Letter: No, you are not a Philistine
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Probably the majority of those in the world of the visual fine arts will protest at Lewis Wolpert's attack on "arty-babble" (Review, 15 December). They might counter it with the claim that peer review in specialist visual art journals is not so very different from that of scientific peer review. The more theoretically competent would point to a unity of making and written discourse, not dissimilar to his notion of the practising scientist. True, in art these functions are not usually embodied in one person, but they sometimes are, and this is more common than Professor Wolpert might imagine. An even smaller number would claim that aesthetic knowledge and practice is a specialised contemplation of value and different from scientific and technical knowledge. However, some "critical agnostics" would agree with him. Grandiose and inflated claims are made for the Fine Artist, not least by the artists themselves. Anyone who works in art schools could tell of astounding ignorance not just of our scientific and technological world but also of philosophy and literature. None of this would matter except that it combines with the "new ageist" talk, such as "condensing energy and tension" or "fusing the material and immaterial", that Wolpert rightly criticises.
To answer his question, he is not a Philistine. He just knows a little more than is good for a gallery-goer.
Peter Seddon
School of Art
Brighton University
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments