Conceptual art: what's the point?
- Thread starter Mr. Tea
- Start date
version
Well-known member
The Uncertainty Principle
Any uncertainty in you, the critic, can be hidden by neatly attributing it to the work. You can't decide whether the work is naff, or charmingly naive? Then say it "hovers between woeful inadequacy and unaffected poignancy" (Martin Coomer, Time Out, 20.1.99). You can't make up your mind if Pollock's paintings fit or don't fit with their time? Then write that "they seem at once to embrace and reject the entire sweep of artistic production (of their time)" (Jeffrey Kastner, Art Monthly, February '99). Paradox is the name of this game - a verbal flourish which papers over the cracks in your argument.
The Comfort of Mediocrity
If you want to be a successful critic, whatever you do, don't criticise. To make value judgements smacks of elitism (see "Great Art" above). Except for charming eccentrics like Brian Sewell, few experienced critics speak out against an artist's mediocrity and incompetence - perhaps because it reassures them about their own: "The photographs of Ulf Lundin are almost entirely devoid of visual interest ... It is ... their very mediocrity, their monotony and their emptiness that attracts us" (John Tozer, Art Monthly, February '99). This journal seems to revel in the more dismal manifestations of post-modernism, which puts its unfortunate reviewers in something of a spot, desperately trying to find something positive to say: "Didensen's video is very likeable mainly, I think, because of its desperate aimlessness."
Any uncertainty in you, the critic, can be hidden by neatly attributing it to the work. You can't decide whether the work is naff, or charmingly naive? Then say it "hovers between woeful inadequacy and unaffected poignancy" (Martin Coomer, Time Out, 20.1.99). You can't make up your mind if Pollock's paintings fit or don't fit with their time? Then write that "they seem at once to embrace and reject the entire sweep of artistic production (of their time)" (Jeffrey Kastner, Art Monthly, February '99). Paradox is the name of this game - a verbal flourish which papers over the cracks in your argument.
The Comfort of Mediocrity
If you want to be a successful critic, whatever you do, don't criticise. To make value judgements smacks of elitism (see "Great Art" above). Except for charming eccentrics like Brian Sewell, few experienced critics speak out against an artist's mediocrity and incompetence - perhaps because it reassures them about their own: "The photographs of Ulf Lundin are almost entirely devoid of visual interest ... It is ... their very mediocrity, their monotony and their emptiness that attracts us" (John Tozer, Art Monthly, February '99). This journal seems to revel in the more dismal manifestations of post-modernism, which puts its unfortunate reviewers in something of a spot, desperately trying to find something positive to say: "Didensen's video is very likeable mainly, I think, because of its desperate aimlessness."
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
"The indie judo move" - Luke Davies, 200?
sus
Moderator
I think the hard thing is figuring out what art should be up to
Fully agree it has ended up in one of the worst possible timelines
But it's harder to point out a timeline worth switching to for most of the mediums
There's some good painting out there but very very little, it just seems like a hard problem
Fully agree it has ended up in one of the worst possible timelines
But it's harder to point out a timeline worth switching to for most of the mediums
There's some good painting out there but very very little, it just seems like a hard problem
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
My suspicion is that painting e.g. doesn't have a primary place in our culture anymore, and can't. It's exclusively stuff you go and visit a gallery (for most people this probably means once a year, if that) to see. It's a peripheral artform. It can't compete with TV. Same goes with literature. There's an underlying futility to all this "serious" literature, and that's in part because books don't matter nearly so much anymore.
Even music doesn't have the importance it did before. It's become something ambient, to lay over the world or a video clip.
Even music doesn't have the importance it did before. It's become something ambient, to lay over the world or a video clip.
luka
Well-known member
it certainly doesn't. whether that means it can't is another question entirely. if a group of people with a modicum of talent and ambition come to value it and use it to express their ideas and perceptions and values then you will end up with something interesting. that isn't happening now as far as i know, and doesn't look likely to, but it's not impossible. television doesn't do the same thing as painting. you don't meditate on the image, you get carried by the flow.
