By DONALD KUSPIT February 2, 2025
As the difference between the Venus de Milo and the Willendorf Venus makes clear, there have always been different kinds of art—radically different kinds of art, that is, different at the root.
And as Andre Malraux’s “Museum Without Walls” makes clear, art has always been pluralistic—radically pluralistic. This is not only because it has been made at different times and places—in different societies with different ideologies, in different situations with different conventions—but because there are “multiple possibilities and real opposition of direction within the general field of art,” as Lawrence Alloway wrote. The “abundance” of art demands respect for “difference,” he insists, suggesting that no one mode or style, manner or idea of art is innately more important or meaningful than another. There is no God-given hierarchy of values, but a simultaneity of different values, inherently irreconcilable, for each has its own essential purpose. Opposites need not be reconciled, but allowed free reign, their conflict indicative of the abundance of possibilities within each mode of difference...
