Letter: Amateur on the wing

I'VE long since ceased to be amazed that people with demonstrably no training in art and/or no knowledge of the study of perception, ideology and creativity and their essential role in artistic understanding are given acres of space to expatiate on any new work, or exhibition. Paul Vallely's musings on Gateshead's Angel, by the sculptor Antony Gormley, are no exception ("A new friend for the North", 28 February).

The vacuous saying he quotes of a local poet that "art dignifies a place'', language as slack as his - eg "art counts for nothing if it does not move ... it aspires to something transcendent ...from which to construct our dreams'' - does understanding no favours. To assume a work is good merely because it is called "art" is to ignore that, like democracy or justice, art is a category whose examples need assessment by expert reasoning evidence, and criteria. Where were these in the article? For those dismayed by their absence, it's no consolation that a visually and epistemologically illiterate culture like ours attends to and admires only the art or interpretations of art it deserves; nor that its comprehension of its Vermeers, Shakespeares, or Turners, will be just as amiss.

DAVID RODWAY,

Lecturer in Art and Philosophy

Art Faculty,

Kensington & Chelsea College

London SW10.