I think its time to put this thread to sleep. The issues, of course, will come back. But thank you for commenting and I’m glad you like the reviews. Like Franklin (comment 8 above),I was “likely drawing too much inference about the world at large from a personal existential problem”.

In reading your two reviews, it seems to me that you have amply proven that you can work in both those “middle” modes. Whatever argument you are having with yourself (or others) about the challenges of reviewing and writing art criticism are not apparent in what you’ve linked us to. Your “dispassionate” review starts out cooly, but quickly engages the art and its surrounds and, as Leslie says, describes with a throughness that is proof of a careful eye.

And your enthusiastic review also shows dispassion about the ways the works reviewed speak (or fail to speak) to one another.

I found the reviews fascinating — and your comments a bit puzzling, mostly because they sounded far more uneasy than what you are doing so well warrants.

Anyway, thanks for introducing me to two new artists. And I liked the “non-criticism,” too, although it isn’t as far removed from critical writing as I thought it would be before I read it. You relied more heavily on the interviewee’s word (a substitute for the visuals in the criticism?) and on your own breadth of thinking to flesh out his ideas, but basically you were still commenting on his art.

Can you define more concretely the constraints you feel? Is the James Siena lecture the direction you would like to push in — more philosophical, perhaps? Or is it something else? Or have we beat this topic to its final flailing demise?

What is expected of me is vague. I have considerable leeway to choose what I want to cover The arts editor makes some suggestions, but this is almost always negotiable. But there are a limited number of art venues in town and I expected to get around. For example, I can’t review two shows in a row at the same venue.

I actually think all of this may be healthy. It can be a drain, but there is also the possibility of being forced to look at things that I would otherwise ignore, things that can turn out to be interesting.

Steve,

I suppose I was indicating dissatisfaction. But my question wasn’t how do I dump the constraints; the question was how do I work more happily within the constraints, within criticism. As I said, I have done writing which I wouldn’t consider criticism. Here is an example.

Is reader agreement important?

I’m not asking this to be contentious, but really want to know what is being expected of you. Is your role to go out and look at everything, and give your readers an evaluation of it? Or you do you have the option to just write about things that are of interest to you? Does the paper you write for have an expectation that you should review everything that has apparent serious intent?

I think Steve was following-up on my earlier inquiry as to whether you had considered curatorial work and the position of writing as an advocate. My curatorial experiences have been entirely positive because, for me, the art matters. This does not mean that Reviewing does not matter, it is just that when I did it, I felt that I was mostly just meddling in the middle.

Good luck.

As far as I understand it, criticism is about making value judgments, saying some things are good and others not so good. It is difficult to see how this goal could be combined with your idea of creating “a gallery of your writings on artworks you love”. Its not that this is a bad idea, its just that it doesn’t seem particularly relevant to my post. Its as if you were to post a photograph and I were to keep asking when you were going to show us a painting.

David,

Do you feel, in your role as critic, that it’s your obligation to write about those things in the middle? Why would anybody want to read about them?

Well for one thing, because (as I just said above) criticism needs to deal with better and worse. And just because I consider them middling doesn’t mean that the reader is likely to agree. The only kind of art that I feel completely safe in ignoring is work lacking in any apparent serious intent.