The D. Roger Howlett '66 Award for Writing on Art, "A Response to Art" ($250) was presented to Marcus Loveland '02 on Saturday, May 25, at the Emerson Gallery at Hamilton College. This special award celebrates the Emerson Gallery's 20th Anniversary and was held in conjunction with the gallery's Hamilton Collects American Art exhibition, April 19 through June 9. It was required that the writing be inspired by the Hamilton Collects American Art show, and include reference to at least one piece from the exhibition.
Loveland is Hamilton Class of 2002, He is from St. Johnsville, N. Y. and graduated with a double major in philosophy and economics. He has been especially interested in the philosophy of aesthetics. Loveland will join the Federal Reserve Bank in the District of Columbia as a research analyst. Howlett is the president of Childs Gallery, Boston.
Following are Howlett's comments on Loveland's winning essay:
The D. Roger Howlett Award For Writing on Art, May 2002
In his essay Alpha and Omega: A Philosophy of Art, Marcus Loveland has used a painting in Hamilton Collects American Art and a chance remark by a fellow student as a springboard to ask questions and make considered answers to "How do we define Art?", "Who gives meaning to the text (work of art)? The author (artist)? Or the reader (viewer)?"
Arthur Dove's Forms and his fellow-student's rejection of it as art, provided the springboard for Loveland's thinking. He recapitulates Heraclitus' "You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you" with his own "Each artwork is equivalent to multiple artworks, changing whenever anyone engages in a new process of artistic interpretation."
If Loveland seems at some points self-contradictory, he also sees that in others. There is a touching belief in education as a necessity for correct interpretation of works of art, however, at points Loveland becomes close to a party line thought policeman when he writes "If one does not believe Forms is art, we can educate him." Loveland may agree with Plato that: "he who cannot conform to this rule of ours [is] to be prevented from practicing his art in our State, lest the taste of our citizens be corrupted by him?" when he states: "something that intentionally harms people is not art, but something different altogether."
Although Loveland presents an art theory, he leaves open the possibility that it could be wrong, or require emendation. In that openness, his thinking has the possibility of growth. In his essay Loveland has grappled with some of the fundamental questions in the philosophy of art and acquitted himself well.
D. Roger Howlett
