The general
lack of what Pope John Paul II called a «new ardour for the new evangelisation»
among us argues persuasively that our
imagination has wandered down the wrong paths.
Because - and especially in their assessments - they tend to reflect familiar categories: The sharp and often distorting distinctions
among and between «subjects»; age grading; the value placed on quick recall; the dumbing down
of the quality and grace
of expository prose to make it fit into some sort
of rating scheme; the overload
of material to be covered, usually the inevitable result
of intracommittee ideological logrolling, which leads to a bit
of this and a dollop
of that; the almost absolute denial
of a value placed on individual ingenuity, craggy but provocative thinking, sustained work, and desirable variety; the
lack of interest, signaled by the assessment apparatus,
of the virtues
of fairness, good character, and
imagination.
Luedeckens believes it was the
lack of control that caught the
imagination of artists like David Smith and John Latham, who were
among the first to produce aerosol - painted series.