I mention these facts not to denigrate the arts but to clarify an important mystery in understanding ourselves. To understand the psychology of the arts, we have to look at the phenomena with the disinterested eye of an alien biologist trying to make sense of the human species rather than as a member of the species with a stake in how the arts are portrayed. But to understand the psychology of the arts that remains when we subtract out the psychology of status, we must leave at the door our terror of being mistaken for the kind of person who prefers Andrew Lloyd Webber to Mozart. We need to begin with folk songs, pulp fiction, and paintings on black velvet, not Mahler, Eliot, and Kandinsky. That question might be answerable, whereas questions about Art in general are not.
Theories of Art carry the seeds of their own destruction.
Any discussion that fails to recognize that dynamic is doomed to sterility. It will never understand the bawdy laughs and convivial banter that are so important in people's lives because it will define humor as the arch wit of an Oscar Wilde. Excellence and the avant-garde are designed for the sophisticated palate, a product of years of immersion in a genre and a familiarity with its conventions and cliches. They rely on one-upmanship and arcane allusions and displays of virtuosity. However fascinating and worthy of our support they are, they tend to obscure the psychology of aesthetics, not to illuminate it.