On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 4:11 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote:
> After the first sentence or so I was so bored by the article Berg points > to that > I gave up. I thought that this is only a redux of John Dewey's > "progressive > education" philosophy, or learn by doing idea. That was of course a good > idea > that was more or less the concept that later undergirded the Bauhaus > curriculum > and still inform the curricula of many schools world-wide. > > There are always several sides to any issue, including anything to do with > art. > For instance, I like much of Jed Perl's writing because he is so good at > getting to the heart of the decadence of contemporary art while holding to > the > enduring ideals of high art. But I also like a lot of what his exact > counterpart, Jerry Saltz, writes as the reigning champion of low art and > popular > culture, the cutting rawness of vulgarity and of all things profane. > Somewhere, > mixing the two together helps to locate the real condition of art -- and > of our > times. > The same dialectic is true when it comes to creativity. The > free-experimentation with an eye on a goal or problem to solve is surely an > important aspect of creativity as is the intelligent and practiced use of > materials, tools, and rule-based methodologies. That's really quite > elementary, > isn't it? > > Berg's insistent desire to raise one side up -- always the most > conservative > tradition-bound side -- and to push the other side down -- always the > irreverent tradition-bashing side -- reveals his aversion to the use of > dialectic which is necessary to any intellectual search for truth. > > Saul's idea that seems to claim many 'discourses about art' each one > embracing a > tradition and each one at some great or small odds with the others is > really a > plea for a highly developed dialectic and, to me, offers the best albeit > very > complex access to what the art of our times is really about. It's a > multi-faceted dialectic. I'd like to see Berg pay more attention to that > level > of thinking and much less attention to the daily deluge of journalistic > dumbed-down re-hashing of well known ideas, like John Dewey's. > > Let's go to the thick soup, not the watered down soup of the soup. > wc > > You always like HIM better than ME.
