High art doesn’t exist

I saw a tweet recently joking that the very first books were audiobooks. The sentiment pokes fun at people who claim that listening to an audiobook doesn’t count as reading the book. Even though audio is a more efficient, more effective way of transferring information, which was the entire purpose of books in the first place. Pages with covers and ink were simply the most technologically advanced way to transfer information at scale. Now we have more effective, more efficient ways to transfer information. 

For some reason, our culture makes distinctions between “high art” and “low art.” If you’re not sure which is which, art that’s been around for longer is “high art” and new mediums are “low brow.” 

“Today, high art and low art lines are blurred,” writes artist Kristin Maija Peterson on her blog. “Although the masses easily digest low art, the quality and craftsmanship of low art are often superb.” 

Then what defines “high art” if not craftsmanship and quality? The fact that it’s popular? All of this sounds like a way for people who paid a lot of money for their degrees to justify the money they spent. 

Here’s what I’m dancing around: artistic classifications are a social construction. The only reason art means anything is because we give it meaning. It touches us. It impacts its creator and their community. If it ceases to impact us, it’s just a waste of time. If culture changes, and thus becomes touched by a different kind of art, that art now has more meaning than “high art.” 

No matter what people with expensive art degrees say.