Art of mass

The expression Art of mass describes an artistic production concerned with the popular culture. This concept has vague contours: what the popular (popularity, people?), what distinguishes the popular from the folk ? The mass of which it is question it does produce these works or can it only consume them? Starting from how much people a crowd does become a mass?
La question eminently complex and, although little is approached, plane with the top of all the debates which surround the Contemporary art.

One can without too much risks pose as principle which the Art of mass would be opposable with a concerning Art the cultivated culture of humanistic tradition, territory which has the reputation to claim a training - which training is not inevitably of nature esthetic one does not need more knowledge to appreciate a cantata of Bach than one should not any to listen to the group U2, and the discs of classical music are not necessarily more expensive than the discs of popular music; on the other hand it is less easy to attend a concert of classical music than to a concert of pop music (vestimentary rites evil known of the public, for example). However the classical music is appreciated by the people who were initiated there, which cannot be seen like a chance. There is a whole sociocultural aspect in our practices of arts, whether it is high art or art of mass. According to our education, of our lived, we forged ourselves certain codes which answer more or less such or such type of work.

The philosopher Roger Pouivet goes rather far in his reasoning and advances that Arts of mass are world arts , not because they would be the vehicle of a culture anglo-saxone economically dominant but because they would be addressed to a smaller common denominator of the human esthetic sensitivity (binary rates/rhythms, etc) perhaps even on a level physiologique.
Une such opinion calls grinds objections and does not allow to answer certain questions: why do we have a presentiment of that a Titanic or a Terminator would not function at all in the same way if their distribution were Asian, Indian or African? In what the tonal Système that the use Beatles in their songs creates it a “universal” music more, nearer to the physiological operating processes of the listeners, who the means-Eastern, Hindi, Chinese or Celtic musical scales, with the different intervals (quarters of let us tons, sixteenth of tons, etc) and whose history is however much older? Can the universality in Art exist? This concept d'" universalité" is all the more difficult to measure Europe (then the " world occidental") the world dominated (politically initially, then technologically then), by imposing its own culture, and this since centuries, so that it became usual in the whole world. Would the universality be the mark of the model dominating?

To speak about the Art of mass very quickly makes run the risk of the value judgment and the political standpoint. Indeed each one of us belongs to the mass (as a group which is other thing that a simple addition of the individuals who compose it) without necessarily wanting to be identified there completely. Conversely, while being an individual one can want to be identified with the mass by political conviction or need, why not, feel less only on ground. The ones speak about “popular music” and the others of “music of supermarket”… These distinctions should not make us forget that the Art of mass and the Art of the humanistic tradition coexist: one can be in love with the painting of Véronèse while listening to the Rolling Stones, one can like the cinema of Pasolini and to follow the serial Buffy, one can love the cartoons of Association and read regularly American Comic S mainstream .

History of the Art of mass

Chapbooks

For some, the history of the Art of mass starts during the Années 1950, at the moment when television is on the point of entering each hearth and where, especially, the radio station took seat there. Such a chronology is a little restrictive: the success of a novel such as the Mysteries of Paris in the middle of the 19th century was already world and touched a population which extended well beyond the taught reading and writing public - the others were made it read. It would also be necessary to mention médiums of a popular culture under the old mode such as the blue books which were used as almanacs and of selection of the reader' S digest whose hawkers ensured the diffusion (and, often, the public reading) in all France.

The Serialized story

1842: the publication of the Mysteries of Paris , by Eugene Sweats, begins in the Newspaper of DEBATEs and gains a very important popular success: the whole country follows the adventures of Rodolphe. A few decades earlier, the historical novels of Walter Scott (which Eugene Süe had taken as a starting point), diffused in the form of cheap books, constitute another example marking of the birth of a popular literature. These two authors opened the way with authors like Ponson of Terrail, to which one owes the rocambolesque adjective which evokes the type of adventures well that the serial puts at the mode. The serial also attracts authors sometimes more ambitious from a literary point of view such as Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas or Victor Hugo.

The great characteristic of Known about the other writers mentioned is that the author is erased behind his characters and that the influence of the novel extends well beyond its readers: the formula of the Mystères of Paris was imitated and repeated in various towns of Europe, the figure of the retributive billionaire (Rodolphe) remained in many works (Jean Valjean or Batman is two well-known misadventures) and the usual vocabulary grew rich by the word pipelet/pipelette, inspired of the name of Mister and Mrs Pipelet, the caretakers of the building where Rigolette saw.

Literature of station

In 1852, in France, the bookseller and editor Louis Hachette creates the “Library of the railroads”, a series of collections of books intended to be read at the time of the ways in the train. Little by little, Hachette acquires the concession of kiosks in the stations, with a success which was never contradicted then. The color of the books makes it possible to identify their public of election instantaneously: red for the guides, green for the history, pink for the literature youth.

The radio

During Years 1920, hundreds of stations of radio broadcast are created in the United States. The tendency mondialise quickly.

Television

During Years 1950, television is diffused considerably in the United States and the wide-area networks of diffusion develop formats which always have course today such as the televised series. These formats are directly inspired by the radiophonic programs.

Some common principles (proposal)

creation:

in order to avoid any individual appropriation, works of mass would preferably be produced according to their diffusion. For example, a piece of music pop is realized to be listened in only one version, that of the produced disc, which is thus not simple a interpretation of a work which would exist in addition virtually or potentially in the form of partition. The example of the cinema (against the theater) is within this obvious framework.
Certains formats is typically adapted to the art of mass: televised series or why not literature of kind. The duration of the “individual ” and the “albums”, in the beginning is determined besides by precise technical constraints. The physical format of the comic-strips and their regularity rise from the same manner of the constraints related to their diffusion.
artistic quality is not inevitably the problem of the producers of an art of mass but that does not mean that there is incompatibility.

emission:

the art of mass would be created by a small number bound for very many people, like the Mural (art of class, demagogic art, democratic art, Official art?)

diffusion:

so that works in question are accessible to the known as public it is necessary that they are accessible financially, and thus, that they are not single parts or with limited pulling whose production would be too expensive.

reception:

the public must be prepared to accept works, which implies that those of did not sophisticate anything or that their sophistication is not lived as such (many Westerns are sophisticated than of the parts of Corneille, however it is the Western which is of mass ).
the public can test an abstract feeling of communion and identification (how to check that one lived well the same experiment as of the million others) but powerful. For example when everyone laughs at the same time in front of Astérix (the film as much as the cartoon besides), is moved at the same time in front of Amélie Poulain or Titanic , dance or sings on the same airs, etc a manner of rejecting the “mass” is besides to refuse this identification and to hate productions openly concerned with the art of mass when their topicality reaches a certain peak.

Some bibliographical elements

Walter Benjamin, the work of art at the time of its technical reproducibility
Pierre Bourdieu, the distinction: critical social of the judgment , ED. midnight, 1979
Marshall McLuhan, to include/understand the media
Carl Gustav Jung (under the direction of), the man and his symbols
Collective, the art of mass does not exist (re-examined of esthetics 3-4) , 1974. With Anne Cauquelin, Jean Clair, Gilbert Lascault, Bernard Lassus, Frank Popper, Olivier Revault d' Allonnes, Michel Makarius and Marc Jimenez.
Roger Pouivet, the work of art at the age of its universalization. A test of ontology of the art of mass , the stolen letter, 2003
No5el Carroll, has philosophy off farmhouse art (in English, not translated), Oxford University Press, 1998

Internal bonds

External bonds

Lines of thinking
Pouivet peeled

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