Eisenstaedt, Children at a Puppet Show, Paris, 1963
In a world where nearly everything that passes for art is
tinny and commercial and often, in addition, hollow and academic, I argue -- by
reason and by banging the table -- for an old-fashioned view of what art is and
does and what the fundamental business of critics ought therefore to be. Not
that I want joy taken out of the arts; but even frothy entertainment is not
harmed by a touch of moral responsibility, at least an evasion of too
fashionable simplifications.
We need to stop excusing mediocre and downright pernicious
art, stop "taking it for what it’s worth" as we take our fast foods, our
overpriced cars that are no good, the overpriced houses we spend all our lives
fixing, our television programs, our schools thrown up like barricades in the
way of young minds, our brainless fat religions, our poisonous air, our
incredible cult of sports, and our ritual of fornicating with all pretty or
even horse-faced strangers. We would not put up with a debauched king, but in a
democracy all of us are kings, and we praise debauchery as pluralism.
John C. Gardner
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