A few things I might note about your response, Boris, to the question of how
on might identify "competent people with discerning taste and knowledge"
First -- it might take a few years to determine whether "creative dynamics"
have improved, or not --- so it's more of an historical judgment than a way to
determine who is best qualified to jury a show or be a minister of art (which
is, BTW, a new position being proposed for the Obama cabinet)
Second -- considering the Soviet historical example that I presented -- I'm
wondering whether "cultural dynamics", as you conceive it, has any connection
with the quality of art as I experience it -- since it's been my experience
that a social realist painting or sculpture can be just as good as a
Constructivist or Modern-Classical one.
(Although -- if we consider American art history --- the social/art forces
that have recently been dominant in the American artworld have resulted in
contemporary museums that have has much aesthetic interest to me as a stroll
down the aisles of Wal-Mart.)
Third -- you have queried whether "historical dialectic and personal could be
separated" -- and wouldn't Saul and Alexei have agreed with you ?
We can probably all agree that our personal lives/feelings/judgments are
affected by the kinds of events and conditions that are discussed by
historians -- whether Marxist or otherwise -- but whether that discussion is
truly prioritizing and accounting for all those effects -- that is a question
that would separate the partisans for an "historical dialectic" from the rest
of us.
I consider my aesthetic life to be completely outside that discussion (so far
as I've heard it) -- and perhaps those who would identify themselves as
artists on this list would feel the same way. That would explain, for
example, why some of us can be so strongly affected/influenced by art that
came from societies that were way-way-way different from our own.
***************
Chris, my answer is very simple. You are missing 'small' details of factual
logic in the essence of my answer. Competency changes things
for the Good. Commissars were not competent, so they changed dynamics of
timing, but not creativity, which they could not stop but only slow down.
Pasternak and alike influenced true creative dynamics of USSR more then all
drunken commissars.
Boris Shoshensky
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