Ted Cohen High And Low Audience Analysis

There is a picture in my garage, painted by my father’s friend, a reminisce of their past that is found in the one rare moment of my father’s stroke on that same canvas, a similarity shown between a professional and an amateur decades before my own. Folk illustration prints a visual story of individual culture, a creation of traditional lifestyle and meaning. A cultural heirloom handed down citizen to citizen and is easily forgettable but not completely forgotten.

In Daniel Walsh’s article, Art as socially constructed narrative: Implications for early childhood education, he suggests that, “-art can usefully be spoken of as a narrative…” and that it is, “-a crucial cultural tool for making sense of our lives in a given culture” (2). Tradition

Cohen’s separation of high and low is black and white, in which high art does not mix with low and vice versa. By saying this he implies that high art and low art are of two opposite extremes and do not mingle with the other. He goes on to say, “I have understood that the common bond uniting members of any audience is their mutual acknowledgement of a sameness of feeling about a work, and here there is no specific “sameness” (Cohen 141). The “sameness” he speaks of is not the likelihood of both categories, fine work will agree with fine work but not with popular art; only those in popular art will agree with those in popular art. Though, when given folk art, this clear line can easily be

It has to do with a person’s intent, and the context (venue).” Although, the eye is really of the beholder as when surveying a group of random individuals, more than one-third believed that art is art regardless of any sort of stipulation. When asked if either would buy an “unkown” artwork versus a Picasso, both the majority of surveyors and Hurt agreed on purchasing the lesser, the latter stating that she, “Don’t have enough money for a Picasso painting, but I do have enough money to buy the “unknowns”. And I have several times.” Folk art is as vast as the oceans are wide; it is their homely similarity that keeps them from crossing over the line into the high art category yet is significant enough to impact those in high art to base their works off