You mentioned Huxley in yr post and I've already
commented and although no one will care what
I write next, I am still motivated to do so because
it's relevant to this discussion on some (admittedly obtuse) level.
You see, the thing about Aldous Huxley is he was a
Brit and he didn't want New York gaining even more
cred as the world art capital with abstract expressionism,
so he liked to make fun of it.
Which is ridiculous considering that
a) he was supposed
to be a "metaphysical" free-thinker according
to many of his books
and
(most importantly)
b)
the guy was legally blind (or just about there)
and he fancies himself an art critic!
Yet, there he is as the main intellect in a
panel discussion in several issues of Life magazine
in the early '50s putting down American
Abstract Expressionist painters and cow-towing
to the lowest common denominator by calling it a sham.
I'll write it again.
Fuck Aldous Huxley.
(He's a) tremendously overrated author,
(& a) tremedously overrated intellectual as well.
Quote:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:QbJhytHFWTwJ:www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/feb03/huxley.htm+huxley+aldous+%22life+magazine%22&hl=en &ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
The frustration of Huxley’s natural scientific bent also had at least one malign consequence: a much too uncritical attitude towards fringe and crank sciences, especially those that offered some hint of a connection to the world of the spirit. He was an early enthusiast for the work of Dr. J. B. Rhine of Duke University, which Huxley believed had established the reality of extra-sensory perception. Huxley’s 1954 essay in Life magazine probably did more than anything else to bring Rhine’s “results” (which rested on a misapplication of the rules of statistical inference) to the attention of the broad general public. J. W. Dunne’s “experiments with time,” which involved sifting through one’s dreams for episodes of precognition, got Huxley’s attention. So did dianetics, which was later incorporated into Scientology. Huxley and Maria, his first wife, had three or four sessions with L. Ron Hubbard.
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