The Apologetic for Bad Art

“The first thing we must do is get the smoke out of our eyes. Which is to say that we must start afresh, and concede publicly what most earnest men and women have always conceded privately, that the ancient apology for bad art-“the work is shoddy and disjointed because The Times are shoddy and disjointed”-is pretty much nonsense. We say ‘pretty much’ because, like lesser axioms of the creative-writing classes (‘the artist must be original,’ ‘the art must be concrete,’ ‘art mirrors life,’ ‘art must be upsetting,’ etc.), the apology for bad art has just a shading of minor truth to it, just enough validity to render it attractive to bad artists and worse critics. The slogan appeals, in other words, to the ego of the third-rate; and-like the lesser axioms of the creative-writing class-it was never meant to be taken seriously by the first-rate, or even the second. It was primarily a hastily invented rationalization, a temporary excuse whipped up in the final decades of the nineteenth century to justify something that already existed. The ‘something,’ of course, was bad art; but-and this is the crucial point-it was bad art that was also popular art, in certain severely defined neighborhoods. ” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), pp. 61-62.]