Speaking of art. The artist Francesco Clemente said he thought art was the last oral tradition. When he arrived in the u.s. from Italy and saw Jasper John's flags, they didn't mean anything to him. They couldn't. People had to explain the context to him. I don't know why art books have such unhelpful and tedious texts. I'm not too interested in artist biography, but some artists are much better at putting things in a real-life perspective than most art-history people, who are all about art being Important! and arguing a position about it.

    I'm not sure art's really that important. It's a fantastic feeling, it might help you through a rough childhood (and it seems to help kids learn and enjoy learning) then it might turn around and eat you alive. The feeling of intensely experienced communication, human community, shared discovery--it's a little like sex. But do we need a history of sex? Okay, I admit I have one over here, Reay Tannahill, Stein and Day Publishers, NY, but I mean quite that much emphasis on the historical side of it?

   I don't know why they don't teach aesthetics in art schools. You'd think it would be a subject of art, but most places you have to be a grad student in philosophy. It's all art history-history. Despite terms like "post-modern" there's still this lingering modernist paradigm of novelty, to do something different. Then it can be "history" I guess, and be Important. It's like a slave galley for the historians. You can make art out of anything, probably, but all that pressure is hard on young artists, who'd probably be better off with more explicit information. It's like sex because it seems people are squeamish about really talking about art, especially the people who pointedly set out to do it. They find ways to talk around it, make it into its own politics--or is it just me? Anybody else find it hard to find real books really about art, even conversation, admissions, sense?