(An Appropriate Distance)

 

FROM THE MAYOR'S DOORSTEP

Jul 06, 2013 9:46 AM EDT

Thanks Piri, for pointing out Ken's new postings. And for providing a forum for commenting on them.The one that interests me most on first reading is "The Eye of The Shaman". It is a well presented observation of the difference between intuitive assessment - from the shaman - and "enlightened taste" (taste contaminated by the intellect and who knows what else) - from the artist. But they are all good and I am very happy Ken posted them. I will go back to read them all again. Now, about the "multi referential" thing. I can see why you didn't argue with him. I found myself thinking as I read that the differences he finds are of accidents rather than substance. Indeed, your theory IS "educational", and not a theory of the "nature" of art of any kind. When I taught I used it to remove the dampers from the aesthetic clickers of students who freaked at the thought abstraction had no subject matter. "Sure it has subject matter" I would say, and do the stick figure number on the nearest black board, to show them how that can make sense. The big foot crushing their response to abstraction would often lift, and they could go about responding to it just as the shaman in Ken's essay cited above. I have long noticed that as the quality of the art a good writer writes about climbs, so does the writing. That is noticeable in Ken's essays about specific artists. It is a lesson for both artists and writers. The commonplace view is that artists need to find a great (and well published) writer to serve as their front runner, in order to succeed. While that might well be true in the short run, in the wider view it is quite different. Writers need to find great artists to write about if they wish their writing to endure.

- John Link