What is the evidence that it "they" (formal value judgments) were what did the trick. I suspect it was just that one painter evoked continuing conversation while the other painter did not. And pompous evaluations (the phrase is redundant: formal evaluations are by definition pompous) were more apt to stop the conversation than encourage its continuations.
And as far as I can tell, _negative_ aesthetic evaluations (other than those expressed by silence) are implicit atacks on those who don't share them. I love Dorothy Parker's little squib:
I'd rather flunk my Wasserman test, Than read a poem by Eddie Guest.
Nevertheless, it is also offensive in its poorly concealed contempt for the millions who _did_ read Guest. And it wasn't necessary to criticize Guest to keep him out of the Oxford Book of Verse or put on dissertaion reading lists. It just happened that way, and it is inconceivable that it would have happened otherwise. But if you were to write an essay damning Guest's poetry, you would just look silly.
Joanna is quite exciting when she is praising something, because in fact in such instances she is simpl,y describing what has excited her. You could eliminate specific statements of "good" from those posts an no one would notice the losss. But when she comes out swinging about something being crap et cetera she is just a bore. In his Polemical Introduction Frey notes the reputation of literature professors as educated scolds. That's my impression too of most negative criticism. It is (a) a waste of time, (b) a bore, and (c) an implicit "Thank God I am not as others who like this stuff. The lead-off post on the systematic refusal of posters on this list to inspect the pol8itcs of the Left Forum opening plenary was a sneer at a speaker followed by "and the audience just ate it up. Yet that contemptible audience are probably our major hoe for beginning to turn u.s. politics around. And aestethic critique of West in that context was spitting in the face of all leftists who want to mobilize resistance to the ongoing attack on the working class rather than just weep and wail aboaut it on e-lists.
Carrol
Carrol