The ultimate arrogance of artists
from Why Has Maya Lin Retreated From the Battlefield of Ideas?
The ultimate arrogance of artists is the belief that they control the meaning of their work, the shape of their career, the pattern of their own biographical narrative -- and their importance in the larger history of art. Composers dismiss their juvenilia from consideration. Novelists decide they're poets, and churn out mediocre verse. Yet very few artists ever exercise any ultimate power over how they're evaluated by posterity.
I guess the ultimate arrogance of Philip Kennicott and other journalists is that they know better.
For both artists and journalists the Fox News rule should apply: They report. I decide. Well maybe that is the ultimate arrogance.
