by Emily Mcbride

Created on: February 07, 2009

"High Culture" is somewhat unfortunately named, the very term suggesting superiority and elitism, and alienating many. Nonetheless, there are different types of culture. We can see popular culture as being culture coming from and supported by the populace; high culture is art that may be of immense artistic value, but does not depend, at least at the time of its creation, upon the approval of a large portion of the population. It therefore allows artists to create their work without showing undue concern to what is popular or understood at the time. Evidently this can produce a lot of nonsense, but it has also given rise to some of the most (posthumously) celebrated artists known today. T.S. Eliot in defining culture stated that both high and low culture are important to having a complete and healthy culture overall. In general, gallery-level art, opera, ballet, literature and the like are considered high culture.

The undoubted strong point of the Caribbean is popular culture, for the writing, painting and particularly music coming from the reason has been in many cases has been absorbed into popular culture on a worldwide level. Nonetheless, there are many instances of "high culture" to be found on the islands. Perhaps the most famous artist of the region is the Cuban born Wilfredo Lam. Lam spent much of his life and career in Spain and France, and was friends with many of the most important artists of the day, trained by Salvador Dal's teacher and was close to Picasso. He was influenced by surrealism and other movements of European high culture of the time, yet he was also a Caribbean of mixed Chinese and mulatto heritage, and sought to portray the Afro-Cuban experience in his work.

A practitioner of both high and low culture is St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott, whose epic poem Omeros is a retelling of Homer's Iliad amongst the black fisherman community of St. Lucia. Walcott's works are not all epics, however, many are short works intended to be performed by the populace on the streets, and he is a great supporter of the popular culture of the region, of the importance of consulting the people, or letting the people decide, what are or are not great works of art. Walcott also asserts that the Caribbean is the true birthplace of magic realism, the celebrate Latin American literary tradition.

Other justifiably famous Caribbean writers include Cuban poets Jose Martia and Nicholas Guillen, and Martinique poet Aime Cesaire. Meanwhile the Caribbean has certainly played

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