The M and Q Words

It is imperative that each individual be the ultimate arbiter and critic of art: Criticism is a right indigenous to a free-thinking society.

For example, to jettison personal opinions in favor of critic Lucy Lippard’s “adopted sensitivities” is to ask one to suspend critical consciousness, a fundamental violation to a reason-based thought process. The advocation of a culturally relativistic point of view, implicit throughout Mitchell’s article, only serves to undermine reason and logic.

If one’s cognitive faculty is rooted firmly in reason, which transcends all cultures as an epistemological absolute, then an individual, or collectively a culture, is quite capable of discerning good and bad in art of any genre, regardless of culture.

STEVE GREEN

Long Beach