Quote of the week

From an excellent article on The Brooklyn Rail by the ARTSEEN editors.

What has been lost, as Ms. Stewart and Ms. Smith both seem to recognize, is faith in the mysterious, non-linguistic channels through which art accomplishes its unique task, including its resistance to colonization by language. It is art’s ontology to function visually and to evoke the tactile, to engage both the mind and body of the viewer. Instead, many of our institutional guardians have sought a prescriptive approach to ensure that visual art works “properly.” These gatekeepers want to dwell in the more easily manageable world of ideas, rather than in the messiness of reality and the tangled threads of aesthetic impulses.

Via