Sally is off the grid for a couple of weeks,  , but she would like to point out two recent, interesting posts about art writing: Leah Sandals drawing connections between the double rainbow guy and art criticism and Art Fag City taking on Trembling's academic style.
Sally says:
Enthusiasm, empathy and speculation seem to get short shrift in a lot of discussion about art writing. Both Leah and Paddy seem to be worrying about art writers reading things into the work that aren't empirically there. I agree that there's nothing worse than narcissistic art writers who just ramble on cause they like the sound of their own words (and I do it myself far too often). But it seems to me that people who are writing about art are necessarily conscious of the fact that there is always an element of speculative fiction in any verbal art interpretation. Language is its own medium that can never exactly reproduce the specificity of an artwork. It's humbling, and it should be, but there's no need for writers to pretend that it isn't also fun. Like artworks, words take on a life of their own.
Hey, thanks for the link! I agree with Sally that it's kind of in the nature of art writing to ramble into speculation, into places that are not empirically there. And that can be a big part of the fun of it--whether reading or writing--too! (Guilty as charged on that point, myself, as well.) I guess what it comes down to for me is subjectivity--it kind of drives me crazy sometimes when people write as if their subjective POV is objective. And that's a phenom that I think is highlighted (to both hilarious and poignant effect) in the double rainbow video.
Of course, I say all this subjectively! Woot!
one of the tensions that i think condemend frank o'haras art writing away from the canon is that he actually liked things
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Sally is off the grid for a couple of weeks,
Sally says:
- L.M. 7-30-2010 5:17 am
Hey, thanks for the link! I agree with Sally that it's kind of in the nature of art writing to ramble into speculation, into places that are not empirically there. And that can be a big part of the fun of it--whether reading or writing--too! (Guilty as charged on that point, myself, as well.) I guess what it comes down to for me is subjectivity--it kind of drives me crazy sometimes when people write as if their subjective POV is objective. And that's a phenom that I think is highlighted (to both hilarious and poignant effect) in the double rainbow video.
Of course, I say all this subjectively! Woot!
- Leah Sandals (guest) 7-30-2010 7:54 pm
one of the tensions that i think condemend frank o'haras art writing away from the canon is that he actually liked things
- anthony (guest) 8-01-2010 8:26 am