the art life

We really should have been paying attention these last couple of months.

First, we discovered that way back when, Andrew Bolt, that scion of climate change denialists and insightful political analysis had had a go at us.

Then, when the second Art Life TV series went to air in March Tim Blair - another right wing political pundit for the Terror and a stand-in on Insiders when Bolt is off checking annual temperature stats - got all upset about a turn of phrase in the voice over for episode two.

Then blow me down Dorothy Parker, "hard left one-woman media watch" [not Michael Duffy as posted here earlier, oops - thanks Dave for the heads up] had TWO MORE TILTS.

First up, Parker had a go over our op ed comment on the People's Choice winner of the Archibald. Her harshest criticism was to compare us to the great Jack McDuff:

Funny how the young turks, when they get a taste for exposure on the ABC and a page 3 picture story in The Sydney Morning Herald, turn into Esteemed Critics, having spent their time out of the sun sending up rotten Esteemed Critics like John McDonald and Sebastian Smee. Just a pity, and something of an irony, that as esteemed critics they seem incapable of saying anything sensible, or short of that, at least saying what they think.

Ow, that really hurts.

Parker also took us to task, in the guise of blogging on Tim Blair. Quoth Parker quoting Blair:

“The Kingpins are four artists exploring ideas about identity,” explains the ABC’s Andrew Frost. Then again, Frost also believes “ambiguity is the natural by-product of art that mocks the whole idea of certainty,” so who knows what the hell he’s talking about."

The standard approach of the blogger is take a quote, usually out of context, and then rain scorn down upon on it. It's something we've been doing for years but unlike our right wing brothers, we refrain from claiming that whatever it is that's been said is illogical. The great fake-out of people like Parker , Blair and Bolt [especially Bolt, good lord...] is to claim a higher understanding of "critical thinking", "logic" or "common sense". The statement quoted above is as simple as they come - when artists embrace ambiguity as part of their art, certainty is questioned. It's not that hard to understand is it?

When it comes to people who know nothing about art, a bit of book lernin' can go an awfully long way.

Speaking of people who know nuthin - Bolt had a go at us for - erm - made up reasons of his own invention

ABC art critic Andrew Frost says it’s wrong to judge art by its content as well as form, and attacks another critic as “biased” for doing so:

It’s quite a natural state for any critic whose credibility is staked on the dubious notion that art must be judged on quality and virtue alone...Recent art controversies have been largely fuelled by people without much of a clue about what contemporary art is about. The spectacle of Bill Henson’s good name being dragged through the mud, Mike Parr’s dead chickens “shock” at the Biennale, the naked kid on the front of Art Monthly, all of these events of the recent past are reflective of a view that believes that art’s only role is to be beautiful while reinforcing archly conservative notions of good taste and decorum.

What’s curious is that this criticism (which does not even state fairly the position it seeks to counter) is made of a judge for a prize for religious art. What’s sad is that this oh-so fashionable morals-free stand leaves critics like Frost unable to criticise the sexualisation and exploitation of even pre-pubescent children, or to differentiate between babble and profundity, between dead chickens and deep insight. They are like people judging conversation only by the grammar or raised voices.

This critic of the Barbarian Age seems dangerously detached from the intellectual tradition he now picks over like a scavenger sorting through sculptures, looking for bronze to melt into shop fittings. On the role of art, and the sin of disengaging from its moral content, I’d advise him to read the musings of finer creative minds which have grappled with these issues since the Renaissance - Georgio Vasari in The Lives of the Artists, Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy, and George Orwell in Benefit of Clergy.

We wouldn't be the first to note Bolt's predeliction for cutting and pasting slabs of quotes out of context, and that dot dot dot in the quote from the SMH article was a mighty big slice. But you know what? Who cares? We've come to love Bolt and his mad protestations that climate change is a liberal media conspiracy, his claims of common sense, critical thinking et al. He's great on Insiders, and even better when Malcom Farr tells him to shut the fuck up. He's great TV.

Bolt's comments came to mind when we discovered that The Guardian UK's art critic Jonathan Jones has written a blog entry on George Orwell and Salvador Dali. While it's pretty clear that dunces like Bolt know nothing about art, it's still shocking that HE hasn't even bothered to read the books he's suggesting we read [read more above]...

Labels: blogging, punditry