One of my unarguable postulates about aesthetics is that life mimics art, not art life.
—Kenneth Tynan, in He That Plays the King (1950)

Occupation: Opinion-monger, observer of artistic phenomena, amateur ideologue.
—Kenneth Tynan, in the Foreword to Tynan Right & Left (1967)

The word “art” is now really no use to me at all. . . . When I hear the word “art” now, I begin to yawn; to me, it’s somehow a cop-out word, a word to dodge and hedge with, a word that means something different in everyone’s mouth . . . . I’ve tried, in everything I’ve written over the last five years or so, to avoid using the word . . . .
—Kenneth Tynan, in The Sound of Two Hands Clapping (1975)

From time to time a critic emerges who may truly be said to personify a...

 

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