Carrol Cox wrote:
>1. The purpose of art is to embody ideology, and thereby make ideology
>visible. To divide art from ideology is to kill art and make ideology
>impervious to analysis.
>
i'm not sure that the purpose of art is to "embody ideology" but i'll certainly argue that ideology is the significant material that art works respond to and work through. not exactly sure where you're going with this since just about any intellectual endeavor - including science - is ideological (i.e. is a historical product of its times and the previous development of its discipline). that doesn't make it impervious to analysis. in fact, art specifically advances due to the presence of ideological material. whether in forms or contents or the interplay of these, artists see deadends in previous works. in a very important sense, artistic creation is the overcoming of these ideological impasses.
>
>2. There are objective categories for "for addressing the nature of and
>qualities of art" -- as long as one does not equate such "addressing"
>with binding judgments of art.
>
not suggesting anything of the sort. again the science analogy: there
are countless examples of formerly discredited or dismissed scientific
theories that are resuscitated and become fresh ground for advancement.
at the time of their initial dismissal, such theories likely did not
address the pressing conditions (i.e. the needs of the powerful) and
were thus ignored. objectively, their truth content was simply missed or
concealed by the ruling elite. likewise with artworks, the objective
aspects are unchanging; its merely the "binding judgment" of the ruling
class that buries access to this knowledge.
>
>3. No one has ever yet proposed a satisfactory criterion for
>distinguishing art from non-art. All the criteria that have been urged
>succeed only in making it impossible to distinguish good art from bad
>art.
>
i'd turn this around to question who benefits from perpetuating the notion that distinguishing what is or isn't art is unsolveable. all too often the "is it art?" question is bound up in the same ideological struggle that blocks progressive social change. put another way, designating what is or isn't art (and by extension what is good or bad art) is a significant tool of those in power. the shifting history of what's in the canon or out, what's significant or not, what gets collected /displayed in museums, and so on, is a product of class struggle, not something undecidable in the nature of art itself.
>
>4. The only criterion for judging literary art is decorum -- but the
>standards of decorum are subject to continuous change. (The classic
>debate that illustrates this is the exchange between Donne & Jonson on
>Donne'sd Anniversary poems.)
>
i can't agree with this assessment for obvious reasons given the tenor of my responses thus far. decorum suggests a relative, contingent standard of truth. new knowledge can always undermine or discredit formerly dear notions (e.g. astronomy supplants astrology as a way of explaining the cosmos). objective truth is objective truth whether it is in the scientific or artistic (or other) realm. it may just take a revolution to uncover that objectivity. further, by referencing the Donne/Jonson exchange (which, i apologize, i'm not at all familiar with), i suspect that you are missing my comments on how artists react to either their precursors or contemporaries. 1) artists are not immune to the ideological milieu they are born into, 2) artists work through given material in specific ways unique to their historical context and individual dispositions and 3) artists are far from the most reliable sources for assessing the objective qualities of particular art works. . consequently, artists are necessarily going to pick apart, dismiss, ignore, overturn, etc. what has gone before and is going on around them in order to advance their unique productions.
michael