Dear John,
An art critic has a responsibility to make an account of the visual arts made in the city or state in which the newspaper for which they write appears.
A good critic applies the highest standards to assess the art they encounter. A good critic persists with this even in the face of the futility of that endeavour.
A good critic applies rigorous standards to see through prevailing fashions to reveal what is more enduring than fleeting.
A good critic does not have a disclosure statement at the end of the review to mark a lack of impartiality. Impartiality and art criticism go hand in hand.
We know from all of your past writing, that you are ambivalent to these grand public art events both here and overseas. You have ‘declared’ your ambivalence and yet, you can also not resist attending these events upon invitation. When you are enthusiastic about aspects of these shows, that enthusiasm seems often forced or obligatory on your part and is not in line with your previously expressed values.
As a reader, when I read these offshore reviews I get a sense of where you are headed from the first paragraphs, and that with each subsequent paragraph the text becomes more like wallpaper than newspaper. This can have a pleasing hypnotic effect but ultimately leaves the reader undernourished.
Sometimes I get a sense of the fuzz induced in your thinking by having had to travel so far to see the show. I can hear the drone of the jet engines echoing in your ears as you plod through the art halls of wherever you happen to end up.
It’s the editors! They send me. I don’t really want to go, I hear you protest.
Perhaps this is a letter to the editor as much as it is to yourself.
As I see it, the other critics at The Sydney Morning Herald better serve their brief. The theatre critics review local theatrical productions. Classical music, jazz, pop all have reviewers that reflect on local productions. A movie critic for example will not review a movie screened where it cannot be seen.
The community benefits from a regular critical discourse about what is being shown in the galleries. The absence of a regular forum might suggest little work warrants critical attention however, quality is even between the arts and the other arts reviews pages are bulging.
It is extraordinary to me John, that I would be the first to articulate these concerns. There would be others, more thoughtful and articulate than I am, to present a similar view.
There would be a queue jostling to mount a sustained argument. All those graduates from the fine arts departments must be champing at the bit to knock you off your perch and yet are strangely mute.
Apart from the reduced carbon footprint from less travel, your accounts of what happens here is more profound, more needed and much missed!
Yours sincerely,
Michael Snape