Well,

My response is going to be published in the "Letters" section of the next (or the next) Ceramics Monthly.

Helen,

I enjoyed your example from poetry.

I admit to a conflict...

I can see that some art is going to be better understood if its context is explained. I understand that, even if it is a worthy goal (in my opinion) to try to approach a "universal" in art, the attempt will always fall short.

I also understand that some art can be better appreciated by an audience educated to accept it. But this too is a gray area. For instance, jazz MIGHT be better accepted by those better educated in music ....... but, on the other hand, as either Mooh or M.Ted said in another thread -- once the music was de-mystified, to a large extent it actually LOST its appeal rather than gaining more.

What I object to is not art education, but the trend toward accepting an art that does not stand on its own merits, its own implications, its own emotional appeal, without someone (the artist, or the bull-shitting critic) to explain (defend?) it.

And I object to "experimental" art being deemed as art without having to have proved itself thus. Not all experiments are successful -- but they are seen that way by the modern academic and critical art world.

And I object to an art world that accepts "new" as better or more meaningful, as though art "evolves". Another potter/educator, Pete Pinnell, in a recent article, points out the folly in this "new-as-superior" view of art. He points out that, if this were a true, realistic view of art, one would have a very tough time explaining Bach -- who was creating within a framework of "style" that was already passe' at the point in time that Bach was utilizing it. Baroque had already given way to Roccoco.