Arrogance & Snobbery

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©Elsewhere
 He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob - William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848

    Baudelaire, writing in an essay on the Paris Salon of 1859 (Selected Writings on Art & Artists) rounds on photography with a venom born of the arrogance of certainty of place in the world:
    '...it is simple common sense that, when industry erupts into the sphere of art, it becomes the latter's mortal enemy...Photography must, therefore, return to its true duty, which is that of handmaid of the arts and sciences, but their very humble handmaid, like printing and shorthand, which have neither created nor supplemented literature...But if once it be allowed to impinge on the sphere of the intangible and the imaginary, on anything that has value solely because man adds something to it from his soul, then woe betide us.'
    Thus, in a few paragraphs, he consigns the nascent art of photography to the 'lower ranks' of the means of mechanical reproduction - a view still strongly prevalent over a hundred years later. In Baudelaire's arrogance we can see class structure embodied in the Arts, a pecking order of 'quality' over the proletarian, the mundane.
    Photography, thankfully - if not necessarily the Arts in general - has transcended these confines in the last fifty years, taking its place and legitimacy as an art form alongside the rest. As to society in general, much work needs to be done to stamp out the sense of absolute entitlement that comes with class and still curses society to the present.
    As has been demonstrated this week 'Do as I say...' and a willingness shown by otherwise moral people - with so far one notable exception - to bow to higher authority and doing so in spite of their moral compass',  still seem to prevail. We might take heed [warning - Birmingham link coming] of the example of Cardinal Newman in a letter to Monsignor George Talbot (a priest in Rome) of 25th July 1864:
July 25 1864
    Dear Monsignor Talbot
        I have received your letter, inviting me to preach next Lent in your Church at Rome, to 'an audience of Protestants more educated than could ever be the case in England.'
        However, Birmingham people have souls; and I have neither taste nor talent for the sort of work, which you cut out for me: and I beg to decline your offer.
I am &c J H N
Notate Bene, Government Advisors and Civil Servants alike.

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