A question of art; Who Makes Taste?

What the devil are artists too. I wouldn't compare it to see where it says an angle worm went tonight. Ask me artists nowadays are just too lazy to learn how to paint. But many are comments. Well such observations have led us to try to reduce the confusion surrounding contemporary art as we ask a question of art. I'll let him in our each week at this time. A question about contemporary art will be discussed by an arc critic a scholar a skeptic is a skeptic producer of the series. Walt Richter do introduce the panelists. Lawrence Solow has been intimately connected with the art world for over 20 years and Englishman by birth Mr. Otway became associated with the National Gallery in London in 1948. Since then he has lectured and written on art and held office in a number of important art organizations and has become like knives as a leading art

critic. A 1962 LAWRENCE I don't want to became the curator of the sought of our Guggenheim Museum in New York City. He is at present. Artist in Residence at Southern Illinois University and appearing with him on our program today is Dr. Gearhart Magnus professor of fine arts who came to his interest in art through what might seem the back door as a professor of English Dr. Magnus became fascinated with the relationships between 17th century literature and art. And soon his interest in art matched his interest in English. Prior to his appointment as professor of fine arts at you Dr. Magnus was director of academic affairs at the Philadelphia College of Art. Today we are going to put Lawrence our way right smack in the middle of the riddle and ask him to defend his notions as to the role of the critic and the contemporary art scene. Maybe I want to start Lawrence rather than ask you what your role is

by examining the critic as the artist as an artist as a critic and artist as criticism of art. Well my feeling is that if it's an odd it's an expandable but that is to say it's more like advertising or television or movie is it's not geared to the demands of the present. I'm not an art aimed at long range survival is a good deal of painting and sculpture you know. In fact it is but basically I think that criticism is a secondary language and the primary fact the primary language is the work of God. Thus it seems to me that criticism is always in the position of being dependent upon another work work of another man. It's always commentary at all that is secondary and function. What do you feel about criticism as an art.

Jerry I think it can be. Of course there have been great critics in the past who are primarily men of letters and who are in a kind of secondary creative impulse I admit. Will write a good deal of criticism while their main job of writing may be poetry or novels or something of that sort. So you would feel art as a literary criticism as a literary enterprise. I absolutely. Criticism is a literary enterprise no matter what kind of art it deals in less and less is governed by whatever principles might exist in terms of writing. Yes. That the is so fond of the old criticism. When old when criticism survives it has a different status from the criticism we need in the present time I mean I think Dryden was a very good critic and Samuel Johnson was a very good critic but that essay is now a walk there I'd

say you would have primary expression with all that piece of writing. All pieces of history you know you check them if you're interested in their classes. Yes I know I should get a system but there is art criticism also in that particularly. I merely brought up the point to distinguish the kind of critic I think you have in mind with the from the the reviewer. Well I think coming coming back to our question about the role of the critic. We admitted that that arc that criticism was sort of a secondary art which hangs very closely to that. The primary thing which with which it's dealing well can the essentials of art be expressed in words. LAWRENCE That's a tough question but it's an interesting point one you made me write down so that's why I was like that's not what I think.

I'm glad you're not going to have a director. Well my my feeling about the relation you know the words of the critic writes to the works of art about which he writes is this I think that criticism surfaces the work of God. We're used to talking about this you only have land you know Atlanta slides or something. What kind of system really is verbal AIDS and. I regard the I credit as more like the television in the hand of a plumber or something and he surfaces some of the more enjoying a quick moment that I got out of the enduring equipment. A variant of what I already said and the critic as a criticism as well as a book to service these works to keep them going with the interpretation to keep them going with full information to keep them going with bubble discussion which relates one work of

art to another chair and so that the critic is always adapting servicing patching together so that and that's why in this sense either the critic doesn't have a relationship either to the. Producer of the heart to the artist or to the consumer to the personal hangs the art on the wall. But but you say that his primary responsibility is to the work of art itself. That era of interpreting reinterpreting was once on canvas or whatever other medium artistic medium with which you're dealing. Well I think that the artists and the artist as a person to whom a critic owes his main allegiance his main obligation is there and the artist as a person that produces the work of art I wouldn't want I don't want to separate works of art from artists. But on the other hand equally I don't think the critic can work solely for the artist. You know that's what I say that's one's

main allegiance but there often comes a point where the critic's interpretation is different from the artist I'm at that point. I'm not what the artist's interpretation is you might have to separate himself off from what the artist says he's doing you know I mean I think it's important to keep the critic to keep independence but nevertheless if you're servicing a work of God you're doing it in terms of the artist's continued vitality. So he is both a mediator and a sense of recreate or in words of the impact of this that the art makes on this fairly small group of people who look at contemporary art with any degree of enjoyment and understanding. He sort of focuses feedback on the artist himself that doesn't leave because the artist as is the artist will claim to respect the critic.

Let's let's ask that not especially now because I mean the artists main experience is in valuing pleasure I think is pleasure and pain both is in producing the work and I'm trying to trying to make it possible to go on and produce his future work. He isn't particularly concerned as well with the discussion of his present work. It's merely what he intended. So you know I don't know so there is so I was erroneous and attributing this feedback quality to the critics work. It's very rare it's very rare that the critic influences a lot of us so the great stance actually between the artist and his work and at least part of the consuming public or just criticizing or other critics you know I think critics just argue with one another. No I think. That changing each other as it is now I think you placed him exactly right between the consuming public work of art and the artist.

But without much feedback to the artist Jerry or read critics as best wedding several centuries. Have you detected a difference in kind of criticism today with say criticism of the 18th and 19th century. Yes of course. I think the job of a critic is constantly becoming more and more difficult. The kind of very influential criticism produced let's say by John Ruskin England where he interpreted guided and to some extent even created a new market and perhaps a public for him. But Turner and was influential in making

the doctrines of the pre-record lights known to a much larger consuming public. This kind of function I don't see today. Lawrence only referred to her as a verb as well as pumping very hard for a given artist just as he was able so it was kind of a function. Well the thing about Ruskin is that he not only had this tremendous feeling for the energy but you you know put behind the repetition of turn. He also felt as Jerry said to the people acolytes who were man like 40 years younger or for whatever it is four of them five years younger than Turner. So that Ruskin was able to feel it you know for a man older than himself and then for a group of 10 just younger than himself with tremendous gap between

I think I think that kind of act of in your will is marvelous. Howard Rosenberg on the other hand has made is active in your book yet you see he's got this terrific. He's around 60 and he's got a terrific feeling for pins with around the Senate with him the coning who he believes to set the up the basic aesthetic problems you know all of the time and he hangs everything on the counting I think he's sort of hung up on the counting whereas you know what. I'm going to ask and got hung up on. He was a gigantic massive tomes about him but then got out of Iraq also to talk about a later generation. I turned it off in style you know before we recorded we were talking at world time about a different kind of criticism of what you write and I was wondering if we could reveal this a little bit the leather depending upon the kind of audience that you're writing is to

reach. Yeah I think it's quite one it's really a kind of stratified I don't mean in terms of top and bottom but in the function's view of art writing. Maybe you want to make it make a series of distinctions as is news reporting this sort of thing say that Grace Gluck does and the New York Times you know and she really says that she gets stories before anybody else does and publishes them first and have a accurate she'd be an example of good news reporting in odd next time as Joe mentioned viewers. They're not exactly our critics are just that they're you know they review exhibitions just quite the same thing. Then there's art criticism. I'm going to come back to that I would say like art historian the art historian goes into the massive arrangement of lots of facts to exhaust the situation that he was working on and then there's esthetics which is concerned the setting. The general system and I think the

autocratic comes like a slap in the middle between the behavior and the art historian. They are going to have to have some of the topicality and flexibility of the viewer. He also needs something of the art historians a sense of fact and data. What about us that exists that it that it was he mentioned this to ya but you see the thing about most architects as that they write occasionally and I say here with you there another couple of S's whereas you can't really set up anesthetics like that if you're going to set up an ascetics. You have to do it the hard way by writing a book on the whole art critics in the 20th century have taken over a septic systems of a fragmentary nature. Bits of stuff they've got from measurable artists like Rosenberg depends on the cooling for his existentialist views and so forth. There isn't really I think anesthetics which has been established in the 20th century by a critic of the system. Been established by other people and they are going to take an oath that what you give

us a short and even a brief guide on how to determine whether what we're reading is criticism or not. I mean you've pointed out that there are writers in various facets of our various artistic subjects not all of whom necessarily are critics. How about yourself what kind of roles do you fulfill feel as a critic. Well which is really where we started I mean that's the lead question What is the role of the critic but let's answer it in terms of your own production. I can't get my general point that the criticism is somewhere between gossip on the one hand and the big picture of the art historian on the other. Let's say it's you know somewhere in the middle. What I think what I would like the Michael was going to be is something like this it's the organization. The present odds in the present but intense pleasure I think of when I want to act on the hedonistic basis. I think too many critics tend to act on

the basis of exclusion. They cut ot down to their favorite half dozen people and then they say this is like the real thing everything else is crap. Well I think what one needs is an art critic who is not so and is not on principle who is not without standards but who acts on pleasure and the fact that I like. I mean you know I don't you know if somebody were to say if I make a generalization about what I think I usually say I like too many kinds of OT you know and I do what I want and I would like to keep that as a basis of an aesthetic and ascetic based on one's pleasure in the present in the present. I'd guarantee you by that. Yes I do I think my position is essentially the same. I haven't got quite the same stake in contemporary art that Lawrence has and I find my self puzzled by a good deal of it and sometimes

reacting violently against it. But my own feeling about the kooks function in this case is I here is a man who has this hedonistic view who does enjoy what he's looking at and can tell me why and this. I trust essentially and I would always balance this against my own negative judgement I'm just wondering isn't the uppers operative phrase. And again tell me why. Yes and this got us going but this goes back then to what to the question What what does it take to be an art critic. He's got to be able to express why. How do you how do you learn to get large Let's focus on you. What was your background that ultimately led you to become an art critic and to be accepted as an art critic. Well I'd be glad to tell you that x. Thought I had to go to the evening classes in London you know because I felt I was among the educated. One of them was an English literary class and the other was art history art history was beginning

and indistinct which I was in the middle and I could never catch up on all the reading and it was that clear cut costs. So I gave that up instead of the art history started for years and even classes and then the lecturer who lectured at the National Gallery gave me a few lectures to schools at the National Gallery and I just sort of this is just an employment of anything else. It's a slow hard business. Well obviously you've got a good deal of reading and art history that those those four years you think of of course as you think were instrumental in informing you as a critic. Well they hooked me on it so that I assisted employment and anything else you know I think that and you get a lot of you get a lot of reading done when you're unemployed and I was on quite a lot. You know I've often I took those causes I think that that also had a lot to do with it. Therefore the criteria by which we would judge a critic would be the amount of art which he

has managed to somehow or another conceal at one form or another that he has today has to as Jerry said be able to give the reasons why he gets the same mystic pleasure from a piece of work. Yeah I think you have to see an awful lot of it I mean that's you really have to be you know soaked and that's addicted to it. He will write for a great variety of magazines as a freelance writer of hard subjects. How does the market influence what what the magazine writer calls the market influence what you do. Not as much as you might think. For instance I try my to Vogue magazine for example. I write I have just the same as if I were writing for a special. Magazine The only difference isn't that edited you know they put you know the correct my grammar much more care than the editors of the

magazines do you know. And they're really because places like go now print odd criticism just as far as just the serious just as rigorous as the regular papers do. So I'm I'm pretty much the same. And here it is way that your audience is different in these two and these two publications you don't take it out of Howard. I'm I'm more in a way the audience I take into account is not so much the big general audience which is favorably disposed towards odd in a magazine like folk asked me to write but I just you know why would I be more I'm OK I'm more likely to think about audience if I'm writing for a specialized paper and then I would think like what is the state of Fons Klein criticism at the moment and then as I did recently I'm going to an attack on him and I'm in the middle of a correspondence about it everybody's complaining that I'm selling just west as part of that all of it. Voted

against the best opinion I think cause I thought opinion you know in the specialized circles was wrong. So that so I think about the audience when I'm writing to the smallest secular magazine but I don't think about it the total time I think of the big one because you have a tendency to express yourself as without it I think that our programs and the popularity of it any that any of us do you think I'm pretty sloppy writer I think how much of it is commissioned and how much do you just sort of think up and pedal. I never write anything until I've been out of the place to sell it. I mean either it's commission I've proposed it. I never write anything and then send it on. I think I'm something special. Well I think with what a lot of our writers would we consider that a professional that I used to be unprofessional. I think I think so I said I get it I want you out you have the reputation I will no longer need to rely on such techniques. You know I just like you not to have a couple of friends who are editors I think that's well that's already Ed. That

is and what are the critics responsibility. Let's let's start first of all I get a Lawrence does do you feel that you have certain responsibilities you must live up to and your work as a critic. Well yes. One of these responsibilities is a responsibility to get the facts straight. I think that on criticism of though it's often shortish you know and often but with a topical Tatars in mind I think it's very very necessary indeed Echaveste on a secure basis of fact. So that although on the one hand I'm running out of pleasure I think the pleasure also has to be balanced by accurate data. And to me the problem of our criticism is combining pleasure and data that one doesn't want so that the pleasure doesn't sort of you know sort of squelch all of the facts but when the facts don't sort of pulverized the pleasure it's a

balancing act between those two things and you are applying a rather rigid discipline yourself. Well I wouldn't go look at the facts. When I did this when I did it without a certain amount of doggedness of staying with it learning with. Well you know if I went and I was the odd historian says somewhere else if a heart can have its reasons I cannot. The intelligence has its pleasures. So you know that there's pleasure also. And in that you have that right you know that's also a place I think you're right. What do you think the critics responsibilities are. Well certainly all of these this act of being in the media to expose it to elucidate or for a work of art and then invariably the the artist behind it entails

certain responsibilities one of the responsibilities to the larger public which has always intrigued me is this whole question of how much the critic is responsible for creating values. That is this would involve anesthetic a certain consistent point of view. Here are are interesting things being done. A certain value is being created something that the critic takes pleasure in. He wants to convey to this to this public be at large or small and in so doing he is recreating values. Here is something and other words which is revealing something to treasure perhaps a private pleasure is being shared.

Now I suppose I see this in my role as as a teacher. And I'm particularly aware of it here as I realize the great hunger and want can put it too strongly. That is that part of the public represented by our young people have for an art. Which is not necessarily. Otherworldly which doesn't necessarily carry the traditional values religious true. It's an echo of the supernatural or or something of the sort. But anyway something a little larger than the self something that affords one a and enlarging glimpse into a world at large and then oneself. It is this kind of creating of value which I think is a very important job for the critic. Perhaps creating insights enlarging of

the of the mind and the spirit. You see him as as a real social phenomenon that is that he has a responsibility beyond just just putting down his ideas that his responsibility is as definable in terms of the effect of what he is what he's doing on the public. Only if you feel that I think but certainly this larger of you. The dog may belong to the historian is I think of crucial importance to the critic who is using the historians that as Lauren said and is also looking at the the current scene. In fact his reactions may be terribly important. All reason is like would you agree with us. Was it. Very flattering estimate of the critic's role and I certainly be pleasant to believe that and I hope it's true. And in this sense I'd subscribe to it. I

think that maybe if a critic writes out of pleasure but also your handles data Well he may be making you know the acquisition of insight of the experience of insight possible to other people if that happened I think got to be great. But this and this one then I think if the critic had done his job well I don't think a critic necessarily has to say this is good this is bad. He writes I have pleasure and detail. Then the reader is in a position to make the judgments of good or bad because I think that good judgments of good or bad are really the acts of people in their own private world. It's completely private I think about which art is good and which art is bad. It's one of the personal non-communicable experiences of people and Lawrence thank you very much and you too of course Gerry for joining us again today in our discussion of the role of the critic.

We're back again next week with another question of art. The in. Question are featuring our critic Lawrence Callaway professor of fine arts and Magnus is produced and transcribed by the SEIU Radio Network. This is us again next week. Another question.

This is the SEIU Broadcasting Service. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.