The tug of war between a cultural object's internal logic and external form will remain with it as long as it remains an intended object (one could imagine an earthquake destroys a minimalists museum and intact pieces of art mingle with other debris and they become unintended objects for the cleanup crew). One could argue the unresolvable internal-external nature of art works is essential to it being an art work. If it was definitive it would not be art but something else.

But human nature as it is, when we create or interpret art works we inevitably favor ( due to accessibility, personal psychology, social conventions, etc.) one side or the other and slowly through critique and comparison the argument is born. The two different but integral parts of art now become polemic opposites or exaggerations (actual or argumentative) to be embraced or rejected.

Within this polemical web Form has been unjustly caught.

Posted by: Christopher Metz