December 17, 2007
Dore Ashton on art criticism and the essay form
What I have noticed in the so-called postmodernist criticism is a marked tendency toward theory—not the ancient Greek notion of theoria, in which there is a suggestion of looking outward toward something, which after all is open—but the positing of a fixed structure to which all experiences must submit. We all know how many professional and academic writers title their works “The Work of Art and Society,” “The Work of Art and the Family,” “The Work of Art and the Gallery,” or “The Work of Art and the Elephant.” Such specificity in allusion is highly regarded. But not by me. Each person, as I see it, builds his own culture. He grasps materials according to his temperament, his background, his education, his own nature. In order to survive in a world of others, he knows he must acquire a knowledge of a number of things just because they are there. But in order to respire in a world of thought, he is always the hunter and the shaper, wielding both the bow and the lyre. The lyre, alas, has been repressed; in other words, the lyrical is usually derided. I can speak of my own case in which I have more than once been dismissed as an “impressionistic critic”—something quite expendable in my country. I often think of the definition of the lyrical poet given by a very logical and commonsensical thinker, John Stewart Mill. “The lyrical poet,” he said, “is not heard. He is overheard.”
I believe the best writing—or, if you prefer, criticism—about the visual arts is done by he who is explaining first to himself, and only then to the others. He asks himself why he responds so passionately to this or that painting or sculpture. I sympathize with artists who so often find the words about their works wanting. A painter, James McNeil Whistler, remarked: “A life passed among pictures makes not a painter—else the policeman in the National Gallery might assert himself.” Of course Whistler was an injured party, having been demeaned by a very famous critic, John Ruskin.
Read more at The Brooklyn Rail.