The Tao of art criticism: Describing that which is ideally indescribable

This thesis traces my accidental history as an art critic, and explores many of the issues about art and art criticism that I find puzzling or irresolvable. I look at my early perceptual experience in the raw natural world of Alaska, and question how it shaped my point of view. I link both the experience of art-making and art-appreciation to the human body's struggle for balance and self-understanding. I wonder if there are limits to what art is or can be. I speculate about the pressures that have motivated, and that continue to motivate, many art commentators---artists, art critics, historians, philosophers---to insist that there are such limits. I argue that art itself refuses be contained within any definition, and that it thus signals human desire for ever-expanding awareness of the "power and way" (the Tao) of all-encompassing consciousness.