ART : New vs. the Old: A Lion’s Den of Divergent Tastes : Should artworks be provocative? Are traditional works the stuff of postcards? Students at Golden West College elicit responses from a critic.

Well, I walked into the lion’s den a few weeks ago. The “lions” were art students at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, who had invited me to speak about writing criticism. Silly me, worried about finding enough to say to fill a two-hour time slot. As it happened, I never quite finished my prepared remarks, so fast and furious came the questions.

With readers like these, who needs enem--no, seriously, close and contentious readers with diametrically opposed points of view force a critic to sharpen her thoughts and bolster her opinions. I’m going to try to amplify some of them in this column.

An older man in the audience grew somewhat testy at my denigration of contemporary art that remains wedded to values and themes of past eras and fails to respond to “the way we are today.”

Such art doesn’t necessarily reflect “the way I am today,” he said. I didn’t ask him exactly what way that was, but it was clear from his other remarks that he admired art made in a traditional manner and deplored the work he saw at Newport Harbor Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Once again, I was reminded of the enormous divergence of attitudes about the world among people interested in art. Some people worship fine technique in service of morally uplifting and aesthetically pleasing themes. Others believe the most important component of a work of art is a provocative central idea, regardless of what medium is used to convey it.

Underlying these points of view can be broader views about society. Traditional art lovers often seem to want art that reflects the values with which they grew up, and to serve as a dignified and comforting ballast against the morally ambivalent aspects of life today. They come to art looking for harmonious form created in accordance with established norms.

Those who embrace the new forms of contemporary art, on the other hand, generally believe that there are no longer any meaningful norms, no authoritative standards of truth and beauty. According to this line of thinking, we live in a broadly pluralistic and relativistic society that is constantly threatened by the lies and distortions of those who wield power through politics and manipulation of the media.

TV tells us how to think and feel, and what to covet; cliches are the common coin of speech. We’ve seen just about everything, because everything has been photographed and sent into our living rooms. But these images are all predigested for us; we no longer feel the immediacy of discovery that direct experience brings.

For artists who subscribe to this general view, the old forms of art have become numbingly familiar--largely because they’ve been co-opted by their pop equivalents (benign landscape painting equals tourist postcard)--and that familiarity has bred contempt.

So the only thing you can do is to find relevance and meaning where you can, to rummage through the huge bargain basement counter of pop culture, non-Western cultures, scientific inquiry, junior high classrooms, alleyways, bedrooms--you name it--in search of a new spin to put on the mind-boggling times in which we live.

One middle-aged woman at the lecture questioned why art necessarily ought to be challenging or provocative. What’s wrong with a painting that just makes you feel peaceful and happy, she wondered.

I said something to the effect that there are numerous experiences people can indulge in--like meditation or long-distance running or baking bread--that can bring about a feeling of peace and inner calm. But art has the potential to do something quite different: to introduce the viewer to a new way of looking at the world.

It’s important to add that, contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of ways to be fresh and innovative without being flamboyantly “shocking” or invoking blatantly sexual or scatological imagery, though such imagery may also be to the point.

Tony Cragg’s sculptures at Newport Harbor Art Museum, for example, involve reconsiderations of landscape, science, the distinction between artificial and natural things, and the nature of sculpture itself.

Art that’s just about making the viewer feel good, on the other hand, closes down a viewer’s options rather than enlarging them.

Rather than being an expression of a personal vision, open to a range of interpretations, feel-good art is designed to push specific buttons (“How beautiful! How peaceful! How sweet!”) in the unsophisticated viewer. The work comes in standard forms (a sunset view, a sleeping child), like greeting cards or porcelain knickknacks. Complacency replaces a searching, experimental attitude, and when that happens, the pulse of art dies.

Some members of the audience wanted to know whether works of art made today are likely to endure through the ages. Now, that would be presumptuous--to try to second-guess posterity! It seems prudent for us critics to confine our subjective opinions to the here-and-now. In any case, some contemporary art isn’t designed to last. It may crumble, erode or exist as a work of art only so long as it remains intact in a specific site.

But let’s come back to the word subjective. This newspaper recently received a howling handful of letters from readers angry at my review of the “California Light” exhibit at Laguna Art Museum. Amid the name-calling and special pleading, which I expected, came the curious refrain that there is actually something called “objective criticism,” and I wasn’t supplying it.

The most absurd comment in this vein came from a letter writer who announced: “A good art critic puts aside his or her personal preferences when judging art. You do not do this.”

Sorry, but there is no such animal as “objective criticism.” Writing criticism is an intensely personal act, based heavily on personal preference. Yes, critics also need to have academic knowledge about their field and to have looked at a lot of art. But criticism is not the same as reporting--which, as we know, is also open to personal bias--or an art history lesson (ditto). It also is not some kind of Holy Writ.

A review is a passionate monologue that can take a number of approaches and assume a number of voices. It can linger over details of the work of art or discuss general ideas. It can shower praise, argue, explain, cajole or whine. The reviewer is a gadfly, putting honest personal opinions in print in order to provoke a response from the reader. Although I am deeply indebted to the work of certain artists I respect, I’m not a spokesperson for museums, curators, artists or art educators.

I’m also only one voice in a critical crowd. It is a pity that more readers don’t read other critical opinions to understand better the kinds of issues that surround art. Somehow, there’s an idea afloat that a critic is a kind of art barometer who is supposed to reflect majority taste. But we insist on thinking for ourselves, in part to encourage you to be equally independent and impatient and irreverent.

Which brings me to a perennial question that popped up once again in my lecture: What are my “criteria” for reviewing art? Sorry, but other than signs of intelligence, I don’t have any.

Reviewing isn’t like checking out a used car--engine runs OK, may need new tires, paint job acceptable. There are too many variables in art. Instead of coming with an airtight definition of good art, you’re waiting to be utterly disarmed and surprised, to see what good work could be.

I came across a perfect description of this notion in a New York Times Book Review article by author Richard Ford. He was explaining how he tried and failed to explain to a curious airline seatmate how he chose the “best” short stories of the year for a book.

“Good stories,” he wrote, “perform what wonders they do using wise standards all their own, discovered in the private vicissitudes of the act of writing.”

Of course, most art--like most anything-- is not good and not surprising. It’s pedantic, it’s old hat, it’s dull, hackneyed, unintelligible, glib. Most art that’s out there is boring beyond belief and not worth spilling ink over.

Boring, indeed! I came in for some sharp words over this bit of candor. A younger woman sarcastically asked whether she and her colleagues should be trying to make art to amuse me. Well, of course not.

But they should make art that amuses and amazes themselves. So often artists don’t seem to push themselves fiercely enough. They seem oddly satisfied with turning out a competent but unoriginal, unremarkable object. As a writer, whenever I read something good, I ask myself what made it so memorable and what I could learn from it. Do artists also play that game?