A cultural issue, which has yet to be resolved, is the question of how to talk about art. Of course, this issue resists being permanently resolved, and I certainly do not expect to tease out an enduring solution. But the point remains: Today, our approaches to discussing art are inadequate.

I should clarify what I mean by an approach to discussing art. Most discourse about art falls into one of two categories: the scholarly approach and the populist approach. The scholarly approach is often highly academic and thus inaccessible to the majority of a public that is taking in works of art at an unprecedented rate, whether through the ubiquity of television and its 24-hour movie channels or the convenience of online services like iTunes and Netflix. I do not mean to dismiss academic criticism, but even it effectively acknowledges its own inaccessibility by constantly alluding to theories and theorists relatively unknown to the aforementioned public. Those theorists are often incredibly interesting and worthwhile reads, but they no doubt require a great deal of patience and a pre-existing knowledge of the ideas of other theorists. I will not call this elitism, but I will say it is a lot to ask of a public being barraged by works of art like never before.

So then, what is what I have termed the “populist approach?” You hear it in a crowd emerging from a theater after the end of a movie; you hear it from backseat drivers commenting on your choice of soundtrack in the car; you even hear it, often painfully, in a humanities discussion section when students are called on at random to offer an interpretation of an assigned work of literature which they obviously have not thought much about. This is the type of discussion you have with your roommates when debating about what movie to go see that night. “No, that movie looks awful,” “That song sucks,” “Such a good book,” etc.

But no one wants to read me rant about modes of discussing art, which I have done in the past to dubious effect. I can diagnose the problems with the way we talk about art till my fingers fall off, but interpreting problems only goes so far (shout out to Karl Marx). The dilemma of our discourse about art, which is so often an “either/or” situation (either inaccessibly esoteric or mind-numbingly shallow), deserves a solution.

First, I should say why this problem deserves resolution. The way we talk about art now has a direct effect on the future of art itself. If enough of the public says a movie is shit, chances are a movie like it will not be made again. Record companies, like any other industry, obsess over popular trends in taste as reflected by the commercial success of songs and albums. Yes, I am referring almost exclusively to the overtly commercial arts (cinema and music), because they are the arts that the greatest number of people interact with most. Painting is relatively admirable in its ability to elude the tendrils of commerce at the popular level; even so, a considerably more discriminate and equally questionable market exists for the sale of paintings.

If art plays such a crucial role in the functioning and preservation of our socioeconomic system and our ways of talking about art affect its future so dramatically, it should be clear that our discourse has a tangible impact.

As I have said before, it seems almost impossible for us to talk about works of art today without judging them in some respect. What I propose is a shift in the criteria by which we judge, if we must. Works of art ought to be evaluated according to their ability to stir creative feelings in their audience, feelings which will ideally be materialized as original works.

There are numerous reasons why a widespread increase in artistic production is a good idea: Art is expression, but art is also therapy. Furthermore, a proliferation of artwork might be a decisive step towards eroding the concept of art as industry. The commercial element of art has led to the abortion of too many worthwhile projects for not seeming profitable enough on paper.

The criterion of evaluation I propose is of course entirely interpretative (or, if you prefer, subjective), but it must be. No work of art is received in the same way by two different people. Perception and interpretation are inextricably intertwined; if in order to discuss works of art we must judge them, which seems to be the case, shouldn’t our techniques for judging reflect that?

The first step towards reinventing the relation between society and art, and by extension the relation between society and ourselves, lies in changing the way we talk about art. Encouraging the production of works of art which in turn inspire us to pursue our own projects seems an effective means of accomplishing this.

Dan Sullivan is a Junior majoring in History. Send your questions and comments to [email protected]