Nobody’s a critic
Thanks for a very enlightening article respecting the state of formal and credentialed art criticism in America as it impacts Central Virginia [“Do the arts mean anything to anybody anymore?” March 30]. One might better ask “Why do today’s critics in the arts have less impact on public tastes and community public vision of the arts than formerly?” This is not meant in a polemical sense, as we genuinely do need arbiters of taste, and that essential job is not being done to any great effect. That we Americans are so cussedly individualistic that we cannot accept the judgments of others on anything, much less on art, is something I do not think is necessarily a negative characteristic of personality (it may have seemed that way to the British 200 years ago politically).
I cannot deny, however, that I see a solipsistic and self-referential aspect to critical thought that needs a bit of correcting, and large areas of ignorance in how and what art is being created in America, and how people are responding to it. Happily, the days when politically charged art can be produced in a manner that results in an audience immediately galvanized for political action are gone forever. Artist and audience alike are sufficiently politically educated by the piles of political propaganda art to which they have been subjected over the past 70 years to dump it from their minds almost automatically. For my part, I prefer my politics at the ballot box or through legislation rather than pushed onto my psyche through acts of artistic sleight of hand. I want to see the legislation and the congressman behind it before making a political decision, not posters or street theater.
The synthesis of the record of public opinion that critics once generated to find what “schools of thought” or “movements” were developing is not being undertaken as a serious task. I know of no critic on the lookout for schools or trends. Is it even the business of critics to tell artists what they need to create, I wonder? Are they not explainers, educators, interpreters and publicists, primarily?
The arts are in fine form, except the art of criticism. They aren’t even undertaking the task of telling anyone who is doing what in the arts, or where, effectively. We need more Thomas Cravens, Pauline Kaels, Bernard Berensons, Sir V.S. Pritchetts and Eliots. Perhaps things are this way because there is no formal institution where one can go to be trained in criticism organized along the lines of the New York School of Design or the Rochester Institute of Technology in the field of graphic design.
Walter James O’Brien
Charlottesville
Dishonorable mentions
In the current issue of C-VILLE, you set forth the winners of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression’s 2004 Muzzle Awards [“Speech impediments,” April 13].
In my opinion, they have omitted the two most glaring choices. First: The Congress in adopting the so-called campaign reform legislation that limits free speech 60 days and 30 days prior to the Federal election. This prohibition targets only selected groups and gives a free ride to others.
Second: That GUTLESS group known as the Supreme Court, which apparently does not comprehend the plain language of the First Amendment, specifically “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….”
Their decision makes Bill Clinton’s phrase “it depends on the definition of what is, is” sound absolutely profound.
Fred Kahler
Earlysville
CORRECTION
In the We Ate Here write-up for Continental Divide in the March 30 issue we incorrectly described the Red Hot Blues as “blue and white corn chips laden with goat and jack cheeses and jalapeno peppers.” The dish does not include white corn chips or jalapeno peppers.