Gilbert Seldes - The Seven Lively Arts

The Seven Lively Arts is Seldes' most significant accomplishment. In explaining its title, he asserted that he was not referring to seven arts in particular –

One thing should, perhaps, be made clear about the phrase. There were those who thought (correctly) that you couldn't find seven and there were those who felt (stuffily) that the seven were not arts. Lively was for the most part unchallenged. The sacred 7 came from the classics, from 'the seven arts' (which was also the name of a magazine recently defunct) and I never tried to categorise the contents of the book to conform to the figure.

He would reiterate all his life that his intention was to treat popular (and denigrated) culture with the intelligent criticism that contemporary critics were largely inclined only to apply to highbrow culture. Following Seldes' completion of The Seven Lively Arts in 1923, he wrote that the central message of the book was

that the minor arts, those frequently called 'lowbrow', are not hostile to the major arts, and that both the minor and the major have their chief enemy in the second rate bogus arts.

In this book, he sought to explain why African-American music and shows were so popular, and to revise conventional definitions art. Still, as much as he praised the vitality and honesty of these shows, he also stated that they were savage in nature, and mistakenly predicted that they would be short-lived.