Abstract
Raquel Jimenez on Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts.
Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts by Jennifer C. Lena Princeton University Press, 256 pages
In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts, Jennifer Lena provides a new look at an enduring puzzle in the sociology of culture: the means by which some forms of cultural production become recognized as art. While this subject has garnered significant attention in prior work, Entitled tackles a fascinating new dimension, exploring how the definition of art in the United States has broadened over time while remaining unmistakably elite. Lena’s analysis covers an astonishing amount of ground by examining over a century’s worth of artistic activity throughout multiple fields of creative production. The result is a powerful theory of artistic legitimation that brings us to a much deeper understanding of art in the United States.
From the get-go, Lena’s meticulous historical analyses and frank writing combine to demystify the relationship between art and elite culture. In case there’s still any question—with conversations like #OscarsSoWhite and #MuseumsSoWhite now threatening to dismantle the art establishment’s discriminatory house of cards—the concept of art in the United States is steeped in a history of white supremacy. Lena makes this point abundantly clear when discussing the emergence of art in the United States with the mid-nineteenth century Boston Brahmins.
Amidst a new wave of immigration, the Brahmins were eager to safeguard their colonial-era power and privilege. They created new discourses to support a hierarchy of cultural production and established institutions designed to promote the purported supremacy of European culture. That the Brahmins adopted the nonprofit organizational structure to support their imperialist cause was no accident. These institutions were tasked with serving the public good through education—a mandate they used to advance their interests by training audiences to appreciate and revere Eurocentric culture.
These early efforts formed the basis of art in the United States, and following Lena’s arguments lead to conclusions that are hard to ignore. It is impossible to separate the history of art from a larger history of cultural imperialism. When we understand that art was invented as a tool for exalting Eurocentric culture, we can begin to understand why institutions have perpetuated such a narrow conception of art in the United States.
However, recent developments in the art world seem to suggest the tide is turning. In fact, forecasting a rising “sea change” in the arts, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith celebrated the 2010s as the decade dominated by Black visual art. Whether or not you’re an art world aficionado, Smith’s basic point is hard to miss: art is no longer the sole province of White culture, and more diverse art now enlivens nearly every sphere of the art world. Though new narratives on diversity in the arts may seem promising, Entitled suggests there is reason for skepticism. Lena writes that the story of art in the United States reflects a tension between elitism and populism, demonstrating that while there might be a few isolated waves on the surface, an elite undercurrent powerfully churns. This is where the story of art gets interesting, and where the most provocative contribution of Entitled lies.
To help readers understand how the process of artistic legitimation remains an elite enterprise, Lena devotes a significant portion of Entitled to examining how the definition of art has broadened over time. Throughout the second through fifth chapters, Lena draws upon archival, survey, and interview data to offer a remarkable glimpse of the forces at play in the art world over time. Lena gives considerable credit to aesthetic entrepreneurs, powerful players in the ecology of cultural production who leveraged considerable capital to ensure that more diverse forms of culture became recognized as art. In many ways, readers come to appreciate how these new aesthetic entrepreneurs borrowed from the Brahmin playbook: they distinguished their preferred forms of cultural production from other kinds of culture, worked to gain institutional support for their aesthetic preferences, and then relied on these institutions to train audiences to appreciate the newly exalted artform.
Within this basic formula, Lena explores two contrasting cases that unfolded during the middle half of the twentieth century. The first case involves the Federal Art Project, an ambitious cultural policy designed to advance the broader aims of the New Deal by diversifying the field of cultural production in the United States. During this time, Holger Cahill was tasked with serving the public good by directing government investments in vernacular, folk, and popular culture. To do so, Cahill drew on new arguments (most notably those made by John Dewey) about the nature of art. Lena cogently explains how a new intellectual discourse on art—guided by an ethos of “equality of representation”— supported the logic of investing in more diverse forms of cultural production.
While the Federal Art Project ushered in a new, more diverse era of art, these efforts are more of the exception rather than the rule. Lena underscores this point in the third chapter, which examines the peculiar case of Nelson Rockefeller and his efforts to redefine non-Western cultural artifacts as art. As you might imagine, Rockefeller had considerable resources at his disposal: limitless cash, close ties to the wealthy and powerful, and privileged access to nearly every corner of the globe. Travels across Latin America gave him an appreciation for what he problematically referred to as “primitive” art, and he devoted his resources to whitewashing the public’s perception of Latin American cultures. His efforts culminated in the Museum of Primitive Art, and eventually, broader (mis)recognition of Latin American arts by the art establishment.
While Lena explains that Rockefeller’s efforts were influential in giving greater visibility to non-Western culture, readers will undoubtedly appreciate her critical discussion of the problem that emerges when the process of artistic legitimation is controlled by elites. Even as the definition of art has broadened continually over the past century, the process has been far from democratic. For the most part, diversity in the arts has been constrained by elite interests and tastes, and under these conditions, Lena explains that the problem that results is that elite outsiders “select and then ‘write the histories’ of these objects in imperialist ways” (p. 68).
Lena’s historical discussion foreshadows a persistent central dilemma in the field of cultural production: the tension between cultural exchange on the one hand and cultural appropriation on the other. Entitled tackles this debate in a series of case studies presented in the sixth chapter, and brings productive clarity to the concept of cultural appropriation. In the current era of omnivorousness, where it is desirable for liberal elites to be seen as cosmopolitan and tolerant of other cultures, Lena explains that expanding the definition of art to include more diverse forms of culture is a covert strategy used as a marker of social status. And yet, because elite appreciation of diverse culture is often predicated on privileged access, Lena explains how exchange can be a rather slippery slope that leads to appropriation. When the gatekeepers of historically white institutions monopolize the power of representation, these institutions often drive the narrative. Cultural appropriation arises when the resulting narrative distorts or otherwise sensationalizes the source culture.
All told, by underscoring the causes and consequences of an elite-controlled art establishment, Entitled sets the course for entering into new debates about art. Rather than asking is this art?—a tired question that seems newly relevant ever since an overripe banana fetched $120,000 at last year’s Art Basel Miami— Entitled gives us the intellectual tools we need to shift our attention to far more interesting questions. Namely: who gets to make art? Who decides? Furthermore, why should we care? When it comes to these questions, the implications of Lena’s work are far reaching. In the absence of robust government funding for the arts in the United States, we are left with an arts ecology dependent upon the moneyed elite. The trade-off, of course, is that the elite have their own interests. While these interests aren’t likely to disappear anytime soon, Entitled offers a spellbinding and long-overdue examination at the problems that emerge when art is shaped by the one-percent.