10.

10.

on Robert Rauschenberg's "Goat with tire" - "Am I a masterpiece or simply a pile of junk? ...What precisely is it in the coming together of goat and tire that is magical? It's not the surprise of seeing the goat attired, although that's part of it. One might say, for example, that the tire [italics] contests the goat, [italics] contradicts the goat, as a mode of being, even that the tire [italics] reproaches the goat, in some sense. ...What is magical about the object is that it at once invites and resists interpretation. Its artistic worth is measurable by the degree to which it remains, after interpretation, vital - no interpretation or cardiopulmonary push-pull can exhaust or empty it" (Barthelme 19-20).

 Alpha, A.

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