Sadly, based on this article and a few of his others, I’m not likely to follow up on his other writings, not merely because of this issue but because I detect a distinct “Counter-Currents” vibe to it all (“all” including reader comments) – which is very muted and which may not be his prior intent, but I think is nevertheless worth addressing. (and shows again, how fickle “prior intent” really is).
This really hits a sore spot for me because I myself have been accused in other contexts of promoting far-right ideas and have taken great pains to clarify my position as a result. But I will say – Amy Hale is a good source on this – (this Amy Hale: https://www.amyhale.me/bio/) that we do have a major problem in how our stuff gets co-opted, a problem that goes all the way back to Tacitus and to how so much of our story has been told by those who had no @#$%^ business telling it.
Now, none of the above may be fair – a vibe is only a vibe – and there could still be a trove of more interesting material – I am “generally” interested in people like Greer – but I also have a pile of other important stuff I haven’t read that would keep me busy for years. I might do so if Greer enters the orbit of people like Gyrus, David Abram, Graham Harvey, and others who have at times challenged my own thinking in productive ways and hence have influenced it greatly. I guess what I’m saying is we all come from certain contexts and I couldn’t care less about Greer being “good” or “bad” but more in how he fits in to, or challenges those contexts in interesting ways, which is also how I think about art. I was hoping to hear more about your context, but I guess you don’t want to have that conversation.
I’d be interested as to why you think “good” or “bad” art is a core question. For me it’s much more specific, it’s about the specific thing or conversation or whatever the art brings forth, and whatever else this gathers around it. Trying to flatten everything into a Yelp 5-star rating doesn’t seem to do anything at all. We are finite, life is finite. There will be vital and interesting pieces of art we’ll never come across. Why then does it matter if they are vital and interesting? Or – shouldn’t one ask at least what specifically a piece of art does before asking if it does it well? [And again, I’d be much more interested in the “what”…]
Also, there are simply things in art which don’t communicate. Different universes. Only when they can meet in some way can one even think of comparison. Problem with comparison along some scale of value is, it still flattens or reduces the work. Much better to start a dialogue. Take A and B and instead of asking does A > B, rather ask: what “C” can be produced as a result? If the works can converse, let them! Expand, never contract or reduce. The closest thing we have to objectivity is discourse.
Failure on the other hand is a core question, but a very different one. For me it pertains to the questions: Was the artist resolute in receiving, then taking charge of a vision? Did the artist have the requisite skill to realize that vision? Put another way, which takes up both questions – did the artist get in her own way? All artworks I think fail in some measure. As artists, I think we want to fail less but what is helpful there always plays out more in specifics. At minimum I do think we need to be mindful of the contexts in which artworks are embedded before discussing exactly how they fail or succeed. And this isn’t subjectivism or relativism because there’s really no “subject” here that’s trying to serve as foundation for the failure or success of the work. There’s just the sense in how everything is interconnected and flows through the artist and flows out into other possibilities. Or in how that flow may be blocked.
