I do think about my audience a lot. Obviously, I’m writing for a broad audience and can’t afford to be too obscure (which isn’t my forte anyway). I also try to assume only a minimal familiarity with artists and art history. (This in contrast to the pieces for Big Red & Shiny, a specialized online publication.) At the same time, I have no intention of aiming for the lowest common denominator. It just wouldn’t feel right. The idea at least is that if I approach a review with enthusiasm, people will be willing to make the leap.

This is only the sixth review I’ve done for the IT. I’m still trying to find my voice.

I miss the concluding paragraph you left out. I sensed your luke warm reaction but would have liked it spelled out, especially since I am not familiar with your writing enough to pick up on clues. I am always intersted in the more subjective experiences of the reviewer, since this is just one person’s reaction anyway. And I agree that the use of “one” is too universal sounding, not acknowledging that this is an individual perspective. If you are to make a universal pronouncement (which I think is risky), it shoudl be something that is definitely universal (not easy to figure out), for example, you would not expect these prints to be shown on the ceiling, or upside down, etc — something implicitly surprising, if that is possible in this day and age!

Very enjoyable and rich writing, chock full, maybe too full? Maybe allowing some spacious, open ended sentences to break it up would also be helpful for the “pace” of the piece?

I read your review 3 times and I found you packed a lot of information into a short space (that’s why I had to read it 3 times).

I thought you intermingled description, analysis, interpretation and judgment very well — not too heavy handed on any. I particularly appreciated that describing the pieces which used the same elements in different configurations had to have been challenging. Because this is a review in a local paper, I assumed a general readership that would be interested in what they might be seeing, how you saw it pulling together intellectually, and whether it was egregiously bad or excitingly good — or something like you describe, interesting.

I liked your opening phrase “taking a look around” because that is what the rest of the review does — looks around, describes, makes some astute comments, and some mild critique. I felt like you had completely circled the exhibit, something that is unusual for a critic. I too sort of wanted more visuals, but if you had gotten them, you would have presumably had to cut down on the text — and I think that might have been hard. When I think about what to leave out, I’m hard-pressed to decide on anything.Somehow the fullness of the text leaves us with an image of a full experience, even with what sound like slight (or repetitious) materials.

I would agree with a couple comments here — I never understand what people mean when they say something looks “contemporary.” And I did wonder about an artist statement of some sort. On the other hand, artist’s statements or commments are often so bad that the writer is generous in ignoring them. Bad writers sometimes rely far too heavily on the artist’s own words, and I like it that you didn’t.

I had the sense that the sentences you wrote were very complex, but when I went back and looked, they didn’t seem so. That means to me that you packed them with so much material that they had to be read slowly.

My only semi-serious comment on your writing would be to ask if this is what your audience would have expected or wanted to find in an art review? The answer to that lies in the nature of the paper and the expectations of the audience and only you and your editor can judge whether you hit the mark or not. And of course, you could be pulling your audience to different (higher?) expectations — I’m only saying that you should be thinking consciously about who you are writing for and why. I feel a somewhat sophisticated audience for this particular piece of writing.

Arthur, I almost hesitate to recommend this, because I see on Amazon that it’s out of print, and used copies of the paperback are selling for $81.28! A friend of mine lent it to me years ago, and I later bought my own copy when I heard Eno and Danny Hillis speak here in Los Angeles. It’s not exactly art writing, it’s a diary w/ essays in the back, but he’s one of my favorite artists of any sort, and he talks a lot about his artistic (including musical) process as well as his ideas on various aspects of art and culture. If he ever comes around Ithaca or NYC for a talk I highly recommend going to hear him, and maybe they’ll have some copies of the book for sale at a reasonable price. I got mine for $10.

You might want to check out EnoWeb, which has links to a bunch of interviews from over the years. I also see he has a new book and DVD set out called 77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno. I haven’t checked it out yet, though I do see there’s a caveat that “This DVD will not play on most DVD players sold in the US or Canada [Region 1]. This item requires a region specific or multi-region DVD player and compatible TV.” We’re thinking about getting a region-free DVD player anyway at some point so we can play the Italian-subtitled Woody Allen DVDs we bought in Italy, so this is an added motivation to do so.