Are there no objective standards by which art can be judged? In his provocative new book, critic John Carey concludes that there aren't. He tells Helen Meany why
The dust-jacket of the latest book by Prof John Carey is telling: he is described as having been "at various points in his life a soldier, a barman, a television critic, a beekeeper, a printmaker and a professor of literature at Oxford". Having met him last week, I would confidently guess that this careful wording was his own choice. More than a question of self-effacement, it is an indication of a cast of mind that is instinctively wary of hierarchies.
Assumptions of superiority - both aesthetic and social - are put to the test in his brilliantly stimulating and timely critical inquiry, What Good Are the Arts?. In many ways it is a development of his provocative book from more than a decade earlier, The Intellectuals and the Masses, but is much broader in scope. He argues that there are no objective standards by which art can be judged, unless we believe in God-given absolutes; that a work of art has no special or mysterious distinguishing qualities - these are perceived by the viewer/reader/audience member and agreed on by societies and cultures during particular historical periods; that all aesthetic judgment is a matter of subjective opinion; that distinctions between high and low art are an invention and that a work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, even if it is considered to be so only by that one person.
Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of London, the book's pugnacious, witty style and informal tone belie the breadth of its scholarship. The field of aesthetics is, of course, vast and Carey realised about three years into his research that he could have gone on reading forever.
"I did get quite depressed," he says, laughing in retrospect, "and realised that I just had to start writing it, even if it is an interim work. But it's not meant to be merely provocative. I've thought harder about it than I've thought about any book I've written."
At first he considered writing it in the form of a dialogue, giving both sides of the arguments. As it stands, it reflects a position of sincere doubt.
"I'd like to be proven wrong," he says. "I want to stimulate serious debate."
His opening chapter trenchantly works its way through previous attempts in Western thought to define what a work of art is ("a modern question"), beginning with Kant's Critique of Judgement, which he dismisses as "a farrago of superstition and unsubstantiated assertion". While this is typical of his style of argument throughout, in person Carey is soft- spoken, attentive and unemphatic, listening eagerly and taking time to reflect on what he's saying.
The book goes on to consider what psychology and the science of the brain can contribute to our knowledge of people's responses to art, and to the possibility of finding absolute standards for evaluating artworks - and is less than satisfied with the results. Too little research is being conducted into how art affects its recipients, Carey says, while advocates of the value of certain works or genres of art rely on their own assumptions about other people's responses, which they cannot ever be sure about.
These responses can be described, of course, but "an astonishing fact about the history of art criticism - including literary criticism - is that it has shown virtually no interest in this source of knowledge. Did Aristotle ever check out his theory of tragedy against a cross- section of the audience at Delphi? Apparently not; and criticism has remained resolutely blinkered ever since."
On the question of high and low art, he says the arguments of advocates of high art don't bear scrutiny. "Taste is so bound up with self-esteem, particularly among devotees of high art, that a sense of superiority is almost impossible to relinquish without risk of an identity crisis."
How has he, as Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, managed to relinquish his own sense of superiority?
"My sense of identity certainly does depend on literature," he says, "It would be terrifying to imagine my life without it. But that should not be the same as a sense of superiority. And, the people I admire in society are not the most literary or cultured. They are the people who are doing jobs that are self-denying. But taste can be divisive, as Pierre Bourdieu points out, and therefore so can art. It can be the root of evil and also the root of good."
The association of artistic taste with personal identity and self-esteem helps explain why questions of artistic judgment can become so heated and bitter, and is also one of the reasons why people feel such animus towards critics. As a prolific literary critic, a past chairman of the Man Booker Prize judges, a former judge of The Irish Times Literature Award and now the International Man Booker prize, Carey makes judgments about the quality of artistic work all the time. But, for him, these remain questions of opinion and preference, which are subjective.
"The critic's role is to express opinions, based on wide reading, knowledge and comparison," he says. "The critic can suggest things that other readers or audience members might not see, and use his or her imagination to persuade and to illuminate. Critics have multiple roles now, but very few these days are sufficiently important to form the taste of their era - as people said of William Empson. In general, we are reluctant to accept authority of all kinds."
In considering whether exposure to art is morally and spiritually beneficial - an assumption that underlies public subsidy of the arts and, to an extent, media coverage of them - Carey is deeply sceptical, as he is about the assertions of the civilising and humanising role of art. He cites the egregious example of Hitler's "deep and serious" interest in the arts and his role as a patron of the arts.
Likewise, he dismisses the notion of the religious status of art, or its immortality, as "an idolatrous fake".
"If anything, the religion of art makes people worse," he says, "because it encourages contempt for those considered inartistic." Compassionate egalitarianism drives his argument throughout.
In the second half of the book he makes a passionate case - which he insists is "personal and subjective" - for the superiority of literature to all other art forms, because it is capable of reasoning, of criticising itself, of moralising, because it stocks our minds and its "indistinctness" requires our participation. Reading is an active and creative process, he says.
Because language is nebulous, it stirs our imagination. He concedes, immediately, that all language-based art forms share this quality.
"Yes, I should have written more about that," he says. "I didn't say enough about film, for example. And the endless new interpretations you get in theatre, say of a Shakespeare play, work in the same way. That's how I feel about literary reading."
While this second part of the book could almost stand alone, the connecting thread here is the engagement of the reader as an active interpreter.
Although dismissive of the benefits of arts education and appreciation, Carey does advocate active participation in art rather than "passive art-worshipping". He is scathing about the concentration of artistic activity and collections in "temples" - national cultural institutions in metropolitan centres. Evidence from arts projects in prisons suggests that creative activity can have beneficial psychological and social effects, he says, quoting psychotherapist Rollo May's view that art that is active can provide an alternative to violence.
There is an underlying tension, throughout the book, between caring about art and caring about people; even the literature he loves tends to illuminate or scrutinise ordinary human lives. A hyper-rationalist, he recoils from any vestiges of woolly Platonism that might be lingering among claims about the enduring value of art. He identifies "an antagonism towards pride, grandeur and self-esteem" as the consistent animus of English literature. Of course, this is something he happens to share (that inevitable subjectivity again).
"Yes, it's the influence of Milton," he says, laughing, "which has also given me an attraction towards ideas in literature. It's a bit limiting perhaps.
"What I want from fiction is to see how events affect the individual, how the context impinges on a few people. My two favourite novels would be War and Peace and Vanity Fair, for that reason, and of the two, I would always prefer Vanity Fair because Thackeray depicts ordinary people. This is not just inverted snobbery. His characters seem to me to be more universal."
The barman, the soldier, the beekeeper and the professor can all agree on that.
What Good Are the Arts?, by John Carey, is published today by Faber & Faber, £12.99
