Word: artes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...chapter entitled, "Order, Hierarchy and Culture," Levine argues that the ideas of "high-brow" and "low-brow" came out of a complicated mesh of modern changes: immigration, and the culturally isolated communities of the "hyphenated-Americans"; the rise of a corporate culture, which linked art appreciation to social status; and changing attitudes toward etiquette and art, which severely restricted the behavior of the audience in "high" artistic shows, and insisted that Shakespeare could share the stage with no other production...
...Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Verdi, whom they had enjoyed in various formats for much of the 19th century, but also that the rigid cultural categories, once they were in place, made it so difficult for so long for so many to understand the value and importance of the popular art forms that were all around them...
...hope for finding a growing re-acceptance of "popular" culture--the underlying purpose of these histories which look back to a brief American utopia--Levine overstates his case. For example, he explicitly praises the New York Times for its Sunday "Arts and Leisure" section's broad definition of "art," failing to recognize the subtle discrimination that goes on in those pages. Namely, that rock, jazz and "popular" music are written about in the "Recordings" page, while "classical" music appears under the simple heading "Music." This is but one example of how cultural distincitons still exist, and Levine fails to hold...
...ART...
...Give You Anything but Love, a song about poverty, the stage is aswirl with what looks like gold and diamonds. The title number, which was wrenchingly performed this season in Ain't Misbehavin', is used here to bring on a choral stomp. Almost perversely, the blues, an art rooted in specific American history, is methodically detached from its context, as if the past were so much soil to be brushed from the roots of an ornamental shrub destined for transplant...