Public Arts

Public Arts Synopsis

First published in 1956 and then again in 1994. Seldes can be viewed as a pioneer of popularising and giving value to popular culture in his various publications since 1924. The Public Arts first published in 1956 starts with a letter to Jimmy Durante and Edward R. Murrow in which Seldes suggests that news and entertainment are 'part of one field' and that 'the lively arts and the mass media are two aspects of the same phenomenon' which can be captured in the term 'the public arts'. Popular culture refers to the world of situation comedies, comic strips, MTV. radio and television talk shows, football games, standup comedians, mystery stories, popular romance novels, and so on. Elite culture refers to operas, ballets, classical music, masterworks of painting and sculpture, serious novels and plays and other art forms that require, generally speaking, relatively sophisticated sensibilities. Many critics now argue that it is now unauthenticated to argue that popular culture and elite culture are different.