I had never heard of a carrot carnation. But when, back in the 1980s, several of my fellow staffers at the office of a Texas State Senator in Austin wanted to learn about them, I went along to kill some time. (There are downsides to working in the legislature of a state with an anti-government culture, but it does provide you with a lot of free time).

We soon found ourselves in the auditorium of the convention center in Austin, surrounded by thousands of middle-aged suburban housewives. On stage, a woman resembling Martha Stewart showed how, with a knife and a little imagination, fruits and vegetables can be turned into ornamental table settings, like carrot carnations.

Many years later, I came to realize that I had witnessed one extreme of the artistic spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are major arts, defined not in terms of cultural superiority but in terms of large audiences. At the other extreme are crafts like making carrot carnations. These are arts that have no audience, other than practitioners of the art itself. Another word for a craft is a hobby. In between the major arts and the crafts or hobbies are minor arts, which have a small audience whose members do not themselves aspire to practice the art.

The assignment of an art to one or another category has nothing to do with its quality. It is merely an assessment of the relationship between artist and audience.