ABSTRACT
This chapter compares artistically relevant criticism with its normal version, criticism with metacriticism. It shows how even when a consumer criticism and an artistically relevant one deal with the same object they in fact treat them differently and ask different things of us. For in the differences between consumer and artistically relevant discourse, as those differences function in practice, lies the crux of the issue between the normal version and attempts to formulate "a context of production" for artistically relevant controversy. The claims that generate controversy in matters of consumption are cognitive claims. By providing the condition for verifying consumer critiques, the rule of taste indicates the particular kind of cognitive status appropriate to consumer claims. The ways the critical remarks of Messrs. Blackmur, Fry, Williams, Yeats, and Fergusson differ from Mr. Alston's provide the distinction between an artistically relevant and a consumer criticism.
