an issue if one appreciates only low art, although most 'pure' high art appreciators tend to be cuntrags.