Which of the many intellectual battles among American art critics in the last half-century has most affected you?

I’ve only ever been aware of one ongoing battle, which is between the people who use art to illustrate an idea, and the experientialists, which is a word I just made up. People say all kinds of things about art, but you have to ask yourself if it’s really true, if it describes your experience of looking. I used to think that a lot of people who write about art or who deal with art are just not particularly visual. I still think that’s true, but now I realize they’re not really interested in art as such. They might not even believe such a thing exists. Their subject is power.

That is all well and good, but the problem is how to determine which art is actually doing something as opposed to merely pointing to something. It’s a problem of synecdoche—the part standing for the whole. It leads to a kind of reckless, or wishful, thinking. Certain artists or certain styles are thought to signify not just virtue but an act of resistance. So much of how art is received is contextual, but do we really want to believe that it is only that? We’ve gone from a time of allusion and metaphor to one of literal-mindedness. To be clear, both ends of the spectrum can be a problem. Each provides cover, a place to hide out for the lazy or the less than brilliant.