ars longa
Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Tue, 24 Nov 1998 08:15:00 +0000
Surely the whole point of the Ern Malley episode was that
the critics who projected meanings onto the poems were seen
to be the idiots. And, unless I'm mistaken, that was the joker's
'intention' in the first place.
They were fundamentally the same kind of idiots who hail
computer generated pictures or the daubs of chimpanzees
as works of art. A landscape or a piquant human face may
arouse all kinds of emotions but they cannot be regarded
as pieces of art until an individual human mind has deliberately
worked to transform them into something else altogether.
That intended outcome by one man or woman is what
qualifies it to be even considered as an art work. (And
don't talk to me about the moving effects achieved by
the commuinal improvisations of the local student theatre group.)
Scottie B.