More Sunday thoughts on art

Abstract

Culture, for its own prosperity, is dependent on a critical counterpart to engender and propagate dialogue on its intellectual and material production. The significance of culture for the enrichment of human knowledge would be reduced to fanciful activity, an event without roots and prospects, in the absence of a strong tradition of criticism. Culture would die a monumental yet unnoticed death without criticism. The fundamental importance of criticism in the sphere of art is today too often overlooked or treated as ancillary and, in modern society, even as a marketing ploy for the promotion of commercial or individual interests. There are insidious dangers in such a treatment of public discourse on cultural activities. Creativity as a cultural action is in itself a form of analytical criticism. [Excerpt by Dr Nikki Petroni]