Jen Graves on Do-Ho Suh:
Some/One has been up so long at SAM, and in such a prominent way, that its impact has faded for me. But it is a majestic work, and by a terrific artist; I love his silken architectures, houses and structures that hang in the air, memories. (more)
Made of 100,000 dog tags that sweep the floor to rise to
a hero’s armor, Some/One is a salute to the soldiers whose deaths become a monument to the man in charge. Seen from the front, the gown is an empty
cavity whose inside is covered in cheap reflective material, giving
viewers the dubious honor of seeing themselves as the One in the title surrounded by the Some.
There are music critics who call for a moratorium on Mozart. They’ve had enough, forgetting that for each generation, he is new, and new to those who know him already as they hear him again at different stages of their lives. But music critics are in concert halls all the time. The music holds up, but they wear down.
At least music critics are forced to sit in their seats and listen. Art critics, hurrying from gallery to gallery, museum to museum, respond to art that stops them in their tracks, art that, in Peter Brooks’ phrase, pulls them up by their own hair and turns them inside out. The next time they see that piece, they want the same high, the flush of the first time.
There’s the pleasure of encountering a significant form and the joy of its reverberations, figuring out its relationships and meanings in its context.
Tim Appelo:
Sometimes the only cure for boredom is to look harder.
Nice essay by Appelo, but his solution is wide of the mark. The problem is not lack of work. Critics seeking to reengage their original reactions have already done the work. The thrill of that effort is gone. They’ve moved from being on a hot date to being with an old friend. The bedrock of any critic’s experience is old friends. As Graves is brave enough to note, it can be difficult to keep old friends from boring us.
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