[NetBehaviour] Learn to draw

[Joel Weishaus]

Edward;

Of course I agree with you here.
A healthy culture has many critics who have different viewpoints of a piece of literary or visual work.
 The important thing, I suggest, is to develop knowledgeable, thoughtful, and courageous critics, and also media that will publish (and pay!) them. 

-Joel
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Edward Picot 
  To: netbehaviour at netbehaviour.org 
  Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 11:22 AM
  Subject: [NetBehaviour] Learn to draw


  A very interesting discussion this has been! But I have to say, with 
  regard to Simon Biggs' comments, that I find it difficult to embrace any 
  philosophy of art which won't let me measure one thing against another - 
  "Wallace Stevens is a better poet than Patience Strong", for example; or 
  "The Mighty Boosh is a better comedy programme than Bread". Such 
  value-judgements may be open to challenge, in fact they must be open to 
  challenge, but it's important to be able to make them. I used to belong 
  to a poetry-society where every poem that was produced by anybody was 
  greeted, not just with a chorus of approval, but with remarks like 
  "That's a great poem, that is". Supportive, encouraging, but ultimately 
  not very helpful. A lot of really dire amateur poetry gets produced 
  under such circumstances. As an artist you have to be able to make 
  distinctions about your own work - "This line is weak if I write it like 
  this, but if I write it like that then it's much stronger" - "This bit's 
  dragging", "I could do with some more jokes in here", or whatever - 
  otherwise you can't develop, and these distinctions extend outwards to 
  the work of other people - "The way he does this is really effective: I 
  could borrow that technique", or "I don't want to produce something like 
  that - it's really trite". ("A Hard Day's Night" is better than "Summer 
  Holiday", by the way.)

  Where it gets dangerous is if the value-judgements are supposed to be 
  beyond question: as in the F R Leavis sort of idea that there's 
  something called "culture" consisting of things like Shakespeare's plays 
  which are unquestionably "great", and this "culture" has to be defended 
  by academics and critics from erosion by mass media and the degradation 
  of modern society. As soon as we write our judgements in stone it's 
  dangerous; but it's also dangerous not to make any judgements at all.

  If that makes me bourgeois, then sign me up to the WI.

  - Edward
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