Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Art and the Art Critic

I said that criticism has no bearing on art, but rather on the apprehension of the work of art. The object which the critic sets out to describe cannot be the work produced by the artist, but what he thinks of it. The critic does not produce art but criticism, and the object of his activity does not pertain to art but to esthetics. This is the reason, moreover, why critics and estheticians most often refuse to distinguish between the two orders, inasmuch as their only chance to remain within the order of art is by blurring the lines of the demarcation.

Etienne Gilson, Forms and Substances in the Arts, Salvator Attanasio, tr. Charles Scribner's Sons (New York: 1966), pp. 13-14