It was the early Eighties when I was invited to Washington D.C. to engage in a conversation about the National Endowment for the Arts. To my great surprise and delight I encountered two friends at this meeting, the founders of The New Criterion, Sam Lipman and Hilton Kramer. It should not be a surprise to the readers of this publication that these men of extraordinary erudition dominated the proceedings.
It was agreed that the three of us would share a cab to the airport and ultimately a flight back to New York. I was seated in a middle seat between them. The conversation reverted back to the day’s events: Should the NEA receive government subventions? Is it good for the arts? Does the marketplace value genuine art?
After about five minutes it was clear I was a human ping-pong ball being hit from the left to the right. But it was exhilarating. Hilton was at the top of his remarkable game, an Aristotelian arguing that culture is an instrument to bind society together, a transmission belt between the past and the present. It was an argument that transcended the appropriateness of NEA funding and went directly to the debased state of popular culture and, specifically, to the private patrons of the arts who are responsible for the precipitous decline in artistic quality.
As was so often the case, Hilton made a telling argument. He was clear, persuasive, and unyielding. I have known many artful propagators
