‘Degenerate Art’: For Some, Ugly Too Is in the Eye of the Beholder
Solliday is oddly confident in his ability to discern the “good” from the “bad.” What’s troubling here is not so much his dogmatism--what political agenda is he prescribing?--but his simplistic and ultimately false equation of “Beauty” and “Truth.” This is both ahistorical and ethnocentric.
We ignore history and its artifacts at significant peril. But what is most disturbing about Solliday’s letter is that an adjunct professor of humanities could have arrived at so unexamined and, as such, intellectually dishonest a conclusion.
JOSEPH FUTTNER
Graduate Student, Art History
The City University of New York
No. 1, art is not intended to be “beautiful,” and No. 2, art is not intended to be commerce oriented or popular.
Art is the presentation of an idea whether society likes the idea or not and whether society sees it as beautiful or not.
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