Is it possible for something to be brilliant as culture, yet rubbish as art? Not only is the answer yes, but the two often seem to happen together, in a particularly noisome yet memorable cocktail – the very flavour of artistic success in our time.
First of all we need to define "culture". This word is often used loosely to mean "the arts", but most of us are also aware that it has a larger, more social meaning. The most useful definition of culture is in the sense anthropologists use it: a culture is a whole way of life, plus the forms of art – elite and popular, readable and abstract – that represent that way of life to itself. British culture, in other words, means not just museums and Jane Austen but sports events, newspapers, hairstyles, going to the shops and falling in love.
The works of art that make most impact on most people are the ones that directly address and even participate in this larger culture. Art, since the 1980s, has become very good at doing that. It stands to reason that if a work makes a cultural impact it is good – doesn't it?
Well, obviously not. There's a long list of works of art that have made a spectacular cultural impact with little or no critical approval as art. Diamond skull, anyone? Myra Hindley portrait?
But a diamond skull is manifestly a cultural symbol: an artist who presents one is acting in culture, playing with collective meanings. Does artistic merit in the old sense actually matter, in the age of potent cultural intervention chronicled by Tate Modern's exhibition Pop Life?
I think it does. But I don't think it is the only truth. A work of art can be both horrible and effective. That happens again and again – often on the fourth plinth. But we desperately need a quiet space where art can be enjoyed in itself, for itself. A cultureless museum.
