The Funniest Very True Thing I Have Read About Art In A Long Time

Lisa Hunter of the blog The Intrepid Art Collector observes:

One's appreciation of contemporary art is inversely proportional to how long it takes to get to it. ... People in big cities are usually the first to appreciate new art, but not because we're intellectually superior. Maybe it's just easier to appreciate something difficult when you haven't traveled a long way with high expectations.

In the art world, such honesty is pure gold. To see the underwhelming art that inspired her epiphany and to read more of her thoughts on the subject, see her post.

Joshua Gibson On Susan Sontag, Annie Liebowitz, and Camille Paglia

Joshua Gibson at Fagistan posted a great piece yesterday about Camille Paglia's ongoing war on Susan Sontag. Here's an excerpt to entice you:

Paglia has a well-known problem with Sontag, though it's one that, even after reading "Sontag, Bloody Sontag", I've never really been able to understand. Paglia hypes herself as one of "Sontag's most outspoken critics" based, almost solely, on that one essay. The essay doesn't really make any particular intellectual charge against Sontag, but instead focuses on how Paglia invited Sontag to give a lecture at Bennington College. Sontag was late and then had the audacity to read a new short story rather than deliver a grand cultural lecture. She was also mean to Camille. This "outspoken criticism" is nothing more than girlish humiliation and resentment and hardly worthy of a serious intellectual attacking another serious intellectual.

It gets even better. And then better still. Read it here.