Critical Cut Up - The 2006 Remix

NOTE: This was composed of several essays and pieces of writing I had done in 2005. It is an attempt at a linguistic remix. A mash-up. A cut-up. Choose your terminology. It is offered as an experiment.

I have never fully understood how one can critique a painting by writing about it. Most people would agree that a painting is not a valid form of critique for a novel, so why the other way around? And why not a painting? It was the exclusivity of it all that really came down to me in the form of confusion. Erasing DeKoonig is an act of pure critique. Not just of a particular work, but of a genre. A tradition.

We need an awareness that any act of criticism is in fact a looking inwards. It is about finding places of connection and loss and disconnect. Guernica and Homage to Catalonia are part of the same dialogue, word illustrating image. And how war always feels specific, but that artwork surrounding war is always universal. I often wonder if Homer is really John Lennon reincarnated backward through time.

Art criticism is a matter of critiquing our fellow human. The artist bares their soul to the world. The audience and the critic then explore and examine the validity of that act. We are not just saying if this work of art is good or bad. But rather we are asking if this person, this soul is worthy of our time and attention. Yet, the roles of artist and critic are necessary compliments to each other. Protagonist and antagonist. They are opposite sides of a mobius strip. Or perhaps they are the mirror reflecting themselves infinitely.

An oil painter might be able to determine the difference between a work where the artist mixed their own paints versus one where the artist bought oils at an art store. Depending upon that person's relationship with oil paints they will ascribe more or less value to one or the other of the works. The one could be seen as pretentious or the other as lazy and undisciplined. A film photographer will have a different relationship to light than a digital photographer. A playwright and a novelist a different understanding of the psychology of dialog.

The medium molds the artist as much as the artist molds the medium. It is a dialog. An active engagement. A continually evolving relationship that is infinitely difficult and troublesome. The reward being never as much as the effort expended and thus there is a constant striving for more and different and new. When a work is placed on view for an audience one is placing a very personal relationship up on a pedestal for public consumption, offering it as a sacrifice to the gods of self-understanding and knowledge. A brutal life. Yet necessary.

Remember that Brooklyn is home to both Walt Whitman and Biggie Smalls. I am large, I contain multitudes.

With the transformation of our environment and the evolution of the technologies of daily life our perceptual understanding of the world has shifted. Our eyes see different colors and different textures. We have available to us a greater wealth of information than ever before and a concurrently reduced ability to understand it linguistically. The three second MTV jump cut is the baseline for judgment. Linear inorganic forms are the most readily accessible to us. Sounds are best understood as the space between silence as the DJ crossfades to eternity.

To diverge with a quote from Heidegger, "What is spoken is never, and in no Language what is said."