MusicPopulism

Quora Answer : Why are people so elitist about art? Why aren't people allowed to enjoy high saturated photos, pop music, or stylized drawings, without being looked down on by "real" artists?

Jan 22, 2019

The problem with "pop" art isn't what people think.

There's nothing wrong with simplicity, or decoration or bright colours or anything else you think people look down on. True artists don't judge these things. They think it's all great.

The problem is that anything that tries to be popular inevitably does so by trying to be as like existing popular things as it can.

What "snobs" like me find tiring is the degree to which all "pop" art is the same.

If you like music, you want to explore a wide variety of it. If you love painting you want to see all the different techniques and styles painters use to capture the light or an emotion on a human face or the sublime in a dramatic landscape. You don't want to hear "new" music that sounds almost exactly like the music did six months ago, or look at a hundred portraits that all use exactly the same trick to make the subject look beautiful.