Should artists make artworks that are easy to understand? Or should there be challenging artworks out there, but free education to help us understand them? What, if anything, is the value of difficult paintings, poems, and novels? This week we’re asking if the arts should be for everyone.

That question has a long and fascinating history. Plato’s character “Socrates,” in thePhaedrus, already worried that books “roll around everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with [them].” He clearly didn’t want writers to make their words accessible to all. The irony, of course, is that thePhaedrus本身就是一本书:即使他写了这些话给他的角色说，柏拉图知道他所做的正是苏格拉底所警告的!

If we flash forward to the nineteenth century, we find French poet Stéphane Mallarmé telling us to stop teaching great poetry to kids, since they have no way to appreciate it. (Judging by my own reading skills as a high school student, maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong.) But we also have Lautréamont, another French poet, saying “poetry must be made by all, not by one.” So which is it: should art be something we all make? Something we can at least all appreciate? Or something for the select few?

我想提出一个折衷的答案。我甚至为它准备了一个口号:“一些面向所有人的艺术;对某些人来说，一切都是艺术。”我不确定它会不会是一件好t恤，但我现在坚持穿它。The thought is, first, that it’s great to have some artworks that are universally accessible, or at least as accessible as possible. In case you think that automatically means a catastrophic reduction in quality—pandering to the “lowest common denominator”—it’s worth bearing in mind that artworks can appeal to multiple audiences at multiple levels. Some watch Shakespeare for the philosophical questions, others for the dirty jokes. Some enjoy Jane Austen for the romantic plots,others (also) for the brilliant ironies and traps. Some bingeGame of Thronesfor the dramatic twists,others (also) for the moral quandaries. So accessible artworks can be layered, sophisticated, and rewarding.

也就是说——这是第二部分——并不是所有的东西都必须具有大众吸引力。在瓜德罗普岛写的小说不需要迎合纽约的读者，解释所有的当地典故。Quirky comedies, likeNapoleon Dynamite，不必去逗每个人的幽默感。政治讽刺不一定对其他国家的人有意义。最重要的是，让我们的生活变得困难的艺术品有真正的价值。

Here I’m thinking about things like Toni Morrison’sA Mercy, James Joyce’sUlysses, Virginia Woolf’sMrs. Dalloway, plays by Beckett, paintings by Picasso, poems by Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück, novels by Proust and Kafka, music by Bach… These are artworks that are hard, and so they aren’t going to appeal to people who are in a hurry. But for those willing to think and feel about them, they can be transformative, getting us to contemplate vital questions, sharpening our mental skills, expanding our emotional range, enriching our inner life.

托尼·莫里森一点都不像贵族。她的小说并不排斥那些没有读到“正确”东西的人。They areavailableto all, even if they aren’t immediatelyaccessibleto all. They’re challenging, not because they require background knowledge, but just because they require a bit ofwork. And that work pays off richly, for those willing to do it.

And while we’re doing that work, we often compare notes with other readers, as we try to make the best sense of the challenging novel we’re all in love with. Books like that bring us together—maybe not as entire nations, but as smaller communities of shared taste and fellow feeling. Would we really want to lose those communities?

I certainly think we should do more, as a society, to put art within the reach of everyone: free museums, free concerts, free (and good!) art education, public literacy programs… But once art is within everyone’s reach, we’ll have done our job. We shouldn’t hope for a world in which every poem, movie, or song is immediately “accessible.” All art is for some people—everyone has at least one aesthetic “niche” they belong to—and I think that’s good enough. In fact I think that’s pretty great!

Photo byMichał ParzuchowskionUnsplash