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Sentences on Art Criticism

Criticism is swimming endless lengths, thinking

In 1969, Sol Lewitt published his now famous tract, ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’. I often return to these sentences, because they encapsulate everything the critic is not.

Lewitt: “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.”

Me: Art critics are rationalists not mystics. They do not leap.

Lewitt: “Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.”

Me: Rational judgements repeat rational judgements. This is why we have come to despise criticism.

Lewitt: “Irrational judgements lead to new experience.”

Me: The critic rarely braves irrationality.

And so on…

In the spirit of Lewitt’s ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’, I would like to propose my own, self-styled ‘Sentences on Art Criticism’:

1.     Criticism is not a constitutional right; freedom of speech is.

2.     Criticism is not an entitlement – it is a response.

3.     Criticism does not arrive dressed in a bow tie or pressed suit.

4.     Criticism is misunderstood. The role of criticism is overstated and undervalued. This can be the source of productive tensions for the writer, or simply induce depression.

5.     Criticism can be a sharp blade, Occam’s razor. Mostly, though, we are made to believe that criticism is a traditional weapon – a gnarled knobkerrie, perhaps.

6.     Criticism is not a period or a full stop; it is not the end of a sentence, statement, thought or idea. In this regard, read Ian Buruma’s The Wages of Guilt (1994): “To catch truth there must be conflict, debate, interpretation, and reinterpretation – in short, a discourse without end.”

7.     Criticism is a love letter to someone you don’t know.

8.     Criticism is reading other critics.

9.     Criticism is Simon Njami consciously setting himself up for failure when he travelled to Senegal to interview the filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety about photography.

10.  Criticism is not a liturgy: it need not be churchly or have a spiritual purpose; laughter is allowed.

11.  Criticism is reverence.

12.  Criticism is, as JG Ballard said of science fiction, “wholeheartedly speculative”.

13.  Criticism is a position; it has no true north.

14.  Criticism is Jean-Loup Pivin writing in the editorial to the launch issue of Revue Noire: “Revue Noire should be savoured on a shady terrace like a glass of ginger.” In other words, criticism is the rattle of ice in a glass on a hot day.

15.  Criticism in not ventriloquism: it cannot make a thing or an experience speak for itself.

16.  Criticism is not the noose that hangs the thought. If the thought’s dead already… the critic merely operates as an obituarist.

17.  Criticism is a contest, a Rumble in the Jumble: Ali is the verb, George Foreman the adjective.

18.  Criticism is a clutch of spurious synonyms: bad press, brickbats, censure, critical remarks, disapproval, disparagement, fault-finding, flak, knocking, panning, slam, slating, stricture

19.  Criticism can also offer analysis, appraisal, appreciation, assessment, comment, commentary, critique, elucidation, evaluation, judgement… a notice, a review.

20.  Criticism is the sweat in the palm of your hand when an annoyed artist, piqued by a review, demands: “What right do you have to shit in my garden?”

21.  Criticism is Gore Vidal, floored by Norman Mailer’s punch, retorting: “Norman Mailer, at a loss for words again!”

22.  Criticism is the startling sound of thunder.

23.  Criticism wants to be a veld fire. Typically, however, it is a stompie jettisoned from a car window.

24.  Criticism is responsibility. In this, it is an ethical pursuit, for as the unpopular poet Ezra Pound reminds: “Fundamental accuracy of statement is the one sole morality of writing.”

25.  Criticism is journalism.

26.  Criticism is for sale.

27.  Criticism has no section in Exclusive Books.

28.  Criticism is the lightning bolt that flashes in the pages of The War Against Cliché (2000).  In the foreword, Martin Amis offers: “Enjoying being insulting is a youthful corruption of power. You lose your taste when you realise how hard people try, how much they mind, how long they remember.”

29.  Criticism is literature.

30.  Criticism is always remaining fascinated, intrigued and obliquely curious. Otherwise you’re just news gathering. In this, criticism implies a partisan spirit.

31.  Criticism is not collaboration.

32.  Criticism is a retreat into silence. It demands knowing when to simply look with the eyes, laugh with the mind, and bite the tongue.

33.  Criticism is none of the above. These are merely sentences on art criticism.

“Here, the time in which one lives, is glorious”

 

 Berlin's Landwehr Canal

Following a second revolutionary uprising in January 1919, left-wing revolutionary figures like Rosa Luxemburg were captured in Berlin by the Freikorps' Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision. Knocked down with a rifle butt, then shot in the head; Luxemburg's body was flung into Berlin's Landwehr Canal at roughly this spot.

Some years before, Luxemburg wrote in a letter: “Here, the time in which one lives, is glorious.”

Random #4 - Magazine lists

Working proofs for Art South Africa, March 2010

I've long been fascinated by magazines. They are the stupid man's literature. Synoptic. Easily transportable. Essentially throwaway. Sometimes anthologised by writers who don't have the time, guts or good sense to write an original book.

1. Roots: Car and Scope, on my dad's side of the bed, Fair Lady on the other end

2. Afrikaans second language: Huis Genoot

3. Grandmother Ramona's influence: Harpers & Queen

4. Standard seven, 1983, New Romantics: Smash Hits and No.1

5. Standard eight onwards: New Musical Express - the 1984 Fleet Street strikes in the UK were strangely real in Pretoria

6. Wits, 1987: at a Wits Student seminar at some posh house in Saxonwold, a Weekly Mail journalist sent to teach us young greenhorns a thing or two about writing said we should read New Musical Express. My first ever piece of journalism was about Gary Rathbone from The Spectres

7. 1989: The Face, yes, but also Blitz. The gold Warhol cover is still gorgeous

8. i-D, Arena, Raygun, Bikini, Interview, Details... The Idler, which showcased poetry by Mickey Rourke

9. Discovering The Baffler, in 1996 or so, was a revelation. Thomas Frank, one its editors, went on to write The Conquest of Cool - it presaged Naomi Klein's No Logo by four years. Frank now writes for the likes of Harpers and is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

10. Kyoto Journal, Kansai Time Out... Relax, Burst, Tokion... Dune

11. Colors magazine, 2001. It seems liek such a long time ago being asked to fly to Los Angeles by Adam and Olly. Leisure World. What a trip. The best moment: sitting in the hot tub with two "tub" salesmen - the best along the west coats, they said. Later in Treviso, where the magazine is pieced together, I realised that a baroque, adjectivally opaque writing will get you nowhere. A steep learning curve. "Who is Tibor Kalman?"

12. Lab, Exit, Playground, Soma... early freelance gigs. Most of these magazine titles are now defunct

13. SL, being sued, hanging out with Andy Davis

14. Lewis Lapham's editorials in Harpers. A few years later author Richard Rodriguez tried to burst my admiring bubble by telling me Lapham was a boring grump. Manhattan literary wars. Boring.

15. NEST... a case study in what a magazine ought to be: eccentric, individual, unexpected. R.I.P.

16. Vanity Fair. I have about six issues. AA Gill's piece on Kate Moss was an exercise in restraint. Martin Amis would have been so much more carnivorous. A society magazine for flunkies.

17. Cabinet, Artforum, frieze... NOT ArtReview, Modern Painters, Art Monthly

18. Rouleur. A recent discovery. A British magazine which proves that a niche idea - cycling - need not be treated in the same old way. Literate, insightful, made for fans. Perfect.

19. Eye, Domus, Blueprint, Adbusters, Foam, Damn, Dazed & Confused, BBC Focus, ID... Elle Decor, Visi, House & Leisure, GQ... I guess I am a magazine hack

20. I started buying frieze magazine in 1994. I tried reading it. The features were obscure, insular commentaries on a sealed world. I kept buying it, mostly for the pieces by writers like Jon Savage and Simon Reynolds. Also the pictures. In 2007, I got my first commission. I read the magazine nowadays. I wonder if anyone found my feature on Amar Kanwar obscure and insular. Like most magazine writing, the words never speak back at you. They travel into a great silence and fall apart.

21. Art South Africa...

Random #3 - Lists

 Alan Fletcher (designer) and Jamie Jauncey (writer)

The list. Concise. Precise. Dissonant. 

1. Contributors to Art South Africa's March 2010 issue: Siemon Allen, Peter Anders, Esmé Berman, Rory Bester, Belinda Blignaut, Anthea Buys, Fred de Vries, Alexandra Dodd, Kendell Geers, Catherine Green, Kerryn Greenberg, Randolph Hartzenberg, Leon Krige, Marilyn Martin, Achille Mbembe, Kyle Morland, John Nankin, Alexander Opper, Malcolm Payne, Mario Pissarra, Lloyd Pollak, Ivor Powell, Tracey Rose, Robert Sloon, Robyn Sassen, Kathryn Smith, Roger van Wyk, Jasper Walgrave, Pam Warne  

2. Some well-known Ukrainian internet porn stars: Veronika Fasterova, Nella Miartusova, Snejana Onopka, Luba Shumeyko and Elena Berkov.

3. Excerpt from Tracey Rose's forthcoming column: " White white white white white white white white white white white white white white white..."

4. Lunch: Monday, cheese roll from Raith; Tuesday, salami roll from Raith; Wednesday, chicken roll from The Kitchen; Thursday, cheese roll from Raith.

5. Requests for transcript of writing prior to publication: one.

6. Requests for PDF of layout prior to publication: two.

7. Number of artists who came into studio to check colour proofs: one.

8. Likelihood of finding cover image's caption on the internet: none.

9. Time before publisher flies to Johannesburg to hand over completed magazine: 15 hours.

10. Price paid for Alberto Giacometti's L'homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) at a London auction house last night: £65,001,250 (or R775,000,000).

11. Cups of tea today: four.

12. Cappuccino: one.

13. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu on the links between economic capital and culture: “So it has to be posited simultaneously that economic capital is at the root of all the other types of capital and that these transformed, disguised forms of economic capital [including cultural capital] … produce their most specific effects only to the extent that they conceal (not least from their possessors) the fact that economic capital is at their root, in other words – but only in the last analysis – at the root of their effects.” (from essay The Forms of Capital, 1983)

14. Number of times Bourdieu is cited in the forthcoming issue of Art South Africa: zero.

15:  "A list, especially one that ranks or categorises, can be a salve for the anxiety of living in an era of information overload. But the relief is short-lived. Listing the options is not the same as selecting one of them to stand by. Unless you have something to say with your list, the experience of both its creation and use ends up being hollow..." Alice Twemlow, 'From the (a) trivial to the (b) deadly serious, lists dominate visual culture' in Eye magazine (Issue 47, 2001)

Random #2

 

Zoo Lake Public Bath, a glorious place to work

More of the same. I woke up early, 6am, to go to a meeting that was only scheduled for next week. I swore at a taxi just as someone exited, a waiter at a coffee shop I sometimes go to. The server is down. I had to write a "bright young thing" profile, not as an afterthought but as a serious and attentive consideration of career about to take shape. In the background, a jackhammer. Renovations next door.
And so on.

Driving to the office, for a second time, Big Black started playing. A song from 1987, I think, although I only heard about them a year later, in a park in Garsfontein, via Mark Pretorius who had a copy of their Racer X EP. The song this morning was from Songs About Fucking. I've always loved, advisedly, Steve Albini's trenchant humour and abrasive manner. He was a journalist, so the story goes. Perhaps that's why he wrote:

"... He's a whore - I'll do anything for money
He's a whore - With the things you like to eat
He's a whore - Well, the stories I could tell
He's a whore - And I'm a moron as well
I'm a whore - He'll do anything for money
I'm a whore - Because he goes anywhere
I'm a whore - He'll do anything for money..."

I listened to it twice on the way to work.

Funny. At some point you realise, I am what I listen to. On which, Beck, from Stereopathetic Soulmanure, bought the year it came out, 1994:

"... Today has been a fucked-up day
Today has been a fucked-up day
Today has been a fucked-up day
Looks like tomorrow'll be the same old day..."

As a postscript: I'm not sure this entry contains much factual accuracy, but for the the authenticity of the song lyrics.

Servers going. Back to work.

Random #1

 I  love this photo by Guy Tillim: Oupa's geraniums, Yeoville, 2004

I was peddling up Table Mountain yesterday, it was sometime after six in the evening, when I remembered something. I forgot whatever it was soon after. Late last night, just before midnight, I picked up where I'd left off the night before with On the Natural History of Destruction. A brief passage in Sebald's book made me pause, something about the accuracy of diary kept by a Japanese physician after the atomic bombing. Factual accuracy.

Over the past two weeks I've been slaving away - there is no other way of putting it - on the next issue of Art South Africa. So much happens during this process. Very little of it is ever recorded. Today's entry is a record of the things I forget about producing Art South Africa. Some might be factual.

1. For this new issue, I decided to interview artists rather than commission boring discursive essays. Listening is such an embodied experience. I say this because while interviewing Guy Tillim, Malcolm Payne and Stephen Hobbs, I was struck by their eloquence. Reading the transcripts of these interviews, well, I'm not so sure anymore. About my own proficiency as a speaker too. So many of the peculiarities of South African speech come through: "I mean", "just" "sort of" and so on. What I also thought would be a simpler solution to editing an essay turned into a large-scale exercise in cutting, cutting, cutting... Gardening, that's what I do.

2. So much time is spent emailing people, requesting this, asking for that. Pictures mostly. I watched that movie September. What I do exists far down the evolutionary chain from what happens in Ms Wintour's office. It's like woodwork compared to steel making. Sometimes, I think carpentry is a better pursuit. Other times not.

3. Writing about art is really a process of rationalizing, after the fact, a visual experience that, for the most part, is immediate and fleeting. There is a contradiction here. I suppose the task of the art critic, arguably, is to make the contradiction more, rather than less palatable. Otherwise it's just writing about things that don't exist.

4. Deciding on a cover image is a bit like walking into a bar and looking for a face that impresses. It's a stupid way to fall in love.

5. This blog entry was inspired by peddling. Malcolm Payne: "...critics are bottom feeders like art peddlers."

6. Despite the caffeine tone, I was prompted to write this because of the joy of possibility. Malcolm Payne, again: "There are very few art critics that write pure art criticism for the sheer joy of it. I think Greenberg possibly was one of those kinds of mavericks that decided he was going to do it and damn everybody else."