A good many of the reviewers of that time came from literary backgrounds, usually the New York School of poetry, which showed up in their exaggerated claims and overripe metaphors. In art school in the late '50s, we played a game, reading reviews aloud from the latest issue of Art News and trying to guess who the subject was. I can still remember one: "X dumps live chunks of landscape steaming hot into the gallery." (Give up? Helen Frankenthaler.) What changed this situation? Artists started writing. (I'll leave it to someone else to answer the question "What changed it back?") Why let the critics speak for you when you are perfectly capable of speaking for yourself?
What changed it back? A bunch of writer wannabes took over an art mag and began using it to court hot writers, leaving little time or energy for artist-writers and their dumb concerns.
Or, by shifting the emphasis to writing, lost the pulse of what artists were talking and thinking about.
(take your pick)
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- bill 6-15-2005 6:17 am
What changed it back? A bunch of writer wannabes took over an art mag and began using it to court hot writers, leaving little time or energy for artist-writers and their dumb concerns.
Or, by shifting the emphasis to writing, lost the pulse of what artists were talking and thinking about.
(take your pick)
- tom moody 6-15-2005 6:37 am [add a comment]