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PARTISAN REVIEW
matter. I'm certainly not arguing that the question of value is
unimportant or that it doesn't exist. I think it exists, and one of the
most important things in our society is that people should have clear
and intelligent reactions to works of art. I don't believe that they're
going to arrive at th ese clear, intelligent eva luations by developing a
system of criteria. I remember when as a kid I read Barnes' book on
art, and he gave criteria for judging works of art. Suppose you had
ten criteria, memorized them, and started looking at a painting?
You'd go nuts. It's not the way one thinks-to count off traits.
If
you had a set of criteria and you went around and said, "All
right, let's try A on this thing. Now we'll try B" .. . first of all, I can 't
even remember them.
If
I had
five
criteria I wouldn't remember
them. I'd have to have them written down.
I once tried to do that in buying a house. I didn't know anything
about houses and I had
to
decide whether or not to buy this house. So
I said to an associate of mine, " You 're interes ted in real estate. What
does one look for when buying a house?" He wrote down eight
criteria: Are the sills rotted? Is the water
O.
K. ? And so on. I wen tout
to East Hampton and I poked around to check the criteria. The
pump wasn 't working, so I couldn't tell whether the water was any
good. The roof was leaking ... that was bad. I went through the
eight criteria. In regard to three of them I couldn't es tablish the facts.
But the real problem was, I didn 't know how
to
weigh the criteria
against each other.
If
three things were lousy, that is, the roof leaked
and two other things were no good, and two were good and two I
couldn't ascertain, did this mean I should buy the house or not? My
critic had failed to give me a scale. So I tore up the piece of paper and
bought the house. As it happened, I did the right thing.
Tumin:
The analogy you're making, it seems to me, is both appropri–
ate and inappropriate.
Rosenberg:
It's appropriate insofar as you have a practical problem.
Criteria are useful in buying cars. But in art you don ' t have a
practical probl em.
Tumin:
Well , an art critic has a practical problem.
Rosenberg:
What's the practical problem?
Tumin:
What do I think about this painting?
Rosenberg:
That's not a practical probl em. The practical problem is
when a collector comes up to me and says, "Should I bu y this for
$IO,OOO?" That's a practical probl em. I never answer such ques ti ons.
I say, "Go and see Clem Greenberg. H e gives advice to coll ectors. I
just write about art. I don 't know anyth ing about the market. I don ' t
know how much you should pay for anything."
