On Oct 10, 2008, at 9:34 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
1. Has expert advice ever caused you to derive an aesthetic
experience from a
work that did not occasion it before ?
2. Have you ever found ever found criticism to be as worthwhile
aesthetically
as experiencing artworks directly?
And regarding that second question -- I would have to answer "yes"
Not that criticism has ever been as worthwhile aesthetically to me
as my
favorite works have been -- but I have often found it as worthwhile
-- or even
more so ----than the works to which it refers. (as when a sharp
reviewer
trashes a movie that I found dull -- or when a literary critic is
writing
about poetry written in a language I can't read.)
Let me see if I get this right: Miller has found it worthwhile when a
literary critic writes about a poem written in a language he cannot
read. Did I get that right? (I'm always thrown by his idiosyncratic
use of punctuation, an orthographic analog to the relationship between
"abstract expressionist" techniques and conventional Beaux-Arts
techniques, btw.)
Is Miller asserting that a critic can lead him to an aesthetic
experience of something he does not directly understand ... and thus
cannot appreciate? Is Miller claiming in this message to value the
exact thing he denounces about modernist painting, namely, that most
of it ostensibly is beyond immediate comprehension (it doesn't observe
the rules and presents itself in an inexplicable way, like his foreign-
language poem) and it is revealed to him by the intermediary work of
critics? I thought those guys, the critics (and their fellow-
travelers, the theorists, gallerists, professorists, and
collectorists) were all coconspirators in a great act of charltanry?
So, critics do boon work. They are, after all, not in the thrall of
Satan.
Note, btw, Miller's comment, "as when a sharp reviewer trashes a movie
that I found dull -- or when a literary critic is writing about poetry
written in a language I can't read": The reviewer writes about a
specific movie, but the literary critic writes about a generality,
"poetry," which means abstracted conclusions about observations. This
is probably just sloppy (--I mean, idiosyncratic--) use by Miller...
Ah, why be coy? I think this slip reveals his slipshod thinking, his
constant staggering and careering around between individual items and
general statements.
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
