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I never could understand art criticsm.
In general, what can you really say about a photograph or a painting, other than "I hate it" or "I love it"?
Sure, you can try to explain why the work affects you, or what it means in a historical or cultural context. But some critics really do carry on a bit. They inflate their opinions to fill sentences and column inches, without making much sense.
Take today, for example. Venerated SF Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker caught my eye this morning with this about the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky:
A print such as "Iberia Quarries #9, Cochicho Co., Pardais, Portugal" (2006) presents an astonishing wealth of detail, allowing us to see clearly equipment and workers hundreds of feet from the camera.
Meanwhile the quarry's towering, steeply terraced walls form a kind of negative architecture, reminding us how much marble has ended up as the substance of buildings and sculpture. The thought of sculpture and architecture may also bring out the odd echoes of Picasso and Braque's analytic cubism in Burtynsky's quarry views.
Looking at "Iberia Quarries #9 ...," like many of Burtynsky's others, entails thinking about distance: about how it frustrates or enlarges understanding, depending on whether it provides context or exempts us from dwelling on disturbing states of affairs.
Burtynsky's work represents sustained thinking about distance, and the power to shrink it, as realities that define privilege and individual fate in our era, and about the camera as a tool for making this historical fact less deniable. That he has persisted in this reflection, while producing images of memorable impact and elegance, qualifies him as a major artist.
Huh? Here's the image he's talking about:
That last paragraph made me drop the paper. What if this picture appeared in a corporate brochure for the drilling company, and not in an art gallery. Would he say the same thing, or pass it off as just another bit of commercial photography worthy of the expensive lenses and camera used.
I wonder.
So much of this kind of art criticism reminds me of the emperor's new clothes, and side-of-the box hype.
But there is nothing here to capture the eye. Boring angle, conventional composition, uninteresting color, it could have been black and white. Yes, and we can see the equipment down there! Duh.
Sorry. I just don't get it.
Like most National Geographic pictures, there is confusion between subject matter and the photograph itself. Is it just the subject that interests us, or is it the photograph?
You miss the point, I think, which is that all criticism is as you describe. It's one person's objective response to art. If you follow the writing of a particular critic, and view/hear/attend what she writes about, you develop a sense of how their taste intersects (or doesn't) with yours. In your example, the critic is presenting his response to the image in the context which it is presented. If he didn't respond to the photo in the way he writes above, he might have said something akin to "it belongs on a gravel company's annual report cover" or something similar, and we'd know that his opinion corresponds to yours. As a professional musician, I read reviews of my ensemble's performances the next day, and am often mystified that the reviewer attended the same performance that I played. And via experience over the years, I now know which critics will most closely mirror my impressions of what took place, with the caveat that one from outside often sees what the individual can miss.
rchrd replies:
Oh, I only wish it were objective. But it's very subjective, and influenced by many things outside the photo image itself. As we can know, reviewing a music concert is very different than reviewing a painting or photo. The concert involves performance, and that brings a lot to consider. But fine art photography, the kind you put on gallery walls, even more than painting, depends so much on context, and subject matter you begin to wonder if any objectivity is possible.
Baker's final paragraph could apply to any photograph of a distant landscape. I just don't see what makes the image he selected so special as to evoke that sort of praise. Which is where I start to wonder about the truthfulness, honesty, and value of such criticism.
And, I seem to be having a lot of arguments over the state of current photography and photo criticism -- its starting to make me wonder what's going on. And it's making me grumpy. But thanks for the comment, and for reading this blog!
