Monday, February 2, 2015

Groundbreaking, I tell you!

Years ago I bought a tiny little book by James Elkins called What Happened to Art Criticism?  For some reason I never read it then, but did the other day.  It's a fun and insightful read, but more than that, it has me contextualizing everything I read in a different way. 

A lot of art writing these days seem to be just blurbs written more as advertising to get people to go see some show or artist's work than anything else. Most of it is devoid of imagination and seemingly written by people who don't even have access to a thesaurus. Today I was browsing the Contemporary Art Daily site and ran into the following piece o writing; take a gander:

Arnolfini presents the first UK solo gallery exhibition of groundbreaking Dutch artist Willem de Rooij this autumn. The show will feature a politically-charged photographic work and a new installation that explores themes of individuality and how single objects can carry multiple layers of meaning.

"Groundbreaking", seriously?  I started reading the blurb because the images of the installation did intrigue me.

Willem de Rooij at Arnolfini

And when that happens, I do read the advertising blurbs after the images on the site in hopes of getting a little more insight about the work, since Contemporary Art Daily does not bother with such incidentals as medium and size: things that would help one visualize the work in a physical universe.   Unfortunately, I rarely glean any insights from doing so.   

... "groundbreaking", really?! ...