Monday, December 12, 2005

interestingish essay on the present perilousState of the Art crisis crisis--

"In the 50's and 60's, young, aspiring art critics were confronted with an intellectual divide. They could write about art out of their particular passions and responses, or they could adopt Greenberg's vision. The first, the belletristic option, allowed for the exercise of personal style, the careful inspection and precise expression of one's own reactions, and it found adherents among poet-critics like John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, and individualistic, iconoclastic intellects like Susan Sontag. But freedom came at a price. The problem with belletrism was a lack of any shared perspective, a floating subjectivity. It depended on little more than hedonistic responsiveness. Greenberg offered coherence and solidity."