What The Critics Say #2: Kicking Arse and Taking Names
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Writers have to stake their claim in the first few sentences of an article – the classic ‘lead’ in a story is the hook that keeps you reading all the way to the end. Art writers working for newspapers and magazines have to get to the point pretty quickly or they will lose their readers. Some writers have absorbed “art speak” and mix it liberally with newspaper style prose, while others are labouring without regard to good writing at all.
Writing the Galleries column in the Sydney Morning Herald, Anne Loxley appears to have learned a thing or two about a snappy lead:
Art dealers work hard on their image. Some offer what they call “blue chip investments”. No such claims are made at Martin Browne Fine Art. But the implication is there?
The key phrase in the above paragraph is no such claims are made in writing. Let’s restate that: Martin Browne Fine Art does not make a claim in writing that what they are selling are blue chip investments. In fact, the only claim they make in writing is that the title of the show is A Selection of Contemporary Australian Art.
You are probably wondering what Loxley means when she says “the implication is there”. What she means is that Martin Browne has successfully marketed his artists to a select clientele of lawyers, property investors and the like, sold these paintings without much in the way of excessive advertising (just the usual art world ads in magazines and the odd line-ad in a newspaper), created a stable of artists mostly made up of refugees from other galleries, and has recently expanded into a brand spanking new gallery space across the road.
So what’s the beef here? Perhaps Loxley has a problem with the fact that Browne has made a lot of money from his artists and shares in the profit from future sales. While this kind of approach to the business of running a gallery is quite different to many galleries – where even the highest profile artists receive exactly nothing from their dealers between exhibitions and the odd sale – it’s hardly a claim for blue chip status. One can argue the merits of individual artists and why they can command certain prices, it’s presumptuous to make a claim where none actually exists.
Whatever the reason for Loxley’s problem with Martin Browne, she certainly doesn’t like the artists who show there:
She says of an Emily Kame Kngwarreye painting included in the show that it “is far from the artists best work.” Loxely would be surprised if William Robinson didn’t “agree that his series of ceramics of swimmers, such as Lifesavers and Bodybuilder (1997) is an unremarkable area of his oeuvre.” Poor Bill Robinson – one minute a maker of masterpieces, the next just unremarkable.
Loxley cannot understand the popularity of Tim Maguire – perhaps its got something to do with the decorative nature of the work? – and has little time for McLean Edwards ("illustrative, discordant"), Chris Langlois ("vacuous") or Neil Frazer ("clumsy").
Blimey – an art critic from the Herald with an opinion that she’s not afraid to spray around! But wait, there’s more:
So there you have it – even for the good artists in the show, there are dangers ahead. And where does Loxley take the blue chip lead? Precisely nowhere. In the next paragraph she discusses a Mardi Gras related exhibition at the Cross Art Projects space and imagines that “here is a gallery where blue-chip are probably dirty words”.
We can’t imagine why an exhibition of work by struggling artists would hate to be considered a sound investment – if they were they wouldn’t be struggling, would they?
Loxley’s ‘blue chip’ lead is tenuous to say the least, and in some cases downright misleading. Loxley should have just fessed up that the thing that really irks her is Martin Browne’s mixture of gallery artists with secondary market pieces masquerading as a “show”.
On Fridays, the SMH’s Metro liftout carries two pages dedicated to exhibitions. Until last year, the pages were written by Victoria Hynes (who has since left to fill the deputy editor position at Australian Art Review under fellow Herald journo and new editor-in-chief Ruth Hessey) or Lenny Ann Low. Hynes was a dry writer – facts with a bit of scholarly flavouring. Low, on the other hand, specialised in clichés that collapsed on the reader like an avalanche rolling over a hapless alpine skier. After her thesaurus was exhausted, Low was moved on to mini-features leaving the Exhibitions pages open to Dominique Angeloro.
Angeloro is a competent writer, specialising in just-the-facts reporting, that sometimes reads like a rewritten press release:
At least it tells you what the show is about, but perhaps go a little easier on the art speak?
Still, it could be worse, a lot worse.
There is nothing quite like the art writing that accompanies new media. Forced to invent new words and grammar to encompass the sheer newness of new media, writers and artists are often one and the same person, since very few are interested in it, and to get the coverage, you need to go out and do it yourself. We have no problem with new media as such, nor digital media, screen media or whatever you want to call it, but we do have a problem with Darren Tofts (an artist and writer) writing about Ian Haig (an artist and writer) in Real Time (+On Screen) in an article called Machineries of joy: Futurotic:
Sadly, this “vast literature” goes without citation.
Writing the Galleries column in the Sydney Morning Herald, Anne Loxley appears to have learned a thing or two about a snappy lead:
As with any market offering products in today’s competitive and sophisticated environment, art dealers and gallery owners work hard on their image and market position.
At one end of the spectrum are those promoting themselves as offering sure-fire investments. Indeed, some dealers go so far as to describe the works they sell as “blue chip”. While no such claims are made in writing for A Selection of Contemporary Australian Art at Martin Browne’s Macleay Street gallery, the implication is there…
Art dealers work hard on their image. Some offer what they call “blue chip investments”. No such claims are made at Martin Browne Fine Art. But the implication is there?
The key phrase in the above paragraph is no such claims are made in writing. Let’s restate that: Martin Browne Fine Art does not make a claim in writing that what they are selling are blue chip investments. In fact, the only claim they make in writing is that the title of the show is A Selection of Contemporary Australian Art.
You are probably wondering what Loxley means when she says “the implication is there”. What she means is that Martin Browne has successfully marketed his artists to a select clientele of lawyers, property investors and the like, sold these paintings without much in the way of excessive advertising (just the usual art world ads in magazines and the odd line-ad in a newspaper), created a stable of artists mostly made up of refugees from other galleries, and has recently expanded into a brand spanking new gallery space across the road.
So what’s the beef here? Perhaps Loxley has a problem with the fact that Browne has made a lot of money from his artists and shares in the profit from future sales. While this kind of approach to the business of running a gallery is quite different to many galleries – where even the highest profile artists receive exactly nothing from their dealers between exhibitions and the odd sale – it’s hardly a claim for blue chip status. One can argue the merits of individual artists and why they can command certain prices, it’s presumptuous to make a claim where none actually exists.
Whatever the reason for Loxley’s problem with Martin Browne, she certainly doesn’t like the artists who show there:
She says of an Emily Kame Kngwarreye painting included in the show that it “is far from the artists best work.” Loxely would be surprised if William Robinson didn’t “agree that his series of ceramics of swimmers, such as Lifesavers and Bodybuilder (1997) is an unremarkable area of his oeuvre.” Poor Bill Robinson – one minute a maker of masterpieces, the next just unremarkable.
Loxley cannot understand the popularity of Tim Maguire – perhaps its got something to do with the decorative nature of the work? – and has little time for McLean Edwards ("illustrative, discordant"), Chris Langlois ("vacuous") or Neil Frazer ("clumsy").
Blimey – an art critic from the Herald with an opinion that she’s not afraid to spray around! But wait, there’s more:
I cannot forgive Roy Jackson his obvious debt to Ian Fairweather and Savanhdary Vongpoothorn’s neat pierced paintings do not deliver any of the promise of her earlier work. In an exhibition of nice painterly finishes, Ildiko Kovacs and Aida Tomescu stand out for their rigour – but even these artists must be wary of repetition.
So there you have it – even for the good artists in the show, there are dangers ahead. And where does Loxley take the blue chip lead? Precisely nowhere. In the next paragraph she discusses a Mardi Gras related exhibition at the Cross Art Projects space and imagines that “here is a gallery where blue-chip are probably dirty words”.
We can’t imagine why an exhibition of work by struggling artists would hate to be considered a sound investment – if they were they wouldn’t be struggling, would they?
Loxley’s ‘blue chip’ lead is tenuous to say the least, and in some cases downright misleading. Loxley should have just fessed up that the thing that really irks her is Martin Browne’s mixture of gallery artists with secondary market pieces masquerading as a “show”.
On Fridays, the SMH’s Metro liftout carries two pages dedicated to exhibitions. Until last year, the pages were written by Victoria Hynes (who has since left to fill the deputy editor position at Australian Art Review under fellow Herald journo and new editor-in-chief Ruth Hessey) or Lenny Ann Low. Hynes was a dry writer – facts with a bit of scholarly flavouring. Low, on the other hand, specialised in clichés that collapsed on the reader like an avalanche rolling over a hapless alpine skier. After her thesaurus was exhausted, Low was moved on to mini-features leaving the Exhibitions pages open to Dominique Angeloro.
Angeloro is a competent writer, specialising in just-the-facts reporting, that sometimes reads like a rewritten press release:
The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, Zip-a-dee-ay is a collaboration between Mike Parr and Adam Ceczy that interrogates the ease with which the media translates images of human injustice into empty spectacle. This video installation powerfully critiques these aesthetics, renegotiating the viewer’s reception of Parr’s horrific Artspace performance where he stitched his face together last year. The unrelenting viewing experience is marked by the nauseating swinging motion of the camera work and the incongruous, happy go lucky soundtrack of the work’s title.
At least it tells you what the show is about, but perhaps go a little easier on the art speak?
Still, it could be worse, a lot worse.
There is nothing quite like the art writing that accompanies new media. Forced to invent new words and grammar to encompass the sheer newness of new media, writers and artists are often one and the same person, since very few are interested in it, and to get the coverage, you need to go out and do it yourself. We have no problem with new media as such, nor digital media, screen media or whatever you want to call it, but we do have a problem with Darren Tofts (an artist and writer) writing about Ian Haig (an artist and writer) in Real Time (+On Screen) in an article called Machineries of joy: Futurotic:
Futurotic manifests Ian Haig’s ongoing interest in the strange relations between the body and technology and, in particular, the peculiar and often disturbing uses people find for gadgets that increasingly surround us at home and work. While the impetus for Futurotic arose from this interest in “looking at everyday technological items and re-thinking them, transforming them,” the specific preoccupation of this work involved the perverse sexual uses of domestic appliances. In the context of the trajectory of Haig’s work, there is something appropriate in this conjunction of, for example, vacuum cleaners and masturbation. But there is actually a vast literature devoted to the history of domestic appliances as sex devices and Haig has clearly done his homework.
Sadly, this “vast literature” goes without citation.
Labels: art criticism, commercial galleries, old media