Ratcliff's lecture began as a bore, tracing what was essentially a history of art since the Renaissance in regards to financing and subject matter. He eventually ended at the art of the individual and the segued into a discussion, the entire second half of his lecture, on what is and what is not art. The problem with this is of course obvious, but what was so perplexing to me was that someone would be brought to lecture about such a topic. His thesis was that art has an infinite amount of meanings, whereas non-art, which included propaganda, illustration, decoration, and document (to name a few, he says), one can "get." It was this kind of precise vocabulary that pervaded the lecture as a whole.The most disappointing aspect of the lecture, however, was not what he said but rather the audiences response. I was shocked that he was not immediately attacked by pointing to the many holes in his argument, ranging from the undue emphasis he placed on authorship (the "art" piece, De Kooning's Woman I being the only object to have an author, non-art is some kind of cultural by-product) to the way he talked about non-art images as having a singular meaning (that does not bear any real information without text, to boot). But no, the audience seemed pleased with his performance and asked questions like, "What about Benjamin?" and "Is dada art?" ("It's a case by case basis"). This seemed unfathomable given the 30-45 minutes I had spent brooding and writing down all the various problems I found with what he was saying. (I was, admittedly, not "friendly" to the text.)
It was astonishing to me that these ideas would be verbalized and then praised by what it is supposed to be an academic, artistic community. At the very least, surely it should have been recognized that these ideas are so conservative as to be heavily treaded upon ground and far from anything new or original.
