I love Alyson Stanfield's blog. She covers many topics that are just dead on relevant to an artist's life. Her current post, for instance, links up an article in the Wall Street Journal that talks about art commentary. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, art-speak language that makes you scratch your head and go, HUH? This kind of art talk troubles me because I strive to make my art accessible to all kinds of people. To me, confusing drivel-ish (ok, that's not really a word) explanations do the exact opposite and only serve to exclude. And there's nothing worse (imho) than uppity art.
Anyway, you can click here to read the article for yourself. There are some classic quotes that are absolutely hilarious. My favorite sentence is:
"Bove's 'settings' draw on the style, and substance, of certain time-specific materials to resuscitate their referential possibilities, to pull them out of historical stasis and return them to active symbolic duty, where new adjacencies might reactivate latent meanings."
Wow. That's a lot to ask from a piece of art.
Thanks for your nice words, MB. I'm glad you got something out of that article.
ReplyDeleteThis made me laugh! My husband and I always speculate about the origins of those crazy, complicated descriptions in galleries. How long does it take someone to write those things (with a gigantic thesaurus and a book on art theory) and do they write them specifically for the show or do they honestly believe what they write? After how many cocktails?
ReplyDeleteLaurie