That Wall Street Journal essay was not so much a slam on contemporary art criticism -- as on the contemporary art that it validates.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120848379018525199.html?mod=taste_primary_hs Is the following really such bad prose?: "Bove's 'settings' draw on the style, and substance, of certain time-specific materials to resuscitate their referential possibilities, to pull them out of historical stasis and return them to active symbolic duty, where new adjacencies might reactivate latent meanings." But good prose or bad -- it does not seem to involve an aesthetic judgment. (i.e. -- an aesthetically unpleasant painting might offer the same referential possibilities as one that is more pleasing) So yes - contemporary art criticism is not aesthetically based. But what about the criticism related to the great encyclopedic public collections of ancient/world art that are necessary for every great modern city to present itself as such? That kind of criticism is not aesthetically based either -- is it? (Or -- at least our locate advocate of Andre Malraux would tell us so.) Is an interest in world/ancient art incompatible with aesthetic criticism? (This might not even be an issue in literature - where there's only a few people who are able to be involved with the literature of many different languages.) _____________________________________________________________ Learn to trade futures online and make extra money. Click here to learn more! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2211/fc/Ioyw6ijleoc40KVO2wOx9y6oURSnDH 1BNHRePxKs5gfvc71nzF4sBG/
