The public realm is not the purview of the elites - it belongs to us all - so we shouldn't expect elites to program and codify exclusively for other elites
I hate to tell you this, but it already is...always has been...always will be. And there is a very practical reason why the elites do control this.....survival. We'd probably be long extinct if it were all left up to the Sun readers.
I'd say there is a distinct anti-populism streak in much of modernism.
I would agree that there is...but it isn't the point, but rather the byproduct.
From a strict dictionary definition you're correct, but when we call someone (or groups of someones) ignorant we're talking about a little bit more than just a simple lack of knowledge.
You're confusing me with a Sun reader. I'm not throwing around words like "ignernt" the way people use the term "retarded".
What is the benefit of using art and architecture to alienate the uninformed?
No-one creates art for the purpose of alienating people...quite the opposite actually...they are expressing themselves externally...not internally. It is the "uninformed" who have alienated themselves, not the other way around.
They weren't seeking to create a secret and codified language that could only be fully appreciated if you were in on the joke
You keep coming up with this secret modernist club...I have no idea where this comes from. We've already fully embraced it. Where's the big secret?
Modernism didn't free us from anything but decoration and historicism, and if anything, distilled elitism into it's purist form
Oh really? Well let me tell ya...the nazis didn't close down the Bauhaus because they didn't like their buildings.
It's becoming quite clear that it isn't just Mystery boy, or whoever it was that got this debate rolling that needs to take a closer look...you seem to have interpreted a lot of it backwards yourself....you really seem to have a rather large, misplaced chip about it.
buildings that don't even really exist unless you understand what they're rejecting or embracing.
Even without understanding excactly the complexities at work in mies's mind when he designed it (which I don't completely I'm sure...he's quite the contradictory sod at times), I can still look at it and simply appreciate the form, the proportion, the materials, the use of space, etc, etc, which is rather easy....and beautiful as well.
It's why the TD Centre was such a big deal when it was built, and why it probably wouldn't be one now.
Mies's work has been copied a zillion times, and still is. There's a reason why it was a big deal then...and still is a big deal now...being that good isn't that easy. You're waaaay off the mark on that one.
You think of them as elite structures only because of what they contain.
Absolutely do not. My fault for picking those examples and making it easy for you to jump to that conclusion, but your fault for doing it.
It isn't only elites, or elitist attitudes, that push society forward.
Not always I'm sure, but in terms of what we are discussing...the higher arts, then I'm afraid that it's usually the cream of the crop which dictates this. But yes, in a lot of ways, the inmates have definetely taken over the prison....how else do you explain hip hop?
Like I said, we were much better off when "experts" told us what was cool. We'd be better read, better dressed, and listening to much better music.
Why not? Should Art and Architecture appreciation only be the purview of the learned and established?
Uh...no...who ever said Sun readers shouldn't appreciate art & architecture? I think they should...the question is, what's stopping them? It's their non-participatory behavior which spawns their taste that I don't want getting out of the box.
