Towards A Catholic Criticism

Extract

Criticism begins in an act of reason. Beason separates individual qualities from a previously undifferentiated whole. Judgment then steps in to appraise the result. Criticism in art results from the detachment of the spectator from the artist and from his work. It works in two ways. It gives awareness of the qualities in the object surveyed. It also reveals to the critic his own attitude towards it. Criticism is, therefore, an advance from the unquestioning acceptance or rejection of an undeveloped mind.

The ancient Greeks lived in an age of great sculpture. We do not find in their writings praise or blame of such works. Criticism originally arose with them in connection with the decline of Hellenic drama, in the Middle Ages books of aesthetics, pointing out the aims, the failures or successes of the architectural magnificence springing up in town and country, were unthinkable. When man has lost the power to create things of beauty he becomes aware of the nature of these. He becomes a critic.

To become aware of the nature of any idea or state of being is to have passed, for better or for worse, beyond it. With the loss of innocence came knowledge of both man’s physical nakedness and his need for a covering. Constant preoccupation with an idea is usually symptomatic of immediate unattainability.