Do You Want to See? by Alice Gribbin - by Alice Gribbin

clunyjournal.com · 3,138 words · saved by 1 readers

We visited galleries and heard lectures, watched arts programming and read criticism, all that time like we were wandering a highway gas station in search of a piece of fruit. Is any substance to be found here . . . substance . . . any, at all? We listened to looped conversations, open-ended, never-ending. “What does this artwork say about us?” “Well, it raises questions.” “Questions about what?” “About how we think of ourselves.” “And how do we?” “We think of ourselves very dourly and often.” The talking never stopped. Their highest praise for an artwork was that it prompted conversation, gave them reason to talk. Things they discussed were worldly, social and theoretical. Some critics lamented how the commercialization of art had ruined their enterprise—but were not critical conversations being had, out there, beyond the pages of periodicals, continuous, overlapping, the activists’ hot litanies, clinical patter of the seminar, all sorely needed, urgent and ongoing, in ever-widening,

Rokeby Venus by Velazquez (1651) We have moved on. Ours is the era of looking. We visited galleries and heard lectures, watched arts programming and read criticism, all that time like we were wandering a highway gas station in search of a piece of fruit. Is any substance to be found here . . . substance . . . any, at all? We listened to looped conversations, open-ended, never-ending. “What does this artwork say about us?” “Well, it raises questions.” “Questions about what?” “About how we think of ourselves.” “And how do we?” “We think of ourselves very dourly and often.” The talking never…

Do You Want to See? by Alice Gribbin - by Alice Gribbin

related reading