Art without criticism

Filched from Terry Teachout's blog (www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/), this observation from Milan Kundera:

"Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, ahistorical accidents, soon forgotten."

Criticism that is "meditative background" is not the usual "criticism" done in most American newspapers and magazines, which tends to consist of thumbs-up/thumbs-down reactions. It is the broader, more ideas-oriented work done by increasingly fewer American critics (of which Terry Teachout is a positive example). At its highest, such criticism is actually philosophy, though criticism-as-philosophy is rarely encouraged in the United States outside the cloistered world of academics.

For such work to exist and to fulfill Kundera's requirement as "meditative background" in any meaningful way, another element must exist: The work must reach a very broad readership and be accepted by this readership as intellectually valid. This, I fear, is where the move from print-based criticism to blog-based criticism does a disservice to the role of criticism. Blog-based criticism tends to be niche-oriented rather than addressed to the general culture. It mediates among true believers in a certain genre, style or format, and rarely ventures general statements. This only serves further to isolate works from one another as well as from history.

What is needed, from where I sit, is a criticism that connects the dots of our niche-crazy culture, averring broad universal statements based on stubborn particulars, and which reaches and provides context for a significantly large sampling of people who accept it. That would provide meaningful framework of the sort that keeps works from becoming "isolated gestures" and "ahistorical accidents."

- KLF