On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 3:02 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote:
> You know, Mr. Berg, this debate goes nowhere worthy of our attention. One > can go > on forever lamenting the fragility of art as something easily ignored as > useless > or easily subsumed by money. The real conversations about art center on > how and > whether art stimulates intellectual and expressive meanings. Everything > else is > incidental and arbitrary. What the gossip about art and money does > suggest, > however, is the excessive role that mass culture plays in determining our > reality. We can't exclude cultural perspectives and the conclusions they > lead > us to, of course, but the last twenty years or so of extreme faith in > cultural > contexts -- a sort of mass opinion surmised after the fact -- have > obscured the > integrity and creativity of an individual intellect and feeling > confronting the > world. Art is a human activity that commemorates that confrontation. > > I agree with Michael in being annoyed by your incessant quoting of others > out of > context merely to imply that you have numerable worthy allies to back up > what > one guesses are your very conventional and conservative, unexamined and > incurious views about art and aesthetics. Surely you can find a quotation > that > says something about the cowardice of not speaking your own mind directly. > How > about Priscilla Mullins telling John Alden to "Speak for yourself, John" > when he > came to deliver another man's love note? Lesson: When John did speak up, > he > had the hand of the lovely Priscilla; their many thousands of descendants > are > pleased he did. > > wc (a 12th generation descendant of John and Priscilla). > Oh yeah? Well, guess what? I have just had a revelation that I am the REINCARNATION of Plutarch who said: - It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. So THERE.
