Art and Everyman
us shrink from any whittling away of the substance of democracy. Of 21 men and women who commented on J. B. Priestley’s complaint that the blind lead the blind when the multitude decide questions of taste only two supported him without qualification. A majority did not support him at all, but opposed him, although there could be no doubt of the accuracy of his statement that it is lunacy to leave culture in the hands of people who do not even pretend to know anything about it. If that were actually done in what he calls cultural democracy the arts would be in a more parlous state than is the case now. It would mean that the number who can now. enter "worlds of wonder and delight," ‘small as it is, would be infinitely smaller, and that the journey from aesthetic barbarism to aesthetic civilisation would be infinitely longer than it now is in every country in which the people rule. But the situation is not as bad as that. Art is already to a considerable extent in the hands of artists, and always has been since the first cave-drawing. No one can make artists sing or dance or paint pictures or write poems if they don’t want to. The worst the world can do to them is starve them if they don’t do what it wants, which in practice usually means making them earn their bread in some other way. That of course is barbarous and wasteful and makes life in general more brutish; but it leaves art in the hands of the artists. In any case, democracy, as one contributor pointed out, is indivisible. Political democracy includes cultural democracy and can’t be separated from it: It may work slowly, clumsily, and blindly in the field of culture, but that is the price we have to pay for its basic liberty. It means houses that perhaps 2 per cent. of the population think ugly, music that 5 per cent. would sooner not hear, poems and pictures that offend 1 per cent. But that is not felt as an oppressive price by the rest of the community, and prescribed or dictated art would be, lz is a healthy sign that most of
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 413, 23 May 1947, Page 5
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375Art and Everyman New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 413, 23 May 1947, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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