Author Archive: Christopher Waldrop

Several months ago I took a picture of this graffiti and spent a lot of time thinking about what I’d like to say about it. Where should I even begin? Should I say that it’s interesting because animal iconography seems to be pretty rare in graffiti? Well, I just did. That’s all, folks!

But wait–there really is more. Some, particularly fans of the literary movement known as New Criticism would say the work can only be judged in itself without any reference to outside influences or the artist’s background or intent. And that’s pretty much all I can do since I don’t know anything about the artist. But what if I found something that shed a little light on it and meant I didn’t have to wrap up quite so soon? That’s where this helps.

From this I think the camel is the artist’s tag–essentially their name. What’s a name, after all, than a symbol? Sure, most names are symbols made up of letters–there are some exceptions, such as that thing Prince used as his name for a while–and letters themselves are symbols that we’ve mostly agreed all make the same sounds, although I did have an uncle who wouldn’t spell anything with the letter Y because he was convinced it would sneak onto his farm at night and tell dirty stories to his cows, but that’s another stor.
Anyway that reminded me of the Dutch aristocrat, art historian, and dealer Jan Six–who is actually the descendant of ten previous aristocrats with the same name, making him the eleventh Six. The first Jan Six (born (January 14, 1618, died May 28, 1700) was painted by Rembrandt and amassed a considerable art collection. The current Jan Six continues to collect with a particular emphasis on Rembrandt and in the past few years discovered what he and some scholars think are two previously unknown Rembrandt paintings at auctions. And keep in mind that a painting by a lesser known Dutch master–say, one of the guys from the cigar box–can sell for thousands but a Rembrandt can be worth millions, and if they are legit he got them at bargain rates because the auction houses didn’t know what they had. Even with a decline in the study and even collecting of older paintings–the prices on modern works are rising while the old ones aren’t–there’s enough interest in them generally to make them, especially the ones done by well-known artists, valuable. Although further complicating all this is the fact that, with his many pupils and large studio, it’s almost impossible to know whether Rembrandt himself painted a painting alone or whether he had help, or whether it was just one of his students copying his techniques.
That difference can also seriously affect the value of a painting, but shouldn’t it be the work itself and not just the name that matters?

Sometimes people say to me, “I like art but I don’t understand it.” I understand what they mean. I also don’t understand what they mean.

Art criticism isn’t as hard as a lot of art critics seem to want to make it out to be. The only thing anyone really has to ask themselves when considering a work of art is, Do I like it? And if you can give a lengthy, detailed answer explaining why then congratulations—you’ve got all it takes to be an art critic, because a critic is just somebody whose opinion is longer than anybody else’s.

I think I first realized this many years ago in college when a famous and highly respected art critic came to judge student works. He was so famous I can’t remember his name now, but it doesn’t matter because you probably wouldn’t recognize it anyway. How many art critics can you name? I read a lot of art criticism and history and I can only name about half a dozen and at least two of those are dead but that’s another story.

When the famous and highly respected art critic came to judge the students’ works he explained his method for deciding what was good and what wasn’t.

“Some mornings I want orange juice and some mornings I want tomato juice,” he said. “If I feel like orange juice and you give me tomato juice, even if it’s the world’s best tomato juice, I’m not going to like it.” This was a pretty brave admission from a critic, and probably more than he meant to say—that his judgments were subjective and fallible and likely to change, even from one day to the next. And he’d probably not be too pleased with me interpreting his words that way but, hey, he’s the one who said it. And I don’t feel bad about interpreting him that way because he looked at my friend’s painting and said, “This is pineapple juice. I hate pineapple juice.”

And then he moved on without saying anything else, which I think was unfair of him. He could have offered more and I’d even say that as a critic he should have offered more. The only critic who should be allowed such a terse opinion would be a dead critic and maybe not even then.

There’s a needle somewhere in this verbal haystack and it’s that I like the above picture but I don’t know what to say about it except that to me it’s pineapple juice and I always like pineapple juice.