<B>A question of discrimination </B><P>High culture is seen by some as the product of a hidebound establishment bent on excluding outsiders. Is it possible to believe in social equality yet defend elitism in the arts? <P>AC Grayling <BR>The Guardian <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Think, wrote the cultural critic Eunice Lipton, "about Michelangelo, van Gogh, Rodin, Picasso, Pollock. Could these artists be lesbians, Asian Americans, Native Americans?" Her point was that if they had been any of these things, they would not have been recognised as "artist-geniuses" (her term); and this by implication shows that the notion of high culture in the western tradition embodies everything that is exclusive of other cultures and elitist within its own. <BR>To writers such as Lipton, quality is not a distinguishing feature of the objects and activities which the term "high culture" standardly denotes. The art critic Robert Hughes explains why: "Quality, the argument goes, is a plot. It is the result of a conspiracy of white males to marginalise the work of other races and cultures. To invoke its presence in works of art is somehow inherently repressive." <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,754319,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A><p>[This message has been edited by Emma Pegler (edited July 13, 2002).]