A01=Wesley Monroe Shrum
Acting
Advertising
Aesthetic Theory
Aesthetics
Amateur
Art
Art world
Attendance
Author_Wesley Monroe Shrum
Award
Box office
Brooks Atkinson
Career
Category=AGA
Category=ATQ
Category=ATX
Category=AV
Censure
Consideration
Critic
Criticism
Cultural heritage
Cultural mediation
Discursive practice
Dudley Moore
Edinburgh Festival
Embarrassment
Entertainment
Entertainment Weekly
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Explanation
Fine art
Genre
High Art
High culture
Highbrow
Highbrow (Transformers)
Ideology
John Cleese
Jr.
Lecture
Literature
Make A Difference
Melodrama
Multicollinearity
Newspaper
Originality
Performance art
Performing arts
Playwright
Poetry
popular art
Popular culture
Popularity
Postmodernism
Prediction
Publication
Publicist
Publicity
Publishing
Revue
Sensibility
Social status
Sociology
Standardized coefficient
Student's t-test
Television
The New York Times
The Other Hand
Theatre
Theory
Tom Stoppard
Traverse Theatre
Variable (mathematics)
Work of art
Writer
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691026572
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 197 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 28 Jul 1996
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Why does the distinction between high and popular art persist in spite of postmodernist predictions that it should vanish? Departing from the conventional view that such distinctions are class-related, Wesley Shrum concentrates instead on the way individuals form opinions about culture through the mediation of critics. He shows that it is the extent to which critics shape the reception of an art form that determines its place in the cultural hierarchy. Those who patronize "lowbrow" art--stand-up comedy, cabaret, movies, and popular music--do not heed critical opinions nearly as much as do those who patronize "highbrow" art--theater, opera, and classical music. Thus the role of critics is crucial to understanding the nature of cultural hierarchy and its persistence. Shrum supports his argument through an inquiry into the performing arts, focusing on the Edinburgh Fringe, the world's largest and most diverse art festival. Beginning with eighteenth-century London playhouses and print media, where performance art criticism flourished, Shrum examines the triangle of mediation involving critics, spectators, and performers.
The Fringe is shown to parallel modern art worlds, where choices proliferate along with the demand for guidance. Using interviews with critics and performers, analysis of audiences, and published reviews as well as dramatic vignettes, Shrum reveals the impact of critics on high art forms and explores the "status bargain" in which consumers are influenced by experts in return for prestige.
Wesley Monroe Shrum, Jr., is Professor of Sociology at Louisiana State University.
