We do ourselves a disservice by praising the second rate

Few things are more calculated to induce rising panic than the Edinburgh festival programme. So much art, so little time, so many ideas, so much to grasp. I have a sense that I am just not good enough to do justice to even a fraction of Brian McMaster's offerings. Side by side lies the far greater slab of the fringe programme, a lifetime of artistic activity for an average person in just three frenetic weeks. This sparks off a wholly different set of feelings. So much energy, so many hopes, such busyness, such industry - ah, is this what Chris Smith means by Creative Britain?

But how much of it is any good? And who is to say what good is? Is what happens at the fringe "good" in the same sense that things at the festival "proper" - now there's a word - might, depending on your inclination, be said to be good? And, as in Edinburgh so in the arts world at large, is there still a common critical, evaluative language that embraces the wide range of activities that inhabit the artistic world and range from silliness to sublimity?

We can all recognise the simply silly - and enjoy it too; we can all be moved by the sublime. But assessing things on the long spectrum that stretches from one to the other gets more and more difficult. (For a start, you will see that I cannot use any word without qualification or apology.) How dare I even contemplate using the word "good"? I know that every judgment about the arts now needs to be qualified by a sense of gender, culture, race, inclusion and ex clusion. You can even throw in class - that reassuringly grand, outdated, sociological Marxist simplification - so long as that means stirring up the newly fashionable but in reality very old pot of elitism versus populism.

I suppose I can imagine a situation where a play or opera or piece of music theatre was so informed with these current sensibilities that everyone might agree with a judgement that it was "good". Such a process reduces criticism to judgment by performance indicators. In the absence of a tick in every appropriate box, any sense of judgement is disarmed, virtually invalidated.

To judge in this way, however, is entirely consistent with the government's approach to the arts. Unless an arts body - whether museum, gallery, performance collective or street theatre - can demonstrate that it measures up to the criteria of being educational, providing outreach, reducing exclusion, improving access, advancing ethnic diversity among audiences and staff alike, then the question of whether the organisation is doing its principal job well is hardly considered. Achieving excellence is formally lauded. In practice, it is no longer a sufficient condition for recognition and funding.

Not content with shying away from unfashionably absolute words such as "good" and "excellent", we have spawned our own weasel words that allow us to label everything while judging nothing. Performers and artists who fight for recognition reject the very idea and process of valuation. They take refuge in self-categorisation instead. It is as if a journalist - critic is too loaded, almost obsolete a word - can only say where an art work exists, not whether it should be judged outside its own self-selected series of definitions. Increasingly, arts journalism involves a mere mapping process rather than one of evaluation. To say where a piece of art exists in the broad categories of artistic activity is perhaps the only valid thing to be said about it.

Needless to say, this is very convenient. Any judgement can be deflected or rejected by disputing the terms on which it is made. An art work so bristles with its own sense of particularity, like defensive barbed wire, that criticism can only approach it on the terms that the artist has constructed. "Don't tell me that I include too many echoes of other people's works; I may look as if I'm taking an easy ride on the back of somebody else's achievement - in fact I am being deliberately referential." Or: "Don't criticise me for appearing to be stupid; can't you recognise that I am being ironic about the stupidity?" Or: "Don't tell me that some previous artist did what I am doing with greater technical superiority - I refuse to be tied down in terms of the dead (white) past." And so on. There are a hundred reasons for refusing to be taken seriously, a hundred excuses to deflect criticism. But if anyone can define the terms on which they are to be assessed, why bother with criticism at all?

If you decide to be an explorer in the comparatively unknown reaches of cutting-edge art, if you are bringing back news from the unknown, all well and good; explorers, those who recognise, identify and report the truly original, are vital parts of the arts dialogue. But sooner or later the role of reporting, recording and discovering has to be followed by another function - that of judgement and evaluation. We will know by then where a work stands - do we care enough to go further and try to decide whether it is good of its kind or bad?

I am not suggesting for a moment that a team of critics with superior knowledge and god-like objectivity can descend and tell us what is good and bad. The history of criticism is littered with learned pundits making fools of themselves, not least with their own wretched human prejudices.

But arts journalists in particular should not avoid using their knowledge to indicate where they stand, what matters to them and where their values lie. It is not enough to accept the blandishments of the PR people, the statistical persuasions of the marketeers. We should expect journalists to be more critical of those who have a vested interest in their own success.
Audience ratings and financial success are not the only criteria for judgement. Journalism should answer to its readers first. Given the weight of commercial hype surrounding so many arts events, particularly films, how many journalists have the guts to say that something is no good?

In the end, I think we should have had enough of judgements based on the evasions of relativism; of the cowardice of special pleading; of fear of being called elitist because we take up the cudgels of robust, disinterested criticism that explains why it is trying to separate the artistic sheep from the goats. It may mean that a new seriousness is called for, one that challenges the humbug of the defence of irony. It might not make any difference to what is put on and performed. It might, on the other hand, shake some of the silliness out of what we see and are supposed to enjoy.

I hate quoting that cultural pessimist, TS Eliot, but I think it is appropriate: "This is the way the world ends; not with a bang but a whimper." Today I would change that. If the world were to end, it would be to the sound of contemporary enjoyment - the giggle, a hollow one, naturally. It would, of course, be ironic. Because nothing really matters, does it? We can do better than that.

John Tusa, managing director of London's Barbican arts centre, will be speaking in the LM Culture Wars debate, What's Wrong with Cultural Elitism, at the Edinburgh book festival on Thursday, August 19. His book, Art Matters, is published by Methuen, £12.99