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Another Look At The Aesthetics Of The Popular Arts, Edward G. Lawry

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

About twenty years ago, Abraham Kaplan delivered a lively and memorable paper to the American Philosophical Association on the aesthetics of the popular arts. Appearing during the heyday of formalist criticism of the arts in America, the clear condemnation of the popular arts in his opening paragraph surprised no one. But many things have happened in the last twenty years to make us want to rethink the casual identification of popular art with "dis-value" that Kaplan takes for granted: the rise in popularity of folk music, the transformation of rock and roll by the Beatle's and others, the advent of …