journalese arts-speak C/D

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I quote:

"Elmgreen and Dragset's bored security guards, abandoned babies and dysfunctional hospitals reveal the emptiness at the core of modern life" says Adrian Searle.

It's almost like some kind of artistic formalism in its own right. (haha see I can do it a bit as well) It makes me not want to read the article or want to know any more about the art being written about. Post real-life examples, what d'y'all think etc etc etc.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 21:28 (twenty years ago)

picking at random out from my art magazine:

"It's chilling, to be sure, this sense of the artist as disinterested controllin force. Viewers may find, as a result of seeing the show, that they sense their own physical selves a bit more distinctly, but the overwhelming feeling is no so much one of interaction as of remove."

― Dominique (dleone), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 21:36 (twenty years ago)

I've noticed that this kind of writing (which I don't always hate, but usually do) seems more prevelant in media wherein the writer is more likely to actually participate in the making of the kind of art he/she is writing about.

― Dominique (dleone), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 21:37 (twenty years ago)

omg it's happening again!!

― Dominique (dleone), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 21:37 (twenty years ago)

http://mypage.bluewin.ch/AviationArt/calvin/calvin_3.jpg

― Abbott (Abbott), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 23:05 (twenty years ago)

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 00:25 (twenty years ago)

"...reveal the emptiness at the core of modern life" is one of the two great fallbacks of modern generalist art crit, along with "playful" pieces about "the construction of identity." You can describe any piece of art with one of these two should you be lazy enuff.

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 00:33 (twenty years ago)

"The simple device of replacing Calvin's words with inexplicable gibberish reveals the social construction that underlies our identities and the impossibility of communication, whilst his desperate, futile attempts to build a model aeroplane demonstrate the ultimate nullity of creation - of art - and reveal the emptiness at the core of modern life."

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 00:39 (twenty years ago)

Very French!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 00:41 (twenty years ago)

I could explique the gibberish, however, if you wanted

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 00:41 (twenty years ago)

It can't be explained - it's ineffable. That's the tragedy - that we are all Adrian Searles blindly groping through the fog of language.

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 00:45 (twenty years ago)

I don't mind Adrian Searle, it's Kirsty fucking Wark who annoys the hell out of me with her "school milk monitor / airport novel with embossed lettering" arts reporting style. Every bloody time I watch her squinty glinting eyes addressing the camera I'm counting down to the moment she uses the word "iconic".

Why does she use the word "iconic"? Basically it means "famous" or "famous for being famous". So it's an appeal to glitzy celebrity culture, or rather, a signal that bourgeois viewers are being encouraged to take a "semiological" interest in glitzy celebrity culture, in the hypocritical way that someone might claim he's only looking at porn for sociological reasons. It assumes that everybody watching Newsnight Review secretly just wants the same Hollywood tat and tabloid tattle that the mass market consumes, but wants it covered with intelligent-sounding adjectives which make it drawing-room respectable... like "iconic".

So, without the viewer ever having to encounter anything more demanding than the latest blockbuster movie, TV adaptation, or Damian Hirst installation, there's a sense of "Abracadabra: cultural capital without tears!"

― Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 02:22 (twenty years ago)

(And of course, if you look deep enough into the knowing twinkle in Kirsty's eyes as she pronounces the word "iconic" you'll see a tiny cameo of modern Britain, a place in which clever, educated elites "like us" rule the masses thanks to our highly professional, slightly contemptuous mastery of the codes of popular culture and marketing.)

― Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 02:35 (twenty years ago)

(Also: the reason Searle is not offensive is that he shares with many of the artists he's reviewing a critical detachment from modern Britain, the very thing lacking in Newsnight Review. Sure, he may ventriloquize slightly...)

― Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 03:22 (twenty years ago)

Momus - check the past few weeks of Ian Penman's (excellent) weblog for much talk of 'iconic':

http://apawboy.blogspot.com/

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 15:16 (twenty years ago)

search :art theory/art criticism machine

― S. (Sébastien Chikara), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 15:37 (twenty years ago)

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