Because I’m not a professional art critic I never have to write about anything I don’t like. Maybe professional art critics don’t either. I read a fair amount of art criticism and it’s very rare that I read anything that’s even subtly negative. I did write for a short-lived arts publication—so short-lived it ended after only two issues, which was unfortunate because my third review was really good, but that’s another story—but got lucky in that I really liked the works I was assigned to review. Well, that’s not entirely true. There were some paintings in an exhibit I was supposed to write about that I really didn’t like at first. I started off making a lot of negative notes but, as I looked at the paintings more closely, I started to really like them. And the more I liked them the more positive things I found I had to say.
Something I wonder about with professional art critics, or professional critics of any kind, is, do they ever have trouble coming up with something to say? Especially with something they like. There’s nothing special about critics—they’re just people with opinions, although their opinions are, or should be, more informed. If you’re looking at, say, a painting, and you like it but you can’t explain why maybe, just maybe, a critic can offer some words. Maybe a critic will point out something you missed. And maybe if you don’t like something a critic can give you a lengthy explanation of why you should like it. You can still hate it after that.
This is a long-winded way of saying I really like that RAZ tag. It’s clean, it’s simple, but it also leaves me wondering if RAZ is short for something. Razmatazz? Razberry? Razputin?
Yet after spending a lot of time looking at it and thinking about the details—look at how that white triangle in the center must have required careful thought and planning, and how the brick behind it is painted while further up has been left raw—there’s not a lot I can say about it. And I hate that.
I always like what you write, Chris. Always.
When I was in film school in the 80’s, I took a course on film criticism where the professor — who was a professional film critic in Boston — told us it was much easier to write an interesting piece about a film you didn’t like. The assignment was to write well about a film we liked and I think I wrote about Spielberg’s “The Color Purple.” I don’t remember much else about that assignment but I’ve never forgotten what that professional film critic said.
My general philosophy when it comes to criticism is that if I can’t say something positive I shouldn’t say anything–and surprisingly I come up with a lot of things to say about what I find. It even seems that we live in a world where so much art, in every genre, is being produced that even critics could, if they chose, focus solely on what they liked. I wish you still had what you wrote about “The Color Purple”. I feel certain I’d like it.