Reconsidering “Some Overrated Masterpieces”: The Exhibition Catalogue Awards for 1997

Abstract

There's nothing so convincing as an opinion, writes Stanley Elkin, beginning a memorably iconoclastic essay, “Some Overrated Mastserpieces,” “and an odd thing about words is the cockeyed weight they’re permitted to bear.” Elkin supplies a wonderfully farcical example: “so that if I say something as flagrantly meaningless or flat-out arbitrary as, oh, he's the sort of person who parts his hair, I’ve not only suggested something negative about hair-parting but have made, too, an aspersion on character.”

While Elkin is writing about personal opinions, his observation might easily extend to collective opinions or juried dispositions just as well. If some . . .