‘The Mind Of A Critic’
Miss Mussel has given much thought of late as to what exactly a critic’s role in the 21st century. Is it best to get out now and take up plumbing or is a brave new world awaiting just over the horizon? Does criticism even matter any more and if it doesn’t what’s the next step?
In his final column for The Australian, art critic Sebastian Smee tells what he thinks it all means. The entire piece is brilliantly composed and well worth the read. Here is the final paragraph:
Good criticism (and I mean this as an expression of an ideal) should be risky, challenging, candid and vulnerable. It should be urbane one moment, gauchely heartfelt the next. It should kick against cant wherever it sees it, and cherish and applaud not only art but the impulse to make art, for that impulse, which comes out of life as it is lived, is the real mystery, and the source of everything that makes it wonderful.
Hear that sound? That’s the nail being hit right on the head.
