Was it difficult to make the transition from academia to popular art criticism?

I began writing art criticism by writing art criticism. It came to me easily and naturally, but I could never have presented myself as a possible candidate for such a position. I would have been considered overqualified, and too academic. Nobody outside philosophy knew who I was. What I found was that I could do something as an art critic that I could not do as a philosopher, namely philosophize. Betsy's phone call changed my life. It was like Lana Turner being discovered at a soda fountain. What I brought to my criticism was something I learned as a philosophical writer--to write clearly, concisely and logically. Too much art writing was and is jargonistic and windy. I had a good time writing the pieces, and I wanted the reader to have a good time reading them. And, because I am a teacher, I wanted readers to learn new ways of thinking about art.

Why is art criticism important for a magazine like The Nation?

Professional art criticism, as opposed to belletristic essays on art, really began at The Nation in the 1860s. Peter Meyer and I put together an anthology of The Nation's critics, beginning with a letter to the editor by P.T. Barnum. We called it Brushes With History, for one can follow art history in America through The Nation's response to exhibitions and controversies. The founders of the periodical were disciples of John Ruskin, who believed that if the art is sound, society will be sound. To reform society one must reform the art, and everything will follow as a matter of course. Nobody quite believes that today, of course, but there can be little doubt that artists, especially today, are addressing the main questions society faces, so that if we confront the art, we are bound to think about the issues that face us as a society.

The art world today is highly globalized. More and more, the same artistic values are globally shared, which must mean that ultimately other values will be shared. In this respect, things have changed drastically in art since I began writing. Recently, I got a letter from Khalad al-Hamzah, an artist in Jordan, who received funding to execute a conceptual work based on some of my philosophical ideas. I was quite overwhelmed that in a country where we mostly are aware of political matters, the avant-garde works with concepts that would be grasped by the avant-garde anywhere and everywhere. Islam prohibits images, but is open to conceptual art--and today most art is conceptual. The landscape is made to order for philosophers!

Since this is for The Nation, I should ask at least one political question. In an article last year in Artforum, you wrote, "In America, the separation of the art and the state is almost as strong as that of church and state." What role should government, and our government specifically, play in supporting art?

The National Gallery in Washington is perhaps the only national museum that is not also a monument to the national spirit. It has no patriotic aura. That is typical of the American governmental system, that our art is viewed as a matter of individual rather than national interest. It is, in my view, a blessing that the government does not care what art looks like. It is through and through a matter of individual freedom, and hence falls under one of the fundamental rights, the right to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness. Even Mayor Giuliani acknowledged this, asking only whether it is proper for our taxes to go to support work that is contrary to our values.

I take it for granted that my taxes go to support a government whose decisions often go counter to my values, and that is how things are in an open and free society with a representative government. The First Amendment protects freedom of expression, but there is a good argument that freedom is in the national interest, since free and open discussion is essential to arriving at decisions. The museum is a forum, and most art is political. But a lot of education is needed to get citizens to willingly accept that their money goes to support an art they often find repugnant. Some of the education should help dull the repugnance but may never entirely eliminate it. There is no a priori rule that all art will ultimately be loved by everyone.

I also want to ask your thoughts on the philosophy of art. Duchamp placed everyday objects on exhibition as found art. Moholy-Nagy's telephone paintings were made in a factory; the canvases remained untouched by the artist's hand until their delivery. Artists from Donald Judd to Jeff Koons have turned over the construction of their art to engineers and craftsmen. Since it's generally accepted that artists can make art without actually making anything, does artistic ability and technique have any value?

As a member of Dada, Duchamp was deeply opposed to the idea of the Great Artist as cultural hero. He felt that the overheated adoration of the artist had had disastrous political consequence. So he was anti-art, which meant that he despised the artist's eye and the artist's touch or hand. Handless creation was a Dada ideal--thus the ready-mades. The consequence was that craft dropped out of the concept of art, the way beauty did when Dada set out to destroy beauty. That opened the way for the artist to turn the making of things over to others, as in the case of Koons or, for different reasons, with Donald Judd. The art was in the idea, whoever executed it. In Judd's case, there was a kind of machine-shop aesthetic he made it possible to appreciate. He knew he could not make edges and corners the way machines could. But of course there is art where we admire the touch--as in Guston or de Kooning. These enter the meaning of the work. The beautiful thing about pluralism is that there is no one way of doing anything. I subscribe to an aesthetic of meanings rather than an aesthetic of forms. My interest is in finding the meanings and explaining how they are embodied in works of art. That is what my writing is mostly about.

Finally, what artists or artworks do you love?

I have fairly conservative tastes. I love eighteenth-century French painting, Watteau and Chardin especially. I love Morandi and Modigliani. Among contemporary artists I like abstract painting a lot--Robert Mangold, Sean Scully, David Reed. But not all important art is especially lovable. I can't say I love Jeff Koons's work--but I think it's important. Who can actually love Duchamp's work? What I hate is being manipulated. I hate Francis Bacon for that reason. But I forgive Norman Rockwell, since I am given to sentimentality. I really wish the world were a lot more like his world than it is. I love Robert Rauschenberg for erasing a drawing of de Kooning, just because of its brashness. I could go on and on about this!

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