represent

A little oasis of wisdom

A brief piece of writing like this feels like a blessing. You could unpack an eccentric little Nicholson Baker-sized diatribe about art by extrapolating on the insights from this little column in the New York Times. At the very least, I’m going to work on a long post this weekend, based my reactions to it. Here’s a sample:

It is a mistake to credit to an artwork meanings that primarily arise from our interpretative efforts.  There is a fundamental difference between discovering meaning in an object and imposing meaning on it.  A great work of art embeds categories of understanding and appreciation that we uncover in experiencing the work.  It is quite another thing to use an object as a framework for displaying categories that we bring to it.  The difference is between discovering a mine that contains gold and constructing glittering objects from dross. — Gary Gutting