STATE OF CRITICISM
49
century, the rediscovery of Masaccio, Vermeer, and la Tour-were
rediscoveries of people who were hailed in their own lifetimes.
MORRIS QICKSTEIN: But think of the many people who were famous in
their own lifetimes who haven't been rediscovered or whom we still
can't see.
CLEMENT GREENBERG: On the whole, the conser..sus comes out con–
firmed in each new generation. Old gaps are filled in, certain
protuberances become depressions. But by and large the landscape
isn't revolutionized.
RODOLFO CARDONA: How does the recognition that this or that painter
belongs to the canon of the people that we should respect and like
ultimately help, whom does it help?
CLEMENT GREENBERG: Well, I have to be elementary here, Mr. Cardona.
All
that helps is looking at a lot of art since you can't learn to see.
You can't learn to get poetry unless you read it, you can ' t learn to
hear music unless you listen to it, and so forth . 'You look, and that 's
how you learn .
KEITH BOTSFORD: Just to change the subject very briefly: in the last
hour we heard the most extraordinary scission of language between
two people talking about art. Mr. Greenberg spoke in language that
we all understood and then Mr. Kuspit came out with a very highly
charged philosophical language. Mr. Greenberg said-he was talk–
ing about Heidegger, but he must also have been referring to Mr.
Kuspit-that he didn 't feel this was of great use to him personally as
an art critic. I have a question that puzzles me. Do you, Mr. Kuspit,
feel that what Mr. Greenberg says does not speak to
you
as an art
critic, or is simply too rudimentary?
DONALD KUSPIT: Yes, I feel it is too rudimentary. I feel that Clem is too
concerned with the room at the top and the room always turns out to
be claustrophobic regardless of how much room there is. I feel the
issues are more complicated. There are certain philosophical issues
about the status of the concept of intuition which I feel are at stake.
Excepting a very elementary political idea, there's no being that
escapes discourse or language. Clem seems to imply that there's an
intuitive experience that does.
KEITH BOTSFORD: I was asking something about language. Is there any
sense in which those of us who are not professional art critics could
in any possible way reconcile the two languages that were used?
CLEMENT GREENBERG: I won't exclude language, Donald, I don't
exclude it.
Do ALD KUSPIT: I did in the latter part of my paper try to introduce the
idea of some reconciliation of taste and interpretation.
If
we look at
