The Hughes Vision
Christopher Knight’s Nov. 18 criticisms of Robert Hughes for his observations on TV’s negative impact on mass culture are unfair (“The Bard of Art’s Decline”).
Hughes does not contend that television cannot serve as a conduit for great art; simply that in most cases it does not. That is because we do not as a culture demand that it does.
Anyone who thinks that mass culture has not been seriously degraded in the last 30 years must have actually enjoyed the recent political campaigns conducted on the TV sets of America. Every day we see the results of a culture that values promotion over talent, marketing over inspiration, image over content.
Yes, we all are enmeshed in this murky web, Hughes included. But he is the only art critic with the vision and values to cut through the murk.
DON CICCHETTI
Loma Linda
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