MICHAEL WOOD
355
although not usually both at the same time. Some fairly fine
critical judgments are called for. I think
North by Northwest,
for
example, is an elegant work of art, while
Psycho
is a rather crude
piece of entertainment. But opinions will differ and the princi–
ple is perhaps more important than the particular opinion. Most
of Hitchcock's films are comedies, it seems to me, and comedy is
an interesting genre when it comes to high art and low art, since
comedy is a low art which becomes high if it lasts. No one would
want to suggest that Dickens or Shakespeare was not an enter–
tainer. And if we wish to save our standards and our faith in the
highness of high art by asserting that something else is "only
entertainment", we have to be ready for the rejoinder which
suggests a certain poverty where we want to see riches, the reply
which says that the art we are preferring is "only art."
MARSHALL BERMAN:
It
seems to me that there's one really genuine and
reasonable motive for getting involved with art-that, in a sense if
you didn't want to really reach people in some essential way you
probably wouldn' t become an artist in the first place. There are
much easier ways to make a living after all.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: You want to comment on that?
ROBERT BRUSTEIN:
It
is a very understandable motive to want to reach
people and to reach as many people as possible but I don't think
that's what makes artists artists in the first place. I think there's a
compulsion. Elaine May said "Art is the best medium of communi–
cation we have," and she was joking of course; it's not a medium of
communication at all. It has a function of communication but it's
not a medium of communication; it arises out of compulsion, and
ultimately the greatest artists do reach enormous numbers of people,
but not right away.
If
they are reaching the greatest number of
people right away, the chances are that they have become that long
uninterrupted monotonous blip. Because that makes them more
accessible, recognizable. They're not responding to their inn'er
hunger, but rather to their hunger to, as you say, reach ...
LARRY RIVERS: Which part of history are you referring to about artists
who weren't immediately recognized?
PHILLIPS: Why don't you get up there, Larry? Go ahead.
