Elite culture has rather blurred boundaries, especially nowadays with the tendencies of mass elements to strive for the expression of individuality. Its peculiarity is that it is doomed to be misunderstood by most people, and this is one of its main characteristics. In this article we will find out elite culture, what its main characteristics are and compare it with mass culture.
What it is
Elite culture is the same as “high culture”. It is contrasted with mass culture, which is one of the methods of its detection in the general cultural process. This concept was first identified by K. Mannheim and J. Ortega y Gasset in their works, where they derived it precisely as the antithesis of the concept of mass culture. They meant by high culture one that contains a core of meaning capable of developing human individuality, and from which the continuation of the creation of its other elements can follow. Another area that they highlighted is the presence of special verbal elements accessible to narrow social groups: for example, Latin and Sanskrit for clergy.
Elite and mass culture: contrast
They are contrasted with each other by the type of impact on consciousness, as well as by the quality of the meanings that their elements contain. Thus, the mass one is aimed at a more superficial perception, which does not require specific knowledge and special intellectual efforts to understand the cultural product. Currently, there is an increased spread of popular culture due to the process of globalization, which, in turn, is distributed through the media and is stimulated by the capitalist structure of society. unlike elitist, it is intended for a wide range of people. Now we see its elements everywhere, and it is especially pronounced in television programs and cinema.
Thus, Hollywood cinema can be contrasted with arthouse cinema. Moreover, the first type of film focuses the viewer’s attention not on the meaning and idea of the story, but on the special effects of the video sequence. Here, high-quality cinema implies an interesting design, an unexpected but easy-to-understand plot.
Elite culture is represented by arthouse films, which are assessed by different criteria than Hollywood products of this kind, the main one of which is meaning. Thus, the quality of the footage in such films is often underestimated. At first glance, the reason for the low quality of filming is either the lack of good funding or the amateurism of the director. However, this is not so: in arthouse cinema, the function of video is to convey the meaning of an idea. Special effects can distract from this, so they are not typical for products of this format. Arthouse ideas are original and deep. Very often, in the presentation of a simple story, a deep meaning is hidden from a superficial understanding; the real tragedy of the individual is revealed. While watching these films, you can often notice that the director himself is trying to find the answer to the question posed and studying the characters as he shoots. Predicting the plot of an arthouse movie is almost impossible.
Characteristics of high culture
Elite culture has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from mass culture:
- Its elements are aimed at displaying and studying the deep processes of human psychology.
- It has a closed structure, understandable only to extraordinary individuals.
- It is distinguished by original artistic solutions.
- Contains a minimum of visual aids.
- Has the ability to express something new.
- It tests what may later become a classic or trivial art.
Forms of culture refer to such sets of rules, norms and patterns of human behavior that cannot be considered completely autonomous entities; Nor are they constituent parts of any whole. High or elite culture, folk culture and mass culture are called forms of culture because they represent a special way of expressing artistic content. High, folk and mass culture differ in the set of techniques and visual means of a work of art, authorship, audience, means of conveying artistic ideas to viewers, and the level of performing skills.
Depending on who creates culture and what its level is, sociologists distinguish three forms:
-elite
-folk
-massive
High culture
Elite, or high culture is created by a privileged part of society, or at its request by professional creators. It includes fine art, classical music and literature. High culture, for example, the painting of Picasso or the music of Schoenberg, is difficult for an unprepared person to understand. As a rule, it is decades ahead of the level of perception of an averagely educated person. The circle of its consumers is a highly educated part of society: critics, literary scholars, regulars of museums and exhibitions, theatergoers, artists, writers, musicians. When the level of education of the population increases, the circle of consumers of high culture expands. Its varieties include secular art and salon music. The formula of elite culture is “art for art’s sake.”
Folk culture
Folk culture consists of two types - popular and folk culture. When a group of tipsy friends sings songs by A. Pugacheva or<Не шуми камыш>, then we are talking about popular culture, and when an ethnographic expedition from the depths of Russia brings material from carol holidays or Russian lamentations, then they are sure to talk about folklore culture. As a result, popular culture describes today's life, morals, customs, songs, dances, etc. people, and folklore is its past. Legends, fairy tales and other genres of folklore were created in the past, and today they exist as historical heritage. Some of this heritage is still performed today, which means that part of the folk culture has entered popular culture, which, in addition to historical legends, is constantly replenished with new formations, for example, modern urban folklore.
Thus, in folk culture, in turn, two levels can be distinguished - high, associated with folklore and including folk legends, fairy tales, epics, ancient dances, etc., and low, limited to the so-called pop culture.
Unlike elite culture, which is created by professionals, high folk culture is created by anonymous creators who do not have professional training. The authors of folk works (tales, lamentations, tales) are often unknown, but these are highly artistic works. Myths, legends, stories, epics, fairy tales, songs and dances belong to the highest creations of folk culture. They cannot be classified as elite or high culture just because they were created by anonymous folk creators.<Народная культура возникла в глубокой древности. Ее субъектом являются не отдельные профессионалы, а весь народ. Поэтому функционирование народной культуры неотделимо от труда и быта людей. Авторы ее зачастую анонимны, произведения существуют обычно во множестве вариантов, передаются устно из поколения в поколение. В этом плане можно говорить о народном искусстве (народные песни, сказки, легенды), народной медицине (лекарственные травы, заговоры), народной педагогике, суть которой часто выражается в пословицах, поговорках> 1)
In terms of execution, elements of folk culture can be individual (statement of a legend), group (performing a dance or song), or mass (carnival processions). Folklore is not the name of all folk art, as is often thought, but only its part, associated primarily with oral folk art. Folklore, like popular, forms (or types) were created earlier and are being created today by various segments of the population. Folklore is always localized, i.e. connected with the traditions of a given area, and democratic, since everyone participates in its creation.
The place of concentration of folk culture, as a rule, is the village, and popular culture is the city, since the majority of the population lives there today. Some creative products are classified as folk culture as a whole, without dividing them into folklore and popular. For example, folk medicine, folk crafts, folk games and entertainment, folk songs and dances, folk rituals and holidays, folk cuisine, folk ethics and pedagogy.
The audience of folk culture is always the majority of society. This was the case in traditional and industrial societies. The situation changes only in post-industrial society.
Mass culture
Mass culture does not express the refined tastes or spiritual quest of the people. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when the media (radio, print, television, recordings and tape recorders) penetrated into most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. Mass culture can be international and national. Pop music is a vivid example of mass culture. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of level of education.
Mass culture, as a rule, has less artistic value than elite or popular culture. But it has the widest audience and is original. It satisfies the immediate needs of people, reacts to and reflects any new event. Therefore, examples of mass culture, in particular hits, quickly lose relevance, become obsolete, and go out of fashion. This does not happen with works of elite and popular culture. High culture refers to the preferences and habits of townspeople, aristocrats, the rich, and the ruling elite, while mass culture refers to the culture of the lower classes. The same types of art can belong to high and mass culture: classical music - high, and popular music - mass, Fellini's films - high, and action films - mass, Picasso's paintings - high, and popular prints - mass. However, there are such genres of literature, in particular science fiction, detective stories and comics, which are always classified as popular or mass culture, but never as high. The same thing happens with specific works of art.
Bach's organ mass belongs to high culture, but if it is used as musical accompaniment in figure skating competitions, it is automatically included in the category of mass culture, without losing its belonging to high culture. Numerous orchestrations of Bach's works in the style of light music, jazz or rock do not at all compromise high culture. The same applies to the Mona Lisa on the packaging of toilet soap or a computer reproduction of it hanging in the back office.
Basic forms of culture
Introduction
Culture is a sphere of human activity associated with human self-expression, manifestations of his subjectivity (character, skills, abilities, knowledge). That is why every culture has additional characteristics, because it is associated with human creativity and everyday practice, communication, reflection, generalization and his everyday life.
Culture is a specific way of organizing and developing human life, represented in the products of material and spiritual labor, in the system of social norms and institutions, in spiritual values, in the totality of people’s relationships to nature, among themselves and to themselves.
Within the society we can distinguish:
Elite - high culture
Mass - popular culture
Folk culture
The purpose of the work is to analyze the content of mass and elite culture
Job objectives:
Expand the concept of “culture” in a broad sense
Identify the main types of culture
Characterize the features and functions of mass and elite culture.
Concept of culture
Culture was originally defined as the cultivation and care of the earth in order to make it suitable for satisfying human needs. In a figurative sense, culture is the improvement, ennoblement of a person’s bodily and spiritual inclinations and abilities; Accordingly, there is a culture of the body, a culture of the soul and a spiritual culture. In a broad sense, culture is the totality of manifestations, achievements and creativity of a people or group of peoples.
Culture, considered from the point of view of content, is divided into various areas, spheres: morals and customs, language and writing, the nature of clothing, settlements, work, economics, socio-political structure, science, technology, art, religion, all forms of manifestation of the objective spirit of this people. The level and state of culture can only be understood based on the development of cultural history; in this sense they speak of primitive and high culture; the degeneration of culture creates either lack of culture and “refined culture.” In old cultures there is sometimes fatigue, pessimism, stagnation and decline. These phenomena allow us to judge how much the carriers of culture remained true to the essence of their culture. The difference between culture and civilization is that culture is the expression and result of self-determination of the will of a people or an individual (“cultured person”), while civilization is the totality of technological achievements and the comfort associated with them.
Culture characterizes the characteristics of consciousness, behavior and activity of people in specific spheres of public life (culture of politics, culture of spiritual life).
The word culture itself (in its figurative sense) came into use in social thought in the second half of the 18th century.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the established evolutionary concept of culture was criticized. Culture began to be seen primarily as a specific system of values, arranged according to their role in the life and organization of society.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the concept of “local” civilizations - closed and self-sufficient cultural organisms - became widely known. This concept is characterized by the opposition of culture and civilization, which was considered as the last stage in the development of a given society.
In some other concepts, the criticism of culture begun by Rousseau was carried to the point of its complete denial, the idea of the “natural anti-culture” of man was put forward, and any culture is a means of suppressing and enslaving man (Nietzsche).
The diversity of types of culture can be considered in two aspects: external diversity - culture on a human scale, the emphasis of which lies in the progress of culture on the world stage; internal diversity is the culture of a particular society, city; subcultures can also be taken into account here.
But the main task of this work is a specific consideration of mass and elite culture.
Mass culture
Culture has gone through many crises throughout its history. The transitions from antiquity to the Middle Ages and from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were marked by deep crises. But what is happening to culture in our era cannot be called one of the crises along with others. We are present at a crisis of culture in general, at the deepest upheavals in its thousand-year-old foundations. The old ideal of classically beautiful art has finally faded. Art frantically strives to go beyond its limits. The boundaries that separate one art from another and art in general from what is no longer art, what is higher or lower than it, are being violated. Man wants to create something that has never happened before, and in his creative frenzy he transcends all limits and boundaries. He no longer creates such perfect and beautiful works as the more modest man of bygone eras created. This is the whole essence of mass culture.
Mass culture, the culture of the majority, is also called pop culture. The main characteristics are that it is the most popular and predominant among a wide section of the population in the society. It may include such phenomena as everyday life, entertainment (sports, concerts, etc.), as well as the media.
Mass culture. Prerequisites for the formation
Prerequisites for the formation of mass culture in the 18th century. inherent in the very existence of the structure of society. José Ortega y Gasset formulated a well-known approach to structuring based on creative potential. Then the idea of a “creative elite” arises, which, naturally, constitutes a smaller part of society, and of the “mass” - quantitatively the main part of the population. Accordingly, it becomes possible to talk about the culture of the “elite” - “elite culture” and about the culture of the “mass” - “mass culture”. During this period, a division of culture occurs, with the formation of new significant social layers. Having the opportunity for a conscious aesthetic perception of cultural phenomena, newly emerging social groups, constantly communicating with the masses, make “elite” phenomena significant on a social scale and at the same time show interest in “mass” culture, in some cases their mixing occurs.
Mass culture in the modern sense
At the beginning of the 20th century. mass society and the associated mass culture became the subject of research by the most prominent scientists in various scientific fields: philosophers Jose Ortega y Gasset (“Revolt of the Masses”), sociologists Jean Baudrillard (“Phantoms of Modernity”), and other scientists in various fields of science. Analyzing mass culture, they highlight the main essence of this culture, it is entertainment, so that it has commercial success, so that it is bought, and the money spent on it makes a profit. Entertaining is determined by the strict structural conditions of the text. The plot and stylistic texture of mass culture products may be primitive from the point of view of elitist fundamental culture, but it should not be poorly made, but on the contrary, in its primitiveness it should be perfect - only in this case will it be guaranteed readership and, therefore, commercial success . Mass culture requires a clear plot with intrigue and, most importantly, a clear division into genres. We see this clearly in the example of mass cinema. The genres are clearly demarcated and there are not many of them. The main ones are: detective, thriller, comedy, melodrama, horror film, etc. Each genre is a self-contained world with its own linguistic laws, which should never be crossed, especially in cinema, where production involves the greatest amount of financial investment.
We can say that mass culture must have a rigid syntax - an internal structure, but at the same time it may be semantically poor, it may lack deep meaning.
Mass culture is characterized by anti-modernism and anti-avant-gardeism. If modernism and the avant-garde strive for a sophisticated writing technique, then mass culture operates with an extremely simple technique, worked out by the previous culture. If modernism and the avant-garde are dominated by an attitude toward the new as the main condition for their existence, then mass culture is traditional and conservative. It is focused on the average linguistic semiotic norm, on simple pragmatics, since it is addressed to a huge readership and viewing audience.
It can therefore be said that mass culture arises not only due to the development of technology, which has led to such a huge number of sources of information, but also due to the development and strengthening of political democracies. An example of this can be given that the most developed mass culture is in the most developed democratic society - in America with its Hollywood.
Speaking about art in general, a roughly similar trend was noted by Pitirim Sorokin in the mid-20th century: “As a commercial product for entertainment, art is increasingly controlled by merchants, commercial interests and fashion trends. This situation creates the highest connoisseurs of beauty out of commercial businessmen and forces artists to submit to their demands, which are also imposed through advertising and other media.” At the beginning of the 21st century, modern researchers state the same cultural phenomena: “Modern trends are disjointed and have already led to the creation of a critical mass of changes that have affected the very foundations of the content and activities of cultural institutions. The most significant of them, in our opinion, include: the commercialization of culture, democratization, the blurring of boundaries - both in the field of knowledge and in the field of technology - as well as a predominant attention to the process rather than to the content."
The relationship between science and popular culture is changing. Mass culture is “the decline of the essence of art.”
Table 1. The influence of mass culture on the spiritual life of society
PositiveNegativeHer works do not act as a means of authorial self-expression, but are directly addressed to the reader, listener, viewer, and take into account their needs. It is democratic (its “products” are used by representatives of different social groups), which corresponds to the time. It meets the needs and needs of many people, including the needs of in intensive rest, psychological time row. Has its peaks - literary, musical, cinematic works that can be classified as “high” art; Lowers the general level of spiritual culture of society, since it indulges the undemanding tastes of the “mass person”; Leads to standardization and unification of not only the way of life, but also the way of thinking of millions people Designed for passive consumption, since it does not stimulate any creative impulses in the spiritual sphere Plants myths in the minds of people (“the Cinderella myth”, “the myth of the simple guy”, etc.) Forms artificial needs in people through massive advertising Using modern media, replaces real life for many people, imposing certain ideas and preferences
Elite culture
Elite culture (from the French elite - selected, selected, best) is a subculture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. A select minority, as a rule, are also its creators. Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes mass culture.
Political and cultural elites differ; the former, also called “ruling”, “powerful”, today, thanks to the works of many learned sociologists and political scientists, have been studied in sufficient detail and deeply. Much less studied are cultural elites - strata united not by economic, social, political, and actual power interests and goals, but by ideological principles, spiritual values, and sociocultural norms.
Unlike political elites, spiritual and creative elites form their own, fundamentally new mechanisms of self-regulation and value-semantic criteria for activity choice. In the Elite culture, the range of values recognized as true and “high” is limited, and the system of norms accepted by a given stratum as mandatory and strict in the community of “initiates” is tightened. The narrowing of the elite and its spiritual unity is inevitably accompanied by its quality and growth (intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and other respects).
Actually, for the sake of this, the circle of norms and values of the Elite culture becomes emphatically high, innovative, which can be achieved by various means:
) mastering new social and mental realities as cultural phenomena or, on the contrary, rejection of anything new and “protection” of a narrow circle of conservative values and norms;
) inclusion of one’s subject in an unexpected value-semantic context, which gives its interpretation a unique and even exclusive meaning.
) development of a special cultural language, accessible only to a narrow circle, insurmountable (or difficult to overcome) semantic barriers to complex thinking;
Historical origins of elite culture
In primitive society, priests, magi, sorcerers, and tribal leaders become privileged holders of special knowledge, which cannot and should not be intended for general, mass use. Subsequently, this kind of relationship between elite culture and mass culture in one form or another, in particular secular, has repeatedly caused disagreements.
Ultimately, the elitism of knowledge, skills, values, norms, principles, traditions formed in this way was the key to refined professionalism and deep subject specialization, without which historical progress, postulate, value-semantic growth, contain, enrichment and accumulation of formal perfection are impossible in culture, - any value-semantic hierarchy. Elite culture acts as an initiative and productive principle in any culture, performing a predominantly creative function in it; while mass culture stereotypes.
Elite culture flourishes especially productively and fruitfully at the “breakdown” of cultural eras, with a change in cultural and historical paradigms, uniquely expressing the crisis states of culture, the unstable balance between “old” and “new.” Representatives of elite culture were aware of their mission in culture as “initiators of the new,” as ahead of their time, as creators not understood by their contemporaries (such, for example, were the majority of romantics and modernists - symbolists, avant-garde cultural figures and professional revolutionaries who carried out cultural revolution).
Thus, the directions, creative quests of various representatives of modern culture (symbolists and impressionists, expressionists and futurists, surrealists and Dadaists, etc.) - artists, theorists of movements, philosophers, and publicists - were aimed at creating unique samples and whole systems of elite culture.
Conclusion
Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that mass and elite culture has its own individual traits and characteristics.
Culture is an important aspect in human activity. Culture is a state of mind; it is the totality of manifestations, achievements and creativity of a people or a group of peoples.
But one feature can be identified that can be attributed to an elite culture - the greater the percentage of residents who adhere to its ideology, the higher the level of the highly educated population.
The work fully characterized mass and elite culture, highlighted their main properties, and weighed all the pros and cons.
mass elite culture
Bibliography
Berdyaev, N. “Philosophy of creativity, culture and art” T1. T2. 1994
Ortega - and - Gasset X. Revolt of the masses. Dehumanization of art. 1991
Suvorov, N. “Elite and mass consciousness in the culture of postmodernism”
Philosophical encyclopedic dictionary. M., 1997
Flier, A.Ya. "Mass culture and its social functions"
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Elite culture- this is “high culture”, contrasted with mass culture by the type of influence on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective characteristics and providing a meaning-forming function. Its main ideal is the formation of a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality. Historically, elite culture arose as the antithesis of mass culture and its meaning manifests its main meaning in comparison with the latter.
The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by X. Ortega y Gasset and C. Mannheim. The subject of elitist, high culture is the individual - a free, creative person, capable of carrying out conscious activities. The creations of this culture are always personally colored and designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the widespread dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of elite culture is a representative of the elite.
Elite culture is the culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. According to I.V. Kondakov, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and recipients (in any case, the circle of both almost coincides).
Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes the culture of the majority in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, the official culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of the technocratic society of the 20th century. and so on.
Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and possessing a number of fundamentally important features:
- complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
- the ability to form a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
- the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;
- the presence of a limited range of values recognized as true and “high”;
- a rigid system of norms accepted by a given stratum as mandatory and strict in the community of “initiates”;
- individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
- the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural horizon from the addressee;
- the use of a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “defamiliarizing” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject’s cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, in the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation with deformation, penetration into meaning - conjecture and rethinking of the given;
- semantic and functional “closedness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole of national culture, which turns elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its bearers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, chosen ones of the gods , “servants of the muses”, “keepers of secrets and faith”, which is often played out and poeticized in elite culture.
The concept of subculture and counterculture
A subculture is a specific way of life, it is the realization of a person’s need for self-expression, personal development, satisfying the sense of beauty, and understanding one’s purpose in the world. Subcultures appear regardless of politics and economics. Material needs, their quantity and quality associated with living conditions, cannot be significant in determining the reasons why a youth subculture appears.
Mass... And then there is elite. What it is?
First of all, let's start with the definition of the concept of “elite culture”. In a broad sense, elite culture (from the French elite - selected, best) is a form of culture in modern society that is not accessible and understandable to everyone. But it is worth remembering that these “not everyone” are by no means the people who stand above others on the financial ladder. Rather, they are such refined natures, informal people who, as a rule, have their own special view of the world, a special worldview.
Elite culture is usually contrasted with mass culture. Elite and mass culture are in a difficult interaction for a number of reasons. The main one is the clash of the idealistic and sometimes utopian philosophy of elite culture with the pragmatism, primitiveness and, perhaps, “realism” of mass culture. Regarding why “realism” is in quotation marks: well, look at modern “masterpieces” of cinema (“Ant-Man”, “Batman vs. Superman”..., they don’t even smell of realism - they’re some kind of hallucinations).
Elite culture usually opposes consumerism, “ambitiousness, half-education” and plebeianism. It is interesting to note that the culture of the elite is also opposed to folklore, popular culture, because it is the majority culture. To an inexperienced outside reader, elitist culture may seem something akin to snobbery or a grotesque form of aristocracy, which it, of course, is not, because it lacks the mimesis characteristic of snobbery, and not only people from the upper strata of society belong to elitist culture.
Let us outline the main features of elite culture:
creativity, innovation, the desire to create a “world for the first time”;
closedness, separation from wide, universal use;
"art for art's sake";
cultural mastery of objects, separation from “profane” culture;
creation of a new cultural language of symbols and images;
a system of norms, a limited range of values.
What is modern elite culture? To begin with, let us briefly mention the elite culture of the past. It was something esoteric, hidden, its carriers were priests, monks, knights, members of underground circles (for example, Petrashevsky, of which F. M. Dostoevsky was a famous member), Masonic lodges, orders (for example, crusaders or members of the Teutonic Order).
Why did we turn to history? “Historical knowledge is the primary means of preserving and prolonging an aging civilization,” wrote José Ortega y Gasset. Gasset’s work “The Revolt of the Masses” clearly illuminates the problem of the “man of the masses”; in it the author introduces the concept of “superman”. And it is the “superman” who is the representative of modern elite culture. The elite, not surprisingly, is a minority; it is by no means “at the helm of modernity,” i.e. the masses are now not exactly in charge of everything, but have a huge influence on the socio-political aspects of society; In my opinion, in our time it is customary to listen to the opinion of the masses.
I think that the mediocre masses practically forcefully impose their thoughts and tastes on society, thereby causing stagnation in it. But still, according to my observations, elite culture in our 21st century confronts mass culture with more and more confidence. Commitment to the mainstream, as strange as it may sound, is becoming less and less popular.
There is an increasingly noticeable desire in people to join the “high”, inaccessible to the majority. I really want to believe that humanity is learning from the bitter experience of past centuries that the “uprising of the masses” will not take place. To prevent the absolute triumph of mediocrity, it is necessary to “return to your true Self”, to live with aspiration to the future.
And to prove that elitist culture is gaining momentum, I will give examples of its most prominent representatives. In the musical field, I would like to highlight the German virtuoso violinist David Garrett. He performs both classical works and modern pop music in his own arrangement.
The fact that Garrett gathers crowds of thousands with his performances does not classify him as mass culture, because although music can be heard by everyone, it is not accessible to every spiritual perception. The music of the famous Alfred Schnittke is just as inaccessible to the masses.
In the fine arts, Andy Warhol can be called the most prominent representative of elite culture. Marilyn's diptych, a can of Campbell's soup... his works have become a real public property, while still belonging to an elite culture. The art of Lomography, which became very popular in the nineties of the twentieth century, in my opinion, can be considered part of the elite culture, although at present there are both the International Lomographic Society and associations of Lomographic photographers. In general, about that, read the link.
In the 21st century, museums of contemporary art began to gain popularity (for example, MMOMA, Erarta, PERMM). However, performance art is very controversial, but, in my opinion, it can safely be called elitist. And examples of artists performing in this genre are the Serbian artist Marina Abramovich, the Frenchman Vahram Zaryan, and the St. Petersburg resident Pyotr Pavlensky.
An example of the architecture of modern elite culture can be considered the city of St. Petersburg, which is a meeting place of different cultures, in which almost every building forces a knowledgeable person to turn to intertemporal dialogue. But still, the architecture of St. Petersburg is not modern, so let’s turn to the architectural works of modern creators. For example, the shell house “Nautilus” by the Mexican Javier Senosian, the library of Louis Nusser, architects Yves Bayard and Francis Chapu, “Green Citadel” by the German architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
And speaking of the literature of elite culture, one cannot fail to mention James Joyce (and his legendary novel Ulysses), who had a significant influence on Virginia Woolf and even Ernest Hemingway. Beat writers, for example, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, in my opinion, can be considered representatives of elite culture literature.
I would also like to add Gabriel Garcia Marquez to this list. “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, “Love in Time of Plague”, “Remembering My Sad Whores”... the works of the Spanish Nobel Prize winner are undoubtedly very popular in elite circles. If we talk about modern literature, I would like to name Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015, whose works, although recognized by the literary (and not only) community, their meaning is still not accessible to most people.
Thus, you need to have a huge supply of “keys” to understanding elite culture, knowledge that can help interpret a work of art to the fullest. Every day, seeing St. Isaac's Cathedral while driving along the Palace Bridge and perceiving it as a dome against the sky is one thing. But when looking at the same cathedral, remembering the history of its creation, associating it with an example of late classicism in architecture, thereby turning to St. Petersburg of the 19th century, to the people who lived at that time, entering into dialogue with them through time and space is completely different case.
© Shchekin Ilya
Editing by Andrey Puchkov
