Reading: Fairfield Porter- Jane Freilicher

• "weakness of traditional painting in America is that it is also provincial and imitative"

Jane Freilicher
-"painting is traditional and radical"
-"consciously imitative of the masters"
-"broad and bright, considered without being fussy, thoughtful but never pedantic"
-"the clumsiness, the blunt puppyish forms remain and mean what they meant before- a deep affection for all bumbling things"

EXPERIENCING ART:

ways to inhibit art:
-"worst and most mistaken way of manipulating art is to use it for malicious propaganda"
-"consider art as a natural phenomenon for scientific investigation"
-"think that it is a substitute for science, religion or philosophy"

sociological approach:
-"if art contributes to the progressive liberation of the poor and exploited it is good"
-"if it darkens people's minds with superstition, it is bad"

historical approach:
-"art presents an image of society at any given time"
"when it works as an art parallel to the art it attempts to illuminate"

• professionals "present art as something to be understood" --> "the experience of art can be inhibited by the way in which it is hung, reproduced, restored and criticized"
• "to present as an actual part of life is quite a different matter from 'understanding' it as part of society"

science + art:
-"antiempirical and authoritarian"
-"doesn't take into account that art, whether realist or abstract... is not valuable... for the general principles... as for its unprecedentedness"
-"when art is reproduced mechanically... it is done scientifically, and the spirit of the original is almost invariably debased"
-"what counts is personal experience...what the critic can do...is to describe his experience as sensitively as possible"