essential to the whole enterprise, an insider. It can be a seductive role. It can be very,
very difficult, then, for a critic to step back and make a clear-headed, unbiased
appraisal, especially if doing so means pronouncing something artistically worthless
or nonsensical. He’s too heavily invested” <http://criticavitjkj.blogspot.com/
2014/04/the-visual-art-critic-survey-of-art.html>. For a critic to make such a judg-
ment would in effect be to declare that a thing dubbed art by his artworld peers is not
art. Few have the courage to do so.- In What Art Is, Michelle Kamhi and I argue that despite continual efforts by
alleged experts to “educate” the public on the merits of avant-garde work, ordinary peo-
ple tend to remain unpersuaded. We offer numerous examples (3–7). For opinion pieces
critical of such antitraditional work, by columnists and writers who are not art critics, as
well as statements by ordinary people expressing similar views, see the Aristos Awards
at http://www.aristos.org/aris-award-3.htm. - Measured against the standards implied in this essay and elaborated in What Art
Is, not one of the eighty-four individuals cited in the survey qualifies as an “artist.” - Mark Stevens, “Paint by Numbers,” Vanity Fair, December 2013 http://tinyurl
.com/Stevens-PaintNumber-VanityFair. - Purportedly alluding to novelist Hart Crane’s suicide by drowning in 1932,
Diver http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=89254 was a study for
a painting of the same name. Carol Vogel, a New York Times art writer, has described it
as follows: “Drawn on brown paper with charcoal, chalk, pastel, and probably water-
color, the work abstractly suggests a diver in motion, showing two sets of hands, one
touching and pointing down as though preparing to dive and the other coming back up
as if the figure were rising” (“The Modern Adds Art as Its Building Grows,” December
16, 2003) http://tinyurl.com/Vogel-ModernAddsArt-NYTimes. Diver (1962–1963),
in fact, does no such thing, abstractly or otherwise. See also note 37. - “A Happy Source of Riches in a Pair of Scowling Busts,” New York Times,
January 28th, 2005. As if one such catalogue were not enough, another is underway. See
“The Catalogue Raisonné of the Drawings of Jasper Johns” (includes a photograph of
Johns working on Diver in 1963), the Menil Collection, 2014 <http://jasperjohnsdraw-
ings .menil.org>. See note 36, above. - Regarding McEvilley’s views, see above, pp. 170–71; and http://tinyurl.com/
ok7qzgq. On SVA’s MFA program in Art Writing, see http://artwriting.sva.edu/
?page_id=49. - That slogan is the title of the Epilogue to an official history of the NEA through
2008, which is said by the NEA to cover its “sometimes controversial history with can-
dor, clarity, and balance.” See “National Endowment for the Arts: A History,
1965–2008,” ed. by Mark Bauerlein, with Ellen Grantham, 2009 http://arts.gov/sites/
default/files/nea-history-1965-2008.pdf. See also “Arts and Public Support,” my cri-
tique of the NEA, in Ronald Hamowy, Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, Los Angeles:
Sage, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/Torres-ArtsAndPublicSupport. - On the 2015 NEA Shakespeare initiative, see http://arts.gov/national/shakespeare.
On the 2015 Jazz Masters initiative, see http://arts.gov/honors/jazz. - About the “Operation Homecoming” initiative, see http://www.defense.gov/
news/newsarticle.aspx?id=26832. - [a] The NEA grantmaking process is fraught with avant-garde bias. The
“Objectives” section of the NEA’s “Art Works” Guidelines, for example, emphasizes
“innovative forms of art-making” http://tinyurl.com/NEA-GuidelinesObjectives.
222 Notes to Pages 176–180