Here are two articles on the future of criticism, post-’the web has democratised everything’. The first, from the Guardian, wonders about the role of professional critics when, yes, ‘everyone’s a critic’. The second by Morgan Meis in the Smart Set (which is better and more interesting), instead focuses on the possibility for criticism when objective standards have evaporated. I toyed with the idea of writing a long piece on this for a while but decided another 2000 word post no-one would read would be futile. The issue, however, is interesting: as a peer once argued, we keep returning to what we consider ‘great works’, even after the postmodern collapse of the master narratives. Is it just the latent value system being inadvertently reproduced? Or is there something that makes certain works better than others?
It’s been a while since I linked to some beautiful photography, so to make up for it, here’s more than you’ll ever possibly want.
LOLcats + Avant-Garde art = pretty damn awesome. (If you read this, thanks Steph!)
Toronto’s NOW Magazine, umm, now has a more bloggy layout/approach. Though really, I s’pose they can do whatever they want: what are we gonna’ do, read Eye? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
And, I didn’t believe it, but here’s the new Zach de la Rocha project. It actually sounds pretty good (he says non-chalantly after having listened to it, oh, 10 times in a row).
You’re welcome!
Heh. I didn’t think you still stopped by
Hope you’re well.
Wow. I really hate both of those articles on criticism. I’m far from a Kantian, but surely we can still make some distinction between having an opinion and the art of criticism (yes, I’m with Wilde on this)? Or has our current master narrative got the TM on “experts?”
Yeah, I hear ya’. I just thought the two articles showing up so close together was interesting. And this may be a simplistic distinction, but isn’t an opinion a subjective reaction to a work, whereas criticism is situating, contextualising, positioning etc in relation to other art and its contexts? Obviously, at some point, the distinction will collapse, but that’s always true on some level.
I think the thing that bugged my about Meis’ piece was the insistence on a work’s internal logic – that’s always struck me as a sneaky way to reintroduce authorial intent as the gold standard.
Anyway, as always, appreciate the comment.