Priests, Poets and Politicians
From Artworld Salon, in response to a book review in the Financial Times questioning the relevancy of contemporary criticism based on its need for "a priesthood" of critical interpreters:
Science undoubtedly shares art's "genuine creative impulses"? Hmm, I'm not following that line of thinking, but philosophy certainly does, if that means it long ago spiraled away into the stratosphere and holds very little currency with the daily lives of regular people. Art used to do this, but that sort of thing doesn't seem to pay very well these days.
Why must art be more popular or, to push the point, more "lay" than either science or philosophy, the two disciplines with which it undoubtedly shares a genuine creative impulse? Or to push it even further: Is this a call for evangelical aestheticism?-i.e. the only way to true "aesthetic understanding" is through one's own personal relationship with art?
