A is for Art part II: “You look so fancy I can tell”

Cover to Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Popular music has evolved across the centuries of its existence from what is now known as “classical” (with the lowercase “c”) to its current “it’s not just awful… it’s god-awful” state. Nevertheless, “pop” music as it stands was came into being at the end of the nineteenth century. The songwriters of Tin Pan Alley dominated the pop landscape while simultaneously inspiring songwriters around the world to expand the scope of pop songcraft for decades, until the radio overtook live performances of standards as the key method of dissemination of pop music.

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A is for Art part I: “I think we’re just going to have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that”

Theatrical poster for The Royal Tenenbaums

The moving picture has been around for over 100 years, and has been a part of the pop consciousness for almost as long. From the earliest days of nickelodeons, movies have been part of mass entertainment.

The earliest American film that can really be considered a work of art is most likely D.W. Griffith‘s Birth of a Nation. There are several other works produced during the first five decades of filmmaking, some of them (such as Leni Riefenstahl‘s Triumph of the Will) just as incendiary as Griffith’s film.

There are of course, more: Chaplin‘s The Great Dictator, Ford‘s Stagecoach, Lean‘s Brief Encounter, and Kurosawa‘s Rashômon, among others.

Even with all these avowed classic films, the medium was essentially scoffed at; the only awards came from the industry itself, and films were not critiqued for their merit so much as they were criticized for their content.

That all changed thanks to Cahiers du cinéma. Founded in 1951, this magazine fundamentally altered the way that film was viewed. For the first time, criticism of film became about the form as much as about the content. Essentially, films came to be viewed as objects as well as stories, similar to the fine arts.

The magazine is also responsible for advancing the auteur theory. The short version of the theory is that directors are the ones who put their personal stamp on the film, and because of it, nearly every classic film was reevaluated and directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Lean were recognized for the quality of their oeuvre. This theory still persists today; modern filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodóvar, and the Coen Brothers are considered auteurs.

Of course, Cahiers du cinéma is also responsible for introducing a bunch of fancy French words into the language of film so that obnoxious film students could let the entire world know how pretentious they are, so it wasn’t a total triumph.

Now, of course, only the stodgiest denier of reality will argue that at least some film is not Art. For over half a century now, the film medium has been seen as an arena of skilled craftsmen. Without the radical reinvention of film criticism engineered by Cahiers du cinéma, however, film’s ascendence to capital-A Art may never have happened.

A Is For Art, I Is For Introduction

Da Vinci's Mona Lisa

When we think about art, the first thing that generally springs to mind are the masterworks of the Renaissance period, when men such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles defined the visual arts for the next five centuries and counting. Painting, sculpture, and the other forms practiced by these masters had a long history even before their time, however, and have helped define capital-A Art since antiquity.

Music predates written language by several millenia. It has been used as a form of communication, and has over thousands of years and endless variations come to be viewed as the premier blending of entertainment and art through the powerful works of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and many others whom they influenced. Music in some form or other has equaled Art for centuries.

The modern idea of the novel has been around since the eighteenth century, when short fiction and epic romance became intertwined. For nearly its entire history (and in spite of pop novels, which continue to clog best-seller lists even now) the modern novel has been considered literature and, consequently, Art.

Everyone of any education thinks that they are able to define that capital-A Art. “I know it when I see it,” they say; so said Justice Potter Stewart about pornography.

But what about the pop arts? Is it possible for popular culture to transcend its vulgar origins and become Art? Of course it is.