Schwartzo writes:

>How would the Times know, outside of a few names, what the aesthetic
>affiliation is? You write a critical letter to the Times.  They publish
>it or they don't.

Bad choice of timing Steve, as I think you know I follow their arts writers
regularly, and as I got this I am reading over a piece of the most purple
prose ever written in favor of modernism - in architecture in this case.
And I also, quel horor, read their letters pages rather frequently.  35
words of opposition squeezed in between letters on the importance of the
Yankees v Mets subway series is not what I would regard as sufficent room
for disagreement, it is rather an opportunity to lie down in front of the
tank.  Perhaps it stops, but probably it does not.

Your entire argument presumes those with power have a moral right to do
what they have a legal right to do.  This is a very bad principle to adopt,
as it is the argument that every corrupt status quo, great and small, puts
forward in repressing every correction, great or small.

In one sense it would be difficult to believe that the Times would have
any other stance then to lean towards post-war modernism.  After New York
was the capital of the movement, and in some sense the capital of the world
during the height of that movement.  And one of the great motivations of
being in, or writing for, New York is that one could more easily be a high
modernist there than elsewhere.  While there are followes of high modernism
languishing in places like Tallahasee - New York is where it is at.  I was
not criticising merely the aesthetic orientation of the New York Times, but
the shoddiness of the research, the purveying of pure progoganda, which,
regardless of the aesthetic orientation, should be troubling to any that
follow classical music.

What I am suggesting is obsolete, and even dangerous, is the continuation
of a cold war style of thinking in the Times art section - what we get is
the hardline.  But hardliners beget hardliners on the other side.  And
given the choice between taking the hardline and being roadkill, a lot of
people will take the hardline.  In 1955 one could perhaps divide the world
of high art into traditional and avant-garde camps, now it is not so easy.
I am arguing that this style of discourse is not appropriate in a
multi-polar world of art.

stirling s newberry
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