Letters From the Creative Bureaucrat, continued

I write a monthly column in Northern Arizona's arts and news monthly publication, The Noise. My column is called "Letters from the Creative Bureaucrat." Here follows "part two" of the March issue column... Click here for "part one." And be sure to pick thee up a copy of this month's Noise, will ya?

~continued from earlier...

However, “excellence” is not some abstract sense of quality that remains only known to those who work in art galleries or academia. It has to be something that can be appreciated through different eyes and many perspectives. There has to be recognition of that excellence even if you don’t like the work in question. Maybe that’s one of the “markers” I’m hoping to find in determining artistic excellence. If those who do not particularly like the work of an artist can admit to the quality of that same artist’s work, have we not found something important there? And yet…

The more I explore this thought, the more I’m convinced that what I’m seeking is a moving target. As soon as a point of criteria becomes clear, I’m sure an artist’s work will present itself which challenges us to move that criteria. Last month, I wrote, “Rejection is in the eye of the beholder.” Maybe I should have just started there with “excellence” and avoided this column altogether.

Oh, and I never got back to the “what is art?” question. I danced around it like a boxer who fears his opponent. I suppose if I were a better writer, I’d give you some neatly wrapped article that circled around and met the question I posed at the beginning with some kind of insightful and revealing finish. Did you really expect that, after I invoked Andy Kaufman? Ha!

Cheers,
JT