The Art of Middlebrow
Tilda Swinton sleeping at MoMA (photo via republicx.tumblr.com)
“The word “highbrow” has been in use for some 150 years, according to Beha’s introduction, although it has uncomfortable racial undertones that have since fallen away; it generally refers to avant-garde art and culture — Joyce’s Ulysses, say, or Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” “Lowbrow” entered the lexicon in the early 20th century, Beha said, and refers to popular, mass-produced art: think Thomas Kinkade and Mary Higgins Clark. “Middlebrow” is a term meant for the culture that falls somewhere in the middle — art that aspires to be avant-garde but isn’t quite, that uses the tropes of highbrow forms but presents them in a far more accessible, easily digestible way. Like Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box at MoMA.”
(via theprocrastinationfile)
