Higher art must approach the masses by assimilating kitsch
Evidence
At no point in time, no matter how utopian, will it be possible to win the masses for a higher form of art. It will only be possible to win them for one which is closer to them. And the difficulty consists precisely in creating this form of art in such a way that it would be possible, with a clear conscience, to assert that it was a higher form of art. … What is true of growing, living forms, by contrast, is that there is something in them which is warming, useful and ultimately cheering. Dialectically, they take up `kitsch’, thus bringing themselves nearer to the masses, and then nevertheless overcome it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 874
Categorization
- DEFINE: This gives Benjamin’s mature position on mass art: a higher art that is also closer, taking up kitsch dialectically rather than rejecting it — his answer to Adorno’s aristocratic dismissal.
- XREF: This is the crux of the Benjamin-Adorno dispute over mass culture and leads toward later cultural-studies debates about kitsch, from Clement Greenberg to the pop art of the 1960s. — connects to: Critics once saw their role as separating authentic art from manufactured kitsch — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 117; Mass culture must pose as realistic while steadily lowering its intellectual demands — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 218; High culture’s contempt for kitsch revealed its own bad conscience (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- High culture’s contempt for kitsch revealed its own bad conscience
#expands(0.85) - Fifties high art asserted authority by deliberately ignoring mass culture
#contradicts(0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 613 - Mass culture must pose as realistic while steadily lowering its intellectual demands
#expands(0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 218 - Critics once saw their role as separating authentic art from manufactured kitsch
#complicates(0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 117