The Venus of Willendorf is hideously deformed.
I think youâre getting your ideas about art criticism from reactionary lampoons. Certainly thereâs no shortage of bullshit and pretense in the art world, mostly geared towards selling gallery pieces to the credulous well-to-do. But just because a car salesman tells you the stripes on the side make it go faster doesnât mean itâs not actually a fast car.
As to the value of a âcritiqueâ of found art â it recontextualizes what you see as an ordinary mundane object and reveals qualities you may have overlooked in ignoring the ordinary thing. Think of it as a painting of the selfsame object, only in the medium of words instead of paint.
Think of the scene in American Beauty where the kid talks about the plastic bag dancing in the wind.
Think of lying in a field pointing out shapes in the cumulus to each other.
Youâre so focused on gotcha-ing the critics (a double-blind test?) that you canât understand them trying to perceive and communicate beauty/âmeaning/âquality in things around us, be they Intentional Works of Art or not.
Youâve gone from certainty to suspicion. Thatâs progress.
Actually, I get it from my own personal bullshit detector, after having read one too many reviews of what appears to be junk described in flowery prose.
You still do have to look at the object and determine whether itâs a car in the first place, right? Just because some of the objects the salesman sells are cars, doesnât mean all of them are. And, once you catch that salesman in the act of dressing up a cardboard cutout as a car and selling it, wouldnât you be suspicious of everything the guy tried to push?
Thatâs all true up to a point. But even there, I wouldnât call something not made with intent a piece of art. The description may be art, the painting, surely. Even a photograph. But the thing itself? Are clouds art? Yes, some complicated shades of grey here.
I feel that too often these days, people take advantage of this inherent ambiguity by pushing things that fall at the far end of the spectrum - objects that donât really deserve the benefit of my doubt. And that, I feel, diminishes the value of that doubtâŚ
To suspect is very different than to be suspicious.
Thatâs regress.
The reason for art critics is the monetisation of art. For the verbal communication of beauty/âmeaning/âquality we have poets.
Turnerâs sunsets versus âThe river sweats/oil and tar/the barges drift on the turning tide/red sails wide/ to leeward swing on the heavy spar.(1)â NOT âMr Turner has taken a pot of paint and thrown it at the public.â
(1)T S Eliot, The Waste Land
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