Someone woke up on the wrong side of the fringe this morning:
If people have never felt the need to think about art before two weeks ago, I maintain that we do not have a responsibility to listen to their dissertations now. If it takes so many tons of orange plastic in their back yard to get people going on art, maybe art isn't their subject. Gary Condit or Scott Peterson might make better areas of inquiry for them. Friends, let's take art out of the water cooler conversation and put it back in the galleries and museums where it belongs.Forget the elitist–populist criticism continuum—what James Panero is saying is that this model has one dimension too many. His negative review of The Gates is the canonical one, there is no room for competing opinions about the work, the people seeing The Gates are cultural philistines, and positive opinions of the work are those belonging to a flock of dimwits. Roll back Vatican II and give the man a mitre—I do believe James Panero wants to be Art Pope. The word from On High? Let them eat CourtTV!
