Saturday evening on Radio 3, a prattle of Oxbridge voices reviewing an exhibition selected by and posthumously mounted as a tribute to Peter Fuller. The wannabe Oxbridge voice of Giles Auty, art bumbler for the Spectator, declares 'Peter' was led by his arguments rather than his eyes. Up speaks real Oxbridge voice, while duly patronising to Auty - not really one of us - does agree Fuller was not guided by pleasure. All assent. Art then is all about pleasure, and art criticism, presumably, a guide to a particular fleshless form of hedonism. The British Broadcasting Corporation - the dominant cultural institution in Great Britain, state-supported and with immense resources - gathers together a group of people to discuss the arts on the channel most directed at the educated, and they say - in the century whose art is dominated by such images as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, by Duchump's Large Glass, by Beckmann's visions of hell - that art is about pleasure.

LRB 7 November 1991 | PDF Download