Wise Words
There is no logic or purpose to anything. Is that clear? Good. We can proceed. The Sunday Times, the newspaper which proves definitively that size is no guarantee of quality, recently published a list of the Top 50 masterworks of all times. I'm sorry, is that really necessary? Of all the staggeringly cretinous lists which have dominated 1999 (Robbie Williams' Angels is looking good for HMV Song Of The Millennium), this may be number one. So, amusingly, the readers of this arsingly idiotic paper have been asked to compare all known art forms to rank the finest works from the past thousand years.
The Sunday Times is a broadsheet rag. Let's get that clear to begin with. The style section begins with a 'yah' column by Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and a 'nah' column by Caroline Aherne, possibly the two most vacuous writers of all time. However, this new list has taken the paper rapidly into seriously globulous territory. Hamlet was voted number one. Michelangelo's David comes in at number two. This is the exact artistic equivalent of comparing the television with the baked potato and then seeking to determine which one of the two is superior. It was, however, heartening to see that Darwin's sermon on evolution is better than the Bible. Might piss off a few religious nuts. Good.
But then, Sergeant Pepper is apparently better than War and Peace and the city of Venice is better than both of them. How can these things be compared? But our survey says that The Beatles in general are the 31st equal best thing ever, in joint place with St Paul's Cathedral. Erm, what the Motherfuck? In the greater scheme of things, we cannot choose between the value of a building and a band. What is better, Sainsbury's or Wales? However, many people were pleased to see the blues guitarist Taj Mahal do so creditably in the list.
The columnist Bryan Appleyard, recently renamed simply The Fool, was clearly worried that a pop album could do so well. He attempted to justify the place of the said album in the list and yet ensure that the readers weren't fooled into thinking that pop music is actually any good. He wrote: "Sergeant Pepper is not being acclaimed as better than the St Matthew Passion - which, of course, it isn't - but rather as a symbolic representative of the achievements of pop". He doesn't for a moment claim that Hamlet can represent all theatre, does he? Why? Because he thinks theatre is more important.
A sickening belief remains widely held that high art is better than low art. The terms in themselves are meaningless. The chief differences between opera and cinema are ticket prices and column inches. For some reason, however, people refuse to trust their instincts. Some internal voice, probably the voice of a lifetime's indoctrination, begs them to condemn what they enjoy in favour of what they do not. The only reason is that one allegedly teaches you more about the human condition. It is difficult to fully understand, however, what exactly the Mona Lisa has ever told us about that. One woman smiling in a slightly odd way isn't going to find the meaning of life.
Art is entertainment; it need be nothing more. The reason that Neighbours is critically condemned is because it's a daily slice of utter shite. It is hideously cheerful and relentlessly awful. It is not and should not be criticised because it is on television. Yet the Sunday Times' list, by ignoring TV completely, demonstrates the tedious attitude that what is new must necessarily be bad.
Good art is what you enjoy, not what you feel that you should enjoy.
ivan.wise@worc.ox.ac.uk