I think that Knowledge and the Arts by Eric T. MacKnight is a very insightful essay that helps me understand more about why my current English teacher is always saying that I am asking the wrong questions about the literature that we read. I always find myself asking, “Why is the poet saying that? What is the writer trying to say? What does this all mean? Can you explain this?”. But these are, as MacKnight says in this essay, the wrong questions (p. 4). The right questions are questions that make you think about your personal, emotional, and cognitive response to art, such as “How does this artwork make me think about who I am?”, “How does this artwork make me think about where I am?”, and “How does this artwork make me think about what I am doing, or what I should be doing?” (p. 9). Within all the serious talk about the theory of how art has anything to do with knowledge, MacKnight still finds ways to entertain the reader, ensuring they attend enough to gather the critical thoughts of the essay. One of my favourite examples of this is when he writes “Calm down, and stop shouting. I know what you mean, and I can help. I will put my argument about the value of art on hold for a moment and tell you a story about ice cream” (p.7). Another example is when he claims, though he does not believe this claim, that the meaning of art is in the mind of the beholder.
“Oh, glory be! What a relief! I can say anything at all about any work of art, and I can never be wrong!
(I just decided on a new career: art critic! A job in which I can never be wrong!) (p.5)
I find this essay interesting because it fulfils its purpose of making me think about what art and literature makes me think about. I often “decide” the quality of an artwork based on how I feel about it, but Knowledge and the Arts has reminded me that I alone cannot be the one to determine how good an artwork is, especially considering that I am not a poet or a professional poetry critic and I have no real qualifications to conclude what an artwork is worth. Do I believe that “How does this artwork make you feel?” is a valid and possibly vital question, even after reading MacKnight’s essay? Yes. Does Knowledge and the Arts make me comprehend, finally, that my question is not the most crucial or even reasonable one? Also yes.