Amateur Artist Poses as Art Critic

Over five hundred of my reviews have been published by New City in the first ten years of my career as an art critic. The feedback below, however, is the first I’ve ever received from someone not personally involved with a show under review. It’s anonymous and belligerent, but at least it opens a discussion about art criticism and who may, or may not, be qualified to write it.

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Amateur Artist Chris Miller Poses as "Art Critic" for New City. New City's audience deserves to know the credentials of “Art Critic” Chris Miller. It’s a story not unlike Steve Bannon. Miller, a music retailer who began his writing career as a blogger who drove from the suburbs to the big city to experience the art scene and then blogged stories of his experience. He gained access to a platform and uses that bully pulpit to spread unfair and ill informed information. Miller is not concerned with the effect he has on accomplished artist long careers simple because he does not understand the work.   With the abundant art community and a plethora of qualified art writers in Chicago, it’s sad that New City has chosen a untalented artist wannabe as an Art Critic to write for the “culture and arts” publication. But it’s hard to employ qualified writers at $15.00 a story.   see attached photos of Miller’s work.



 
Your pitch is accepted - if not by New City, at least by me
in my blog of unpublished New City Art Reviews.
You won't get paid the $15, but everyone who cares
about the subject matter will eventually get around to
reading your opinions. And I would like to read why
you think my art is so bad. Hopefully you will have
more to discuss than credentials.

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Hey, don't give up on me here!  You have expressed a valid concern: what are the qualifications for writing art criticism?  Now it's time for you to continue the conversation.  Requiring that a critic be a good, professional artist would disqualify most of the iconic names in art criticism from John Ruskin to Clive Bell to Clement Greenberg to Jerry Saltz. That's OK with me --  perhaps their reputations are undeserved.  But to make your case, you might at least demonstrate the inadequacy of a specific art review that they, or I, have written.

Or... maybe you're not really interested
in the qualifications of an art critic.  Are you an artist who feels poorly served by one
of my reviews?

I better respond before I get another email from you. I guess spoiled husbands have a lot of time on their hands unlike the artist you review whose livelihoods are derived through art. Something you need to understand...this is not a conversation, it’s a one sided narrative...like a published art review. Don’t worry about the $15, however I have failed to find the pitch on your blog, therefore I guess your honesty is in question too. It’s understandable that it would never be published by New City so you’ll have to look for it somewhere else.   As to why I think your art is bad, all you have to do is go to a high school art class and find that answer. But I’d be interested in seeing an artist CV/Resume if you think you are a professional artist. I realize you don’t like discussing credentials given you did not defend or add to your “art critic” farce. Chris, you are no John Ruskin, you are no Clive Bell, you are no Clement Greenberg, and you are no Jerry Saltz and the thought that you think you are in this club is laughable. If you think art reviews are accurate and unquestionable you should really read some more about Art History. You’ve managed to worm your way into the Chicago art scene and you must enjoy that press pass. It’s okay Chris, there are plenty of frauds in the art world, the problem with that is you will always have the fear of being exposed for being a hack.   Oh, and your guess is wrong I am not an artist who has been "poorly served by one of your reviews".  I am however someone who earns my living in art world and I'm fed up with hacks who muddy those waters. I will defend artist until my last breathe, not tear them down.  

My mistake.   I was  thinking of your pitch as a
proposal for a story, not the story itself.
 I incorrectly assumed that you were planning to
write a more thorough treatment of the
subject. I will go ahead and publish the
"pitch" that you sent me, as soon as I can
confirm your address.

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In the above dialog, one of my readers asked who has the right  to criticize the work of a professional artist.  He asserted that I don't qualify because I'm only an amateur, and provided examples (shown above)  to demonstrate that I am a poor one at that.  (they come from my works in progress blog   and  my drawing blog  )

I  replied that most, if not all, of the best known art critics throughout history have not been professional artists -- to which he replied my writing could hardly be compared to theirs.

Since this reader considered his judgments of both art and criticism to be too obvious to require explanation, he did not offer any -  so our conversation has ended.  We still don't know about whom I "spread unfair and ill informed information", so no attempt can be made to rectify the matter.

It wasn't much of a conversation - but at least it was something.

If this reader, who wishes to remain anonymous,  ever gets around to explaining himself, I will append it to this post - and will do the same with responses sent by anyone else.

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Regarding credentials in the arts, they cannot make a good painting look any worse -- or make a bad one look any better. And looking for visual quality is what I do first - before thinking about who made it and why.  Most other art critics do not  share that priority.

Likewise, for me,  the credentials of an art critic have no effect on the merit of what that critic has written. Obviously, the anonymous reader quoted above would strongly disagree.

I want art criticism that relates art to life - so the more it reflects a passion and broad experience with both, the better.  And I consider it provisional -- i.e. not so much a final judgment as one voice within a never ending discussion.  Which is why I like to respond to art criticism written by others -- and invite others respond to mine.

Participants often feel that personal authority is at stake,  so discussions about art often descend into personal attack.  Especially in the anonymous world of the internet, where a troll seems to hide beneath every bridge.   But we can all do better - can't we?

Unlike most art criticism, but similar to most film criticism, the question of "is this art work worth viewing ?"  always lurks in the background of my writing - and evidence of the artist's success, hard work, erudition, reputation, and sincerity will not drive it away. No one is qualified to render a final judgment - but each of us has to decide where to allocate our own time and attention.  Each of us has to have our own hopes and dreams.

My approach fits much better into the American artworld of sixty-five years ago -- back when a leading artist like Ben Shahn might write:  "Form is the visible shape of content".  If you are searching for content, take a look at the art.

 In the artworld of today, a much greater emphasis is placed on context as validated by institutions and those they employ.  Which might explain the above job-holder's resentment and anger.

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Here are my priorities in art criticism:

1. Does it point to something worth striving for? (not necessarily by me). Because that is why I come to art.

2. What kind of human condition or life issue does it seem to represent? - because that’s the  most  engaging topic for discussion

3. How does it relate to and compare with art history? - because I find this question unavoidable.

4. How does it relate to what has been written  by the artist or others? - because I am fascinated by opinions other than my own.

My art criticism is based upon personal reaction and reflection - not because I claim that mine is authoritative -- but because that’s the kind of art writing that I want to read - and I don’t want to be told what I should be thinking. Often politically correct, that kind of criticism is tedious, pretentious, and useless. As well as ubiquitous. It's my hope that eventually other art writers will share the above priorities. Like myself, however, they will probably also have to come from outside the worlds of journalism, universities, or investment grade art galleries. 

 

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Susan Snodgrass, a prolific local writer,  has provided a job description  for art critics that is much more prevalent in today's artworld:

Artists are creative thinkers who challenge, expand, educate, disrupt, and revision the world in ways that others cannot. The task of the critic is not dissimilar to that of the artist. Our charge is to use the power of words to elicit, extend and mediate the dialogue, to inform and educate, to re/frame the view, to challenge the status quo. The resolve of art and artists will be tested once again with the imminent return of the culture wars reignited by Trump. Now is the time for critics to take back the discursive function of public space and re-energize the critical apparatus of alternative media and the art press. Above all, our primary mandate is to uphold the rights to free expression and free speech, including our own.

If this paragraph began with the word “politicized”, I could hardly disagree.  Politicized art promulgates one side in a conflict - but I  think of art as more like a harmonization of the human condition -- which is psychological, social, and environmental all at once.  The more stressed  the conflicts may be -- the more useful and amazing their resolution can feel.  Politicized art calls for a politicized criticism that will "elicit, extend, and mediate the dialogue" that it has begun.

But the kind of art that interests me does not  so much initiate a dialogue as satisfy a yearning -- and the job of the critic is to report on its satisfaction.

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A very different task for art criticism was presented by Edmund Burke Feldman in a chapter entitled "The Theory of Art Criticism" in "Varieties of Visual  Experience", a textbook  in American universities from 1967 through it's final edition published in 1992.  One might notice that its original title was "Art as Image and Idea" -- and then the word "art" was removed from the title in an academic world that was  beginning to prefer "visual studies".  (though one might notice that no chapters are devoted to the biophysics of vision or looking at natural phenomena)

"The chief goal of art  criticism is understanding.  We want to find a way of looking at art objects which yield the maximum of knowledge about their meanings and merits.  Works of art yield information to the trained  viewer, but we are not interested in information for its own sake.  For the purposes of criticism, we want to know how information about a work is related to its excellence.  For this reason, archaeological, historical, or literary data about works of art may be fascinating but not necessarily useful in art  criticism. In short, we want to understand the causes in the work of the effect it has upon us"

To "yield the  maximum of knowledge" introduces a notion of quantification which I do not believe applies to the kind of knowledge involved. To attempt to "understand the causes in the work of the effect it has upon us" undermines that which makes things qualify for study as art: their inner unity.

I  fear that like all textbooks, this volume primarily serves an institutional need to present a subject in a non-controversial way  to young people who are mostly interested in  graduating. 

However ---- he does elevate the importance of "excellence" while diminishing the importance of "archaeological, historical, or literary data".  This hierarchy would probably not be found in the textbooks of today.  Connoisseur-ship is long gone from the humanities - but still quite important to anyone, including myself,  who seek and are grateful for excellence in things.

He also lists the four kinds of art criticism as:  Journalistic, Pedagogical, Scholarly, and Popular.  Nothing that I have written  fits into any of these categories.

Perhaps in our new age of internet self publishing, a fifth category will receive more recognition: Amateur - not as in half-assed - but as in done for no reason other than love - an all consuming love.

And so we return to the title of this post

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Lori Waxman  shared her thoughts about art criticism in The Creative Independent  , a website sponsored by Kickstarter.  She has been the principal free-lance art critic at the Chicago Tribune since 2014.

Critics are not commentators. Critics are not influencers. Critics are experts in a particular discipline that are able to articulate their opinions about what they encounter in that field, while also providing immense amounts of context and other sorts of arguments to back up their opinions.

This statement does not identify Waxman as a professional journalist, but she does so later in the interview.  She likes subscription newspapers - she does not like the  free-for-all,  un-edited, self-published  internet. Art critics are not opinionated bloggers like myself - they are professional  journalists, like herself,  whose expertise is art - so they can provide “immense amounts of context” to  substantiate whatever opinions they offer.  I question whether expertise in the arts can be validated unless it is financial (how much will it sell for?) or institutional (where has it been exhibited and discussed?). Those criteria do not interest me -- though I realize that hardly any recognized “experts” would take my side. Some might agree, however, that what's important about context is not the "immense amounts" of quantity - but rather some notion of quality. Or, at least I hope so.

I write about a fairly elite subject, which is contemporary visual art, and I write about it in a general interest publication. So I also have to provide whatever is necessary for your average reader to understand what the hell I’m talking about. Just at the level of, “What is this art? Why does it matter? How does it fit into the grander scheme of things?” Influencers and lay commentators do not have that responsibility.

Even if there is something about a piece that compels such questions, there is no correct answer to them. Personal meaning is the most important because that’s how artworks come to life in each of our lives. Driven by how the work has affected us, we’re all alone on that search.  It’s the job of the art critic to stimulate thought and experience by sharing feelings, observations, and references - though that’s the job of any interlocutor in a good conversation.

The responsibility of a journalist is - or used to be - to aim at accuracy and objectivity. Objectivity is a killer, isn’t it? Apparently it’s considered impossible if not immoral in our current election cycle.  Is it really any more attainable in the discussion of art? So the only serious responsibility left for the professional arts journalist is to give the editors what they want. Which would make the “Influencers and lay commentators” somewhat more sincere - for whatever that is worth

To be a critic is a very particular vocation. It’s to know your field inside and out. It’s to know what happened before, what’s happening now. To know why something is important beyond just your particular interest in it is to be able to defend all of that contextually and historically. And it’s also the ability be a fucking good writer!

"To know why something is important beyond just your particular interest in it” is to speculate on the relative status of the opinions of others.  It contributes nothing to the discourses involved. That’s not art criticism - it’s social journalism.

And to know this entire “field inside and out” is impossible -  even if that only refers to the academic field in which she has taught. The world of art is so vast -- even if you’re only considering the  American  art of our time.  That’s what I learned from going to exhibitions every weekend for the past ten years. Whether it’s Puerto Rico  abstract expression or Ukrainian American tapestry - there's more different kinds of things out there than one lifetime can comprehend.

These requirements are beyond challenging -- and yet Waxman is now practicing a “short form” art criticism (the “60 wrd/min art critic”) that is intentionally shoot-from-the-hip rather than based on careful deliberation  and research. The critic declares that she will only spend twenty minutes on each review.   Occasionally  that review is judgmental rather than merely descriptive. That’s what I would call irresponsible - even if the artists are fully aware of the circumstances.

Whatever our theoretical differences, however, sometimes we come to similar conclusions in our reviews. The "Modernisms" show this year at the Block Museum is one that both of us covered. Here is her review in the Chicago Tribune ;  here is mine in New City .  We also both agreed about the Edlis / Neeson Collection. taking up so much space at the Art Institute for another fifty years.  

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It is amusing to see with what constant recurrence the epidemic of discussion on the subject of art criticism breaks out every now and again. Opinion on this matter is like a spring that overflows at irregular intervals. And that makes up for long periods of a quiescence by occasional displays of violent energy. There is no fore-telling when the outburst may come, nor how long it may continue; it begins as a rule with hardly a warning, and all at once drowns the world with a muddy torrent, that carries along all sorts of incongruous mental wreckage, and intellectual odds and ends. Yet these alarming manifestations are only so much force wasted. It is surely obvious that, so long as the artist who possesses and uses technical knowledge is confronted with a public that neither has nor desires anything of the sort, the critic must find occupation - as a go-between. This indeed, however it may be disguised, is the real mission of all who write about Art. 

 

......Alfred Lys Baldry (1858-1939)

 

an articulate statement of a kind of art writing in which I have no interest - as either reader or writer.  Why should anyone care about technical knowledge other than those artists who wish to learn how to use those techniques?

For what is the New Art Criticism? It is simply the attempt to apply to current art the same standards which we apply to ancient art, to disengage from the enormous stream of picture-producers the one or two contemporary masters who are worthy to be named beside the ancients, the one or two promising talents that may some day deserve the same praise ; to refuse steadfastly to confound the very good with the pretty bad, and to take mediocrity at its own estimate.... Dugald MacColl, 1893

So now you might say that I practiced  the "New Art Criticism" as it was practiced in London, c. 1890.... as long as we allow that these "standards" need never be articulated. They're like the Tao as described by Lao Tse -- whatever you say about them is wrong.

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Sean Talol self-publishes  as The Manhattan Art Review.  He covers the New York art world with short pithy comments, accompanied by a 1-5 star rating system much like movie critics use.

He has written this fine essay about art criticism.

 Is criticism nothing more than sophistry motivated by self-interest? Or does the critic have a role to play in helping us make “better” judgments about art? …….the critic’s social standing, however misused, is grounded in the possession of perceptual skills that are of cultural value. At present, even that allowance is no longer certain.

Right on!  Ironically, I find his writing about art criticism far more  entertaining, informative, and inspiring than his art criticism (even when I agree with it).   The essay tells us so much more about himself. ( and the 5-star system  is really rather useless unless you’re  familiar with the taste of the critic. It would be so helpful if  an online gallery of five-star contemporary pieces were posted)

 

  He’s a  34 year old writer who

"was born a pathological overthinker, neurotic and hard to please. For years I nursed vague artistic aspirations, but it turns out that obsessively thinking about art is a bad way to become an artist."

It’s also a bad way to write what I find readable.  The compelling subject here is human life. Not the ongoing history of art theory and techniques.

..... off-the-cuff reviews would attract more attention than intermittent longer essays. 

As Ben Davis noted, negativity also attracts more attention than positive — and as the new Republican Party has learned, colorful lies are better click-bait than boring truths.

 The value of these judgments is not in their being absolutely right or wrong, but in the way they crystallize the critic’s sensibility.


I’d rather have that sensibility elaborated than crystallized.


The disappointment of bad art is its inability to be anything more than what was expected, whereas one of the greatest pleasures of art—and one of the few well suited to the critic—is when it proves to be more than what was suggested by your preconceptions or by the small photo you could make out on your phone.


For me, the disappointment of bad art is that it’s a dead end.  You turn into it - like any other street on your journey  - and then it goes nowhere.  You have to back out. 

On less grand but more useful terms, artistic quality is never given; it has to be found, fought for and defended. This is the critic’s fight.


I don’t like to fight - let the artwork itself win or lose affection.  The critic can only report on their own experience.  And everyone is a critic when they say something like "Wow!  Did you see that ? It’s just like xxxxx"

…… the function of art: the struggle toward expression, to eloquently articulate qualities that are beautiful, emotive or otherwise engaging. 

The function of art:  to enhance human life through the imagination.

In the contemporary context, becoming cultured requires a resistance to the prevailing culture, and could ironically  be considered countercultural. Nevertheless the pursuit remains necessary, and perhaps even unavoidable, because it is intrinsic to our nature. I certainly agree with this first sentence:  popular culture creates whatever can be sold - whether it’s porn, French fries, or MAGA resentment.  University culture should be the antidote - but instead it’s been cultivating a narrow minded, overly mental conformity.  Becoming cultured needs to resist both.Cultivation is the growth into a distinct individuality by means of culture, an understanding of oneself and the world that always seeks to more fully encompass this understanding, a knowledge of life, an intelligence. 

High-Classical-culture person that I am - I’d like to say that I’ve seen the difference that it makes in the "knowledge of life" and "intelligence" of others —- but I can’t really.  And nothing  in this key sentence suggests anything like "spirituality" -  despite what follows.  This aspiration reaches toward an absolute, an omniscience that is both desired by and denied to humans: something I might call God if I were religious, but that for our purposes we can call the good. This good is something we can only put ourselves in service to. Good art, by extension, is good by its achievement of the good, a channeling of an external sense of life into an artwork. Good criticism seeks to recognize this good in art as much as it can. 

This is the sentence that provoked Ben Davis to write The Quasi-Theological Turn in Art Criticism is a Mirage Leading Art Criticism in the Wrong Way" and it echoes the quote from Thomas Aquinas that preceded it. Whoever dreamed we’d be arguing about scholasticism in 21st Century Art criticism?!?

You can mark me down as Franciscan as opposed to Dominican.  Reason has its uses - but spirituality is something else again.  And if you remember that 1987 groundbreaking exhibition at LACMA, "The Spiritual in Art" , spirituality has been important to much  of the art that came after Kandinsky.

The process of learning to discern what separates the truly good from the seemingly good, and the failed attempts at the good from the irredeemably bad, does not follow rules. 

Yes - there are no rules.  And if AI ever discovers any, they will apply to the new silicon life forms, not us hairy, smelly humans. …… However……I do think the human adventure is too ever changing to have a "truly good".  This is the medieval scholastic mind at work again. My alternative scale would be "most intensely good - benign - incompetent - confused - damaged "

Writing about art can have any number of objectives, but lurking behind any analysis is the question of judgment. Most contemporary art writing uses interpretation as a way of sidestepping the problem of quality, but interpretations are impossible to take seriously if the art itself is bad. A critic who avoids evaluation may have a less contentious body of work; perhaps they will protect themselves from ever saying anything that will sound embarrassing to future generations. I agree 100%   The cost is that they won’t be able to help their readers learn how to judge art or to understand it, which are in essence the same thing. Judging and understanding are far less important to me than experiencing - and surprisingly, Tatol himself writes something like that in the following quote:

The real sustenance of the artistic is the scope of experience it provides, the cumulative sense of growth and cultivation of ourselves through art, a tendency toward a good that we can never capture but only assist in radiating itself and existence.

I’d like to replace the word "good" with the phrase "higher energy" — if anyone really cares.

In his critique of Tatol,  Ben Davis offers two interesting quotes.

I retain, but suspend, my personal taste to deal with the panoply of the art I see. I have a trick for doing justice to an uncongenial work: “What would I like about this if I liked it?” I may come around; I may not. Failing that, I wonder, What must the people who like this be like? Anthropology. I assess art by quality and significance. The latter is most decisive for my choice of subjects, because I’m a journalist. There’s art I adore that I won’t write about, because I can’t imagine it mattering enough to general readers. It pertains to my private experience as a person, without which my activity as a critic would wither but which falls outside my critical mandate…………  Peter Schjeldahl ( I have written about him here )

Obviously, I do not share Peter Schjeldahl’s critical mandate - and so I must forever be self published. It does raise the question, however, whether publishable art criticism can ever be sincere.  It’s all phony: the writer pretends to pass judgment, but is only really a journalist.  He could just as well be reporting the weather.

The consumer service remains the professional basis for the staff reviewer’s job; fidelity, evidence, and so forth are still the measures of his value, but the high critical edge becomes misplaced, disproportionate when applied to most ordinary work. The staff critic is nonetheless obliged, and paid, to do more than simply mark time between rich periods and occasional masterpieces. The simple truth—this is okay, this is not okay, this is vile, this resembles that, this is good indeed, this is unspeakable—is not a day’s work for a thinking adult. Some critics go shrill. Others go stale. A lot go simultaneously shrill and stale… By far the most common tendency, however, is to stay put and simply to inflate, to pretend that each day’s text is after all a crisis—the most, first, best, worst, finest, meanest, deepest, etc.—to take on, since we are dealing in superlatives, one of the first, most unmistakable marks of the hack.......... Renata Adler

Another way of telling us that professional art critics are all phonies.

Two of our local painters,  Dmitry Samarov and Alan Pocaro , exemplify the kind of critic who is not.  Every few months or so, a show provokes them to write  -  and it gets published in an alternative weekly.  It’s not a living - but it’s one of many streams.  And they always have something interesting to say.

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Mention should now be made of that paragon of nasty quips and negative criticism, Denis Diderot - the super-star of 18th C.  art criticism. (I’ve written about one of his Salons here )

"I haven't the courage to describe this thing. Read Anacreon, and if you have a copy of his bust, burn Boizot's painting in front of it, pleading that he never again be permitted to produce anything so limp based upon so charming an author."

History has been validating Diderot for more than a century.  His favorite artist of the Salons was Chardin - and he considered most of the others as badly flawed and mockable.  You would probably agree with him as well.  His raucus negativity is forgiven because he was right.  That may or may not be the case with Tatol.  (mostly I think he needs to learn and experience a lot more before sharing his snap judgments)

But regarding his demand for qualitative judgment - that’s how I was taught and that’s what I live by.  An artist is no less responsible for producing good art than a chef is for presenting a wholesome and delicious entree - regardless of  the differing tastes of the customers. The artist establishes a taste - and lives or dies by it.

A hundred years ago, the universality of taste was proven by the encyclopedic museum - with a collection of alleged masterpieces that spanned continents and centuries.  That proof has been challenged by a conceptual relativism in the Humanities (what a statue of Anubis meant to an ancient Egyptian could not possibly be what it means to you).   It has also been challenged by an art market where objects of no special  visuality are sold for astronomical prices.  And there’s really no way to defend against them.  Either you see that universality or you don’t - and either you find it painfully absent in Andy Warhol , Jeff Koons, and Thomas Kinkade —- or you don’t.

I empathize with Tatol’s religious inclinations.  There is one Taste - just as there is one God ( or Tao ) - and a oneness in each piece.  Our small human minds can never fully comprehend it - but at least we can grow in understanding.

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We might note the title of Ben Davis’ first essay : " Is Art Criticism Today Too Affirmative? That’s the Wrong Question to Be Asking ".  And so ——- what question should  we ask?  His answer:  " Is “the question of judgment” really a full picture of what is at stake."  — rather than something like "how good are today’s art critics?"

And Ben Davis, though offering a fine critique of Tatol, nimbly dances around a notion of art criticism without actually offering one:

But if the vision for culture being offered is different from cultural conservatism in either its old-school or new-model forms, where a call to reassert aesthetic hierarchies is read together with a call to reassert social hierarchies, there’s good reason to be clear about how......The simplest and philosophically cleanest way to make this differentiation is just to incorporate the reality of aesthetic pluralism as a positive force into the theory—to say that it is not always a name for intellectual laziness but can also be a name for intellectual curiosity, that it is not a barrier to having standards but their desirable starting point.

So the best way to avoid "cultural conservatism" and still have standards  is to always be at the "starting point" ?  Davis just needs to consider the very high standards of his own prose - and realize that he has been well educated in the verbal, but not the visual arts.

Kano Masanobu, Bodhidharma in Red Robes (late 15th century)

In response to a query for "one work of art that brings you joy", here is  (an abbreviated version) of what Davis wrote:

What first stopped me is just how grumpy he looked. He’s got these big, haunted eyes, and he’s kind of giving you the side eye, like he’s not sure about you. He’s got heavy, frowny, wispy eyebrows. He’s got a five o’clock shadow. His hair is kind of scruffy.

But I also really love how vivid this image is. Like this painting really captures something for me. It just really looks like this guy who’s had a hard day, who’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, who thinks too much. He looks like someone who hasn’t had his coffee yet. It’s simple, but it’s very powerful for me.

After I saw this artwork and kept thinking about it; I kept thinking about why it stayed with me. The text at the Met says it is about Bodhidharma’s message: “look within to become a Buddha.” But this guy doesn’t look like he’s looking inside; he definitely is looking out at me. And he doesn’t look like he’s found tranquility; he’s scowling at me.

All of this is fine.  Joy is primarily what I seek in art - and it’s personal effect is exactly what I want an art critic to write about.

But Davis has only written about that  narrative theatrical part which many representations of the Bodhidharma have in common - and which a competent cartoonist could whip up today in a few minutes.

What about those more formal aspects of internal energy and how figure/ground become one?  What about the electric tension of the brush strokes as they shape and organize space ? This is what can make the ordinary feel profound.  To savor the  balance  between  something and nothing is especially meaningful in the context of Zen.

Nope - Davis has nothing to say about that— and since he is quite articulate, he probably would have mentioned it  had it made any difference to him.

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Now let’s move on to a short review by Sean Tatol:

Magalie Guerin , untitled (CC2), 2023

Magalie Guerin, Some Mondegreens, Sikkema Jenkins & Co.  :  **.5 The compositional sensibility is decent, if a little one note, but the real problem that's hard to shake is the insistence of a bad color palette. 

"bad color palette" is  quite reasonable as a personal preference - but as a serious criteria for quality in  painting ?   Tatol must be joking. His essay touted something like an education in the Liberal Arts as a path to deeper understanding and personal development. Here - as  Ben Davis puts it - he offers nothing more than "Random personal antipathy”

 

By contrast -  here is what John Yau had to say about the same show on Hyperallergic:

In her latest exhibition, what struck me immediately about Guérin’s work was that it neither looked like anyone else’s nor immediately disclosed its meaning.

 Both Guérin and Nozkowski are abstract artists who explore a subjective space that the latter helped open up, starting in the mid-1970s, when Conceptual art superseded painting. It is a direction in abstraction that has been largely overlooked because the critical narrative of 20th-century abstraction that has dominated Western art history focuses on the pursuit of objectivity, with an emphasis on external structures, such as the grid, two-dimensionality, paint as paint, and post-easel scale. Working from memory, Nozkowski undermined these measures of objectivity with skewed grids and irregular geometric shapes drawn from the landscape or things he experienced or read about.

I've liked Guerin's paintings for more than ten years - so I appreciate Yau's positive evaluation ("one of the best of her generation")  But more than that -- Yau's review introduced me to Thomas Nozkowski - so I could think about the similarites and especially the  differences.  That's the kind of thing I want from art criticism.

 

But I would not present this review as exemplary.

 

Regretfully, Yau's text is void of aesthetic response and judgment.   He's a poet - so it's enough for him to say that a painting  is enigmatic - without querying why anyone might care to puzzle it out.

Something does feel wrong or broken about Guerin's world - but her response has a strange grittiness  and determination that I find fascinating and admirable. And her work has become more lighthearted over the past two years. Has she found love?  I want to cheer her on.