Since my last essay in this space attempted to adumbrate the
principle for would-be censors, we have seen a spectacular
illustration of the truth that meaning depends on context—and of a
characteristic political obtuseness in understanding it. In fact,
the “Sensation” exhibit at Brooklyn Museum, discussed in detail by
Roger Kimball
elsewhere in these pages, takes us to the very limits of that
principle, to the point at which there is no meaning apart from
context. We have long been used to the postmodern definition of
“art,” which is that art is anything displayed as such in an art
gallery or museum. The context is all, the content nothing. Yet
somehow it still takes us by surprise every time another collection
of worthless junk is packaged as art—given a context—precisely so
as to create a sensation: even when the packagers advertise their
purposes by calling it “Sensation.” We seem unable to refrain from
responding to it as if it were not packaging but art, as if it had
some genuine content.

Naturally, the packagers depend upon that
inability. Only on its account is the sensation duly generated and
does the packaging work as it is designed to do. I only bring this up
because the habit of responding to context as if it were content is
not limited to those who haunt Lionel Trilling’s bloody crossroads
where art and politics meet. It is also the very foundation of
America’s media culture. Though it is now nearly four decades