From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 08/18/02-02:30:29 AM Z
Shannon Stoney wrote:
>
By way of discussing these shows, the
> critic muses about 19th century photography and how its issues are still
> with us,
>
Having recently written and submitted an article for review that deals
with this same sort of idea, I was quite interested to see what Perl
might have to say, so got into my car immediately and drove 20 miles to
the nearest newstand that would have the New Republic. I wish I'd waited
for the URL that someone sent in later, because not only was that issue
of the magazine not there yet, but there was an accident ahead of me on
the way home and I spent a long time sitting in stopped traffic. But I
did eventually get back home and find the post with the URL and read not
only the article in question but several others of Perl's articles,
which I enjoyed so much that I subscribed to the magazine on the spot,
something I'd not generally inclined to do. I certainly don't agree
with everything he says, (I find his enthusiasm for Balthus
inexplicable) and I don't think this article about leGray et al is his
clearest, but in general I find his writing cogent and his viewpoints
refreshing, insightful, thought-provoking, and in many cases, right on
the mark. It's not really his job to tell us whether the Pope is
Catholic, but I would trust him to tell me that (in Ralph Waldo
Emerson's phrase) "a popgun is a popgun" if that's how he sees it, even
if the whole art world hails it as the next brilliant thing. That's his
job, to say what he thinks, not to echo the conventional wisdom, and one
would think that just his being relegated to the backwaters of lesser
publications, (like so many cogent thinkers today) would be punishment
enough for the sin of having independent opinions, without abusing him
further. My 2cents.
kt
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