|
Is it possible to see what one doesn't know - as this question presumes?
Isn't that the province of saints or madmen? Is an art historian/art
critic/theorist supposed to project his vision a priori? Why are
we being asked to extend our kit of tools into the future, almost
like cartoon characters skidding to a stop and hanging in mid-air?
I wish I could encounter my desire around the corner of the next
museum or gallery wall. But is that a vision? It's happened to me
two or three times in my 42 years of life, so it's rare. Moreover,
it doesn't seem an adequate program - or even a vision - of a yet
unknown art. But maybe that's why I keep looking, so it's a vision
of a sort. Perhaps we just keep looking for pleasures we never could
have imagined.
If I were an artist I'd try to think about the social as form -
to make a social formalism! Some people are doing it and I like
their art and write about it. But when you start talking about visions,
you shatter the propriety of professional judgement. Michael Brenson
was brave enough to say something like this in Los Angeles a week
ago: maybe, after all, we are waiting to be saints, pierced by a
shaft of light. But for the moment, we all have our jobs to do.
David Joselit
Williamstown, Mass. & L. A.
|
|
|
