Tory Dent

The last two posts are titled after art critics. The first critic, R.M. Vaughan, was in the news recently for art-bashing a historical exhibition at the Nova Scotia Art Gallery. The second critic, Jerry Saltzer, is always in the news because Jerry is that kind of critic.

To address the gender imbalance, I decided to post something from an art critic who is a woman.

I have in my head a list of woman who are art critics. But rather than rely on what is in my head, I thought I would test my knowledge against Google's inevitable inventory. After entering "woman art critic," I was presented with ranker.com's list of "Famous Female Art Critics". Of the 24 names given, I knew roughly half of them. Rosalind E. Krauss came in at #1, which is no surprise (she is, to my mind, the world's leading English language art critic), while Tory Dent came in at #2, which is.

How had I not heard of Tory Dent? Like me, she is a writer with a broad practice. Unlike me, she is no longer among the living.

Here is a poem Dent wrote called "The Moon and the Yew Tree", an intertextual work that uses (italicized) lines from Sylvia Plath's 1961 poem of the same name. Here is another.

Tory Dent was diagnosed with HIV in 1988 and died of an AIDS-related illness in 2005.

Jerry Saltz

Regardless of what you think of Banksy, of Jerry Saltz, of those who begin conversations about a work of art with a dollar figure, of how things are "meant to be," of having "had a ball," of the potential for things to "do something really big here in New York," of the United States in general, who among us does not appreciate moments where the talk is not of what is known or of what is possible, but that people are stopping to do just that -- talk -- and that it is art that is there to invite us in?

R. M. Vaughan

Hard to believe ten years have passed since Canadian Art flew R.M. Vaughan to Antwerp to write a "diary" entry based on MUHKA's Intertidal: Vancouver Art & Artists exhibition. As if to commemorate that entry, the CBC commissioned Vaughan to not even leave his home this time so he could do the same to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s The Last Art College: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1968-1978.

I am fine with Vaughan writing to exorcise his demons, just as I am fine with that other cartoon, the CBC’s Don Cherry, launching “racist” epithets at European-born hockey players on Hockey Night in Canada. But to frame these rants as journalism, to have Vaughan’s CBC piece stand in for thoughtful visual arts coverage when our underfunded public broadcaster already has so little time for the visual arts, is so Fox News.

In his Momus review of Vaughan’s CBC piece (February 2, 2016), Dick Averns writes:

"This is not to underestimate the value of iconoclasm, a role Vaughan seems to relish here; but only time will tell if we have a corollary to lowbrow art criticism or Stuckism in the making."

Well, if time has told us anything, Dick Averns, it has told us that after ten years R.M. Vaughan still can’t help himself. So yes, fair comment, one reminiscent of what Gabrielle Moser once said of the art of Douglas Coupland:

"Coupland's work looks like what popular culture would have us think contemporary art is supposed to look like."

With Vaughan, all you have to do is substitute “Coupland’s work” with “Vaughan’s prose”, and  squeeze criticism in-between “art” and “is”.

Criticism In Search of Its Critics

A new online publication announces its mandate – “A return to art criticism” – and the writer, who writes art criticism, wonders what this means. Word spreads that the publisher, who also writes art criticism, is coming to town to solicit writers and to moderate a panel on art criticism (though the main reason for the publisher’s visit, according to a local dealer, is to sell advertising). All this before the publication has issued a single word of art criticism.

Another dealer -- an emerging dealer -- is helping to organize the publisher’s panel and mentions to the writer that the writer’s name came up as a potential participant. But the writer has heard nothing from the publisher, and a week later has still heard nothing. What does the publisher mean by “a return to art criticism”? the writer asks the dealer, and the dealer attempts a definition of art criticism that only Liberace could appreciate. So we are to return to that? asks the writer. Apparently! beams the dealer, without irony.

Two weeks later the publisher’s name pops up in the writer’s in-box. The publisher’s email begins with an apology for not contacting the writer sooner, but it is in the construction of this apology that the writer wonders what of the dealer’s conversations with the writer had the dealer conveyed to the publisher. That the publisher’s apology hinges on a missed prompt in past communication between the publisher and the dealer has the writer wondering once more – this time whether the publisher is blaming the dealer for using an indirect form of communication, or whether the deployment of an indirect form of communication by the publisher has allowed the publisher to avoid taking responsibility for the delay in contacting the writer. Maybe both, thinks the writer, before reading the email a second time.

The publisher has praise for the writer, and the writer’s impact on the region is noted. The publisher offers to discuss the panel further with the writer by phone, but no number is given. Nor does the publisher explain what kind of art criticism we, as readers and writers, are to “return to.” Near the end of the email it is clear to the writer that this is not an invitation to appear on a panel, but to re-consider appearing, as the writer, in a email to the dealer hours before, said no to any panel without hearing from the moderator about what it is that the moderator – in this case the publisher -- is talking about when talking about a “return to” anything, let alone art criticism.

In a return email to the publisher, the writer is philosophical and, without lecturing, relates how in art, as in life, it is not what happens that motivates the writer, but how it happens. In this instance, how the writer’s interest in the panel could only be sustained through first hearing a few words from the publisher about the kind of art criticism the publisher wants to “return to.” But when this was not offered, the writer’s interest waned. The writer concludes the email with a promise to attend the panel presentation as an audience member. In response, the publisher once again states that a desire for direct communication with the writer was not made clear, and suggests that this misunderstanding be forgotten, to which the writer agrees, adding that the fault in this communication ultimately lies with a writer who is wrong to expect that someone launching a publication on art criticism would want to contact others in the field before making it public in the form of a panel.

A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

Some new books by my bedside, both ordered from Pulp Fiction, both in support of my current research interests: Critical Regionalism: Connecting Politics and Culture in the American Landscape by Douglas Reichert Powell (2007) and Who Sings the Nation-State? (2007) by Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak.

So far, neither book is doing much for me. Powell, a scholar from Johnson City, Tennessee, is at his best when writing on representations of Appalachia in film (Deliverance and the remake of Cape Fear), but has yet to convince me of a critical regional methodology. As for this Butler-Spivak joint, it is the Kantian Butler who is doing most of the talking, with the ever-encouraging Hegelian Spivak waiting to disagree.

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dəˈstrəkSH(ə)n

COMPLETE DESTRUCTION (1921)
William Carlos Williams

It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it

in the backyard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.

*

THE DESTRUCTIVE CHARACTER (1931)
Walter Benjamin

It could happen to someone looking back over his life that he realized that almost all the deeper obligations he had endured in its course originated in people who everyone agreed had the traits of a “destructive character.” He would stumble on this fact one day, perhaps by chance, and the heavier the shock dealt to him, the better his chances of representing the destructive character.

The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred.

The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, out of his own condition. Really, only the insight into how radically the world is simplified when tested for its worthiness for destruction leads to such an Apollonian image of the destroyer. This is the great bond embracing and unifying all that exists. It is a sight that affords the destructive character a spectacle of deepest harmony.

The destructive character is always blithely at work. It is Nature that dictates his tempo, indirectly at least, for he must forestall her. Otherwise she will take over the destruction herself.

The destructive character sees no image hovering before him. He has few needs, and the least of them is to know what will replace what has been destroyed. First of all, for a moment at least, empty space – the place where thing stood or the victim lived. Someone is sure to be found who needs this space without occupying it.

The destructive character does his work; the only work he avoids is creative. Just as the creator seeks solitude, the destroyer must be constantly surrounded by people, witnesses to his efficacy.

The destructive character is a signal. Just a trigonometric sign is exposed on all sides to the wind, so he is exposed to idle talk. To protect him from it is pointless.

The destructive character has no interest in being understood. Attempts in this direction he regards as superficial. Being misunderstood cannot harm him. On the contrary, he provokes it, just as oracles, those destructive institutions of the state, provoked it. The most petty bourgeois of all phenomena, gossip, comes about only because people do not wish to be misunderstood. The destructive character tolerates misunderstanding; he does not promote gossip.

The destructive character is the enemy of the étui-man. The étui-man looks for comfort, and the case is its quintessence. The inside of the case is the velvet-lined trace that he has imprinted on the world. The destructive character obliterates even the traces of destruction.

The destructive character stands in the front line of traditionalists. Some people pass things down to posterity, by making them untouchable and thus conserving them; others pass on situations, by making them practicable and thus liquidating them. The latter are called the destructive.

The destructive character has the consciousness of historical man, whose deepest emotion is an insuperable mistrust of the course of things and a readiness at all times to recognize that everything can go wrong. Therefore, the destructive character is reliability itself.

The destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees ways everywhere. Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees a way. But because he sees a way everywhere, he has to clear things from it everywhere. Not always by brute force; sometimes by the most refined. Because he sees ways everywhere, he always stands at a crossroads. No moment can know what the next will bring. What exists he reduces to rubble – not for the sake of rubble, but for that of the way leading through it.

The destructive character lives from the feeling not that life is worthing living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.