Popular culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images , and other phenomena that are within

the mainstream of a given culture, especia lly Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mai nstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass medi a, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society. This culture is often viewed as being trivial and dumbed-down in order to find c onsensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a result, it comes under heav y criticism from various non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups a nd countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalis t, and corrupted. (wikipedia) Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It for ms currents and eddies, and represents a complex of mutually interdependent pers pectives and values that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example, certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge in to) a subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular cu lture has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appe al to a broad spectrum of the public. Important contemporary contributions for u nderstanding what popular culture means have been given by the German researcher Ronald Daus, who studies the impact of extra-European cultures in North America , Asia and especially in Latin America. But what exactly is the value of popularising - or trying to popularise - contem porary art? What, or rather who, benefits from this ritual? The artists? The pub lic (whoever they are)? The Tate? The press? Obviously the last two stand to gai n something in terms of visitors or readers and one artist gets a decent cheque out of it, but that really isn t the point. Such quantifying exercises may mean so mething to administrators but they say nothing at all about art and people s relat ionship with it. Why is the prospect of more people going to art galleries assum ed to be, in itself, a positive development? Why and how is it better for art to be, or to be seen to be, popular? Modern art of the last 150 or so years has not generally been very popular; more over, it is a commonplace that modern art has in part defined itself in oppositi on to conventional taste. Certainly artists have exploited popular sources in a number of ways - from Courbet and Seurat to Warhol and Koons - but this has had little to do with courting popularity. It isn t necessarily that artists have cons ciously set out to defy the public so much that this largely imaginary body has be en irrelevant to the development of art. The point is that art has been subject to exactly the same forces that affect every other meaningful activity in modern culture: the forces of specialisation. It always strikes me as an odd complaint that modern art is difficult to understand. Why should anyone expect it to be a nything else? I have never heard the same charge levelled against science, mathe matics, mechanics or dentistry. It is accepted (if not welcomed) that these subj ects are difficult ; that in order to understand them it is necessary to read some books, got to some lectures, learn the language, and so on. When art is difficult , abstract, not-immediately-accessible, it is labelled elitist . It is probably a condition of saying or making anything significant in our cultu re that it will be said to or made for relatively few people. General truths are for the most part empty words. Lger wrote in 1913: Each art is isolating itself a nd limiting itself to its own field. Specialisation is a characteristic of moder n life, and pictorial art, like all other manifestations of the human mind, must submit to it. Pure modernism. But the point for Lger was that this condition resul ts in a gain in realism in visual art . That is, for Lger, modernism was the realis m of the 20th century, not its imaginary other. 80 years after Lger observation, there hasn t been a noticeable easing off in the process of specialisation. Yet st ill there s a deep resistance to art s inevitable position in the modern world.

Not only the art becomes an increasingly specialised activity, it has also sub-d ivided into a series of sub-specialisms. Art criticism, at least in the specialis t journals, has become increasingly bound up with its own methods and means and i ncreasingly autonomous from art. The same is true of art history which in some i nstances seems to have abolished the connection with art altogether. It is telli ng and ironic that at least as many - and probably most - complaints about the el itism of modernism come from these sub-specialist areas as from outside art. It i s not the first time art has become a scapegoat for other s professional, social o r political insufficiencies. The psychological condition which tends to accompany specialisation is paranoia. As we become more and more dependent on experts to mediate between the specialist and the non-specialist, we have to take a lot on trust, and trust involves the possibility of being taken for a ride. Art, it seems, has become a focus for the paranoid anxiety which is inherent in our relationship with modernity in genera l. This being the case, any self-appointed mediator between art and the public the Tate Gallery or Channel Four for example - has their work cut out. The dang er of doing exactly the opposite of what was intended, of intensifying rather th an dissolving public doubt and cynicism, will always be present. Add to this the recognition both that a significant amount of art and art-talk really is preten tious and self-satisfied, and that a rather more significant proportion of the m edia act wholly in bad faith - and then ask whether it s worth the trouble. Certai nly if the trouble amounts to a small annual four-person exhibition and a couple of short TV features, then no one should be surprised when absolutely nothing n oticeable changes. The point is not that the public doesn t matter, but that it doesn t exist. Like the-s ilent-majority, people-in-general, and the-man-in-the-street, it is a self-justi fying fantasy of politicians, civil servants, administrators and journalists. It is a mythical creature with invisible interests on whose behalf people claim to speak, so as to disguise the self-interest of their own actions. It s one of the great self-deceptions of our age. Artists have a responsibility to art, not to a nything or anyone else. So much for bringing contemporary art closer to the publi c . It s a blind date with a ghost.