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08 Jan 08

Arts study a culture shock (Toronto Star)

I read something about this study last week, can't recall where, and generally think it's a bit silly anyway. But what catches my attention in this Toronto Star article by Peter Goddard is how it brings out that visual art is currently at the very bottom of the totem pole. I see that in my own habits, too, and wonder why it's so. Is it because too much of the art being produced is uninteresting?, can't compete with other media or arts (like theatre, music, etc.)? Has visual art become somehow irrelevant, and if so, when did this happen and why? Does it have to do with time, with speed? Or simply relevance -- and format?

www.thestar.com/...290794 - Preview

arts cultural_support culture popular_opinion socialtheory studies surveys trends

Forget class versus trash, the elite versus the masses.
Divide culture consumers into four new groups, says an international study Oxford University researchers released late last month that will have far-reaching results for arts support everywhere.
"Univores," "Omnivores," "Paucivores" and "Inactives" are the new categories we can all find ourselves in. Which one depends on whether we believe Britney is a huge tabloid star or an area in northwestern France where Impressionist painters spent their summers.
But no matter what group is discussed, the visual arts do not figure very high on anyone's to-do list.
"When it comes to the visual arts, you find there's a sizeable part of the adult population that doesn't participate at all."
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- "Univores," the largest of the four groups, consume great quantities of pop culture – TV, pop music and Hollywood flicks – and little else. "But there are no truly popular forms in the visual arts that have as wide a media exposure as does pop music," says Goldthorpe. Tak Wing Chan was his colleague in the study for the Economic and Social Research Council in England.
- "Omnivores," the next biggest group, includes people who go to the ballet, symphony or opera on occasion while still buying lots of pop culture.
  For purposes of the study, cultural consumption was split into three basic categories: theatre, dance and the movies; music of all sorts; and the visual arts.
- Only "Paucivores," a decidedly small group, may be found at a blockbuster museum opening. But that's about the extent of it. Paucivores don't care much for contemporary art.
- The "Inactives," are the Goldthorpe-Chan version of couch potatoes, hunkered down in front of the television day and night. They're found in every culture. Along with the U.K., data was assembled in France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Israel, Chile and the United States and analyzed by 13 researchers.
- In England, the report has caused something of a stir because it blew holes in the idea of an upper class forming a cultural elite.
- "We are unable to identify any numerically significant group of cultural consumers whose consumption is essentially confined to high cultural forms and who reject, or at least do not participate in, more popular forms," says the report.
  Status counts, not class. And status is defined by income not by culture.
  In short, the very idea of "pop culture" is a misnomer.
  There is no pop culture. Pop is culture.
- "Status is now attached to material consumption, not cultural consumption," Goldthorpe tells me. "People with status show who they are though expensive cars and houses rather than by going to museums and the like."
  Indeed, the report itself hammers home the blunt truth that "income has no effect on determining" the kind of culture being consumed. The bottom line? People who could help symphonies survive or back the arts don't want to.
  They are "self-excluded," says the report, "rather than socially excluded."
  - - sounds grim (for arts).... - on 2008-01-08
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- Better education does little to change this bleak picture. "There is a sizeable number of people in this group who don't participate" in the elite arts, Goldthorpe says
  Why?
  "The short answer is, I don't know," says Goldthorpe.
- Unfortunately, the Chan-Goldthorpe report will play into the hands of reactionary politicians who question whether the arts should be funded at all, since no one gives a hoot about them.
  Already the Labour government in Britain is showing signs of cutting back its cultural support as a way of funneling money to "the demands of the Olympic Games," Goldthorpe says.
  - - yes, the old libertarian argument, in action again... - on 2008-01-08
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Arts study a culture shock (Toronto Star)

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