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.
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?! ...
