As might be expected, my critics have begun to weigh in, the first being Professor Paul Duncum of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In his one-star “review” on the Amazon.com page for Who Says That’s Art? he dismisses my ideas as “grounded in Kantian aesthetics as reworked by right wing ideologue Ann Rand.”
Anyone who has bothered to read her writing on aesthetics (much less my work about it) knows that no one would be more stunned by the alleged Kantian connection than “Ann Rand” herself!
I don’t mind slings and arrows—I only wish that the level of scholarship were a bit higher, and that the names could at least be spelled right.
Professor Duncum is shocked that my definition of (fine) art excludes photography and “abstract” work—though he has never bothered to consider my reasons for doing so. In truth, as I note in Who Says That’s Art?, he is among the all-too-many these days who, while charged with the training future of art teachers, are more concerned with consumer goods, popular culture, and critiques of capitalism than with “art” of any kind.