AVANT-GARDE AND KITSCH
45
omy becomes somewhat blurred. The axioms of the few are shared
by the many; the latter believe superstitiously what the former
)lelieve soberly. And at such moments in history the masses are
able to feel wonder and admiration for the culture, on no matter
how high a plane, of its masters. This applies at least to plastic
culture, which is accessible to all.
In the Middle Ages the plastic artist paid lip service at least
to the lowest common denominators of experience. This even
remained true to some extent until the seventeenth century. There
was available for imitation a universally valid conceptual reality,
whose order the artist could not tamper with. The subject matter
of art was prescribed by those who commissioned works of art,
which were not created, as in bourgeois society, on speculation.
Precisely because his content was determined in advance, the artist
was free to concentrate on his medium. He needed not to he phil·
osopher or visionary, hut simply artificer. As long as there was
general agreement as to what were the worthiest subjects for art,
the artist was relieved of the necessity to he original and inventive
in
his "matter" and could devote all his energy to formal problems.
For him the medium became, privately, professionally, the content
of his art, even as today his medium is the public content of the
abstract painter's art-with that difference, however, that the
medieval artist had to suppress his professional preoccupation in
public-had always to suppress and subordinate the personal and
professional in the finished, official work of art.
If,
as an ordinary
member of the Christian community, he felt some personal emotion
about his subject matter, this only contributed to the enrichment of
the work's public meaning. Only with the Renaissance do the inflec–
tions of the personal become legitimate, still to he kept, however,
within the limits of the simply and universally recognizable. And
only with Rembrandt do "lonely" artists begin to appear, lonely
in
their art.
But even during the Renaissance, and as long as Western
art was endeavoring to perfect its technique, victories in this realm
could only he signalized by success in realistic imitation, since
there was no other objective criterion at hand. Thus the masses
could still find in the art of their masters objects of admiration and
wonder. Even the bird who pecked at the fruit in Zeuxes' picture
could applaud.
