This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series The Arts Without Mystery, given by Dennis Donahoo, was originally broadcast in 1982.

Two years ago, the critic Marina Vasey wrote an essay on the language of art criticism,

in which she reflected severely on those dictionaries of art which, as she said,

do not criticise their subjects so much as praise them.

But the most revealing passage in her essay reported that in a London art gallery one day,

she came upon what she described as a middle-aged pair doing the art gallery swoop.

In the swoop, you look at a painting and then bend down to see its title and the painter's

name. The middle-aged pair were bending down to look at an electrical fitting, a complex

of wires and plugs which they evidently took for a work of art. They were searching for the

label. So disoriented had this couple become, Lady Vasey commented,

so uncertain as to what was art and what wasn't,

that their eyes were taking in the sculptural possibilities of electrical plugs and wires

while looking for the label that would validate their perceptions.

I can't see what this is called, one said to the other,

as Lady Vasey passed by. The conclusions Lady Vasey drew from this episode seemed to me wrong.

She implies that she is free from the bewilderment she ascribes to the Middle AIDS pair.

I don't think she is. She recently reviewed in the

Sunday Times a work by Joseph Boyes, exhibited in Anthony Dauphé's Gallery in London. It isn't very

clear from her account of it that she has any notion of its character or whether it is a work of art

or not. She assures her readers that

Boyce is a person of the utmost dedication, charm and sincerity. The effect of Boys' work has an

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