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Design Review: Volume 2, Issue 3 (October-November 1949)

To the Editor

To the Editor

Sir: Although, like yourself, I found Mr Sutton-Smith's “dialectic” somewhat intimidating, I am inclined to think that the issues raised by him were not unimportant. They dealt, in fact, with the problems of the precise relations between art and criticism: and his general plea was for a species of art criticism in which reason and feeling are harmoniously combined.

Now few people will quarrel with your own contention that every work of art (worthy of the name) contains certain “elusive qualities” which escape analysis. But, if art consisted entirely of “elusive qualities” and intangible essences there would be no possibility of intelligent criticism at all: and we would have to fall back on that “miserably insufficient conception of art as the subject-matter of ‘taste”’ (Herbert Read).

Is this a paradox? I do not think so. The truth of the matter is that all art criticism has to steer an even and precarious course between the opposed evils of a sterile dogmatism and esoteric humbug. What we require are not dogmas but “standards” of value.

What, then, is “design”? Well, the truth of the matter is that “Design Review” has not always been so evasive and inarticulate on the subject. One of the first principles of modern design (as several of your contributors have pointed out) is the criterion (one might almost say the “big stick”) of utility. An article should be “easy to make” and “easy to handle”. A house should be easy to live in. And so on. Now this is not a dogma: but it certainly is a “theory” (it couldn't be more abstract!) and implies a whole philosophy of artistic values.

And this brings me to my final point: Why all this hysterical denunciation of “theories”? Many fertile theories have played an essentially creative part in the history of art; and, unless I am very much mistaken, even modern design is, to some extent, the product of a long series of “Adventures of Ideas”. You cannot avoid them. Moreover, to be very precise, you cannot discuss a work of art “on its own merits”. The sine qua non of all intelligent criticism is a comparative standard of values.

John Miller

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