please empty your brain below
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Let's have a heated debate!
drD | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 8:58 a.m. | #
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Feh!
We want a mass debate!
Scaryduck | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 10:32 a.m. | #
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If the image "is deceptive in its apparent simplicity ", it begs the question, who did it deceive? - clearly not the reviewer, because he saw though it. So, is he assuming that it is we, the ignorant peasants, will be decieved?
And, where is the complexity that renders the simplicity merely "apparent"?
Anyway, I'm off to think about things what have happened in the past. SORRY!, I mean conduct a "memory audit"!
Severin | 29.09.04 - 11:00 a.m. | #
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To your list I would add restaurant and wine critics, the latter especially as illustrated by that madwoman they had on the telly a year or two back. One hundred percent amphetamine-fuelled drivel.
(Incidentally, I wouldn't pay more than a fiver for that target thing, but I bet you Londoners have coughed up at least a thousand times that.)
But, critics have got to eat, just like the rest of us. Nice job if you can get it. Just ignore them if you can't. I'd do it, if someone paid me.
Peter | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 11:03 a.m. | #
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ikea do a mat just like that emma kay thing. i might buy one and call it my 'art mat'. i could sit on it while i do my bratz felt tip colouring-in set.
dave | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 11:15 a.m. | #
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You're confusing what is said with how it's said. The style may be a bit overblown, though it's not as bad as you make out. The critic is saying rather more than "12 rings, nice." The piece does prompt a double-take, and it's interesting to have someone articulate why this is so. It's also interesting to have the work related to that of other artists. Presumably, the part "She makes works using memory, history..." is Emma Kay's own view of what's important in her work. So it's entirely reasonable for the critic to suggest how those things play a part in "You Are in London."
peter howard | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 11:57 a.m. | #
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Speaking of more Pseud's corner stuff on Tube related matters, don't get me started on the review of The Great Bear - essentially The Tube Map with names of philosophers, comedians, sports people, actors and celebs replacing tube station names (link here)
Why is so much art about the Tube playful? Please God let's hope Emma Kay didn't get a much as Patterson's made out of The Great Bear - who made almost 15 grand
Annie Mole | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 12:48 p.m. | #
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Well, I like it . The problem is not the piece itself, but the ridiculous need to to justify what is a simple and effective image (which is bound to lead to ignorant cries of 'I could have done that' (yes, but you didn't, did you?)) by making it vastly more complicated than it needs to be. Art speaks to the soul and the heart, not the head and bad art critics really don't seem understand that. On the other hand, the description given isn't that pseudy and I agree with some of it - it did, for example, make me double take when I worked out what the colours were.
Most of this pseud stuff, I think, is designed to make the writer sound clever and the rest of us feel stupid. I'm a well educated woman, read widely, all the rest of, but sometimes I read stuff thinking 'what the hell are you talking about? Make sense!'. I've also known some very very clever people in my time, and the real thing doesn't need to wrap itself in impenetrable prose.
Katherine | 29.09.04 - 12:58 p.m. | #
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This is akin to the marketing drivel I loathe (and fight against) so much. When will people learn that using big words doesn't make you clever.
Gordon | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 1:15 p.m. | #
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I liked the piece of work, and I fully respect what the artist herself may have said about it. I just have a problem with this critic swanning in and offering up his/her own opinions as fact, without any recognition that the artist (and indeed viewers) may have thought something completely different.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 1:23 p.m. | #
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I still think, DG, that it's the style, rather than the substance, that's getting up your nose. I don't agree (and I'm not convinced you do) that nobody should ever say anything about a work of art more critical than "that's nice." But let's see. I've paraphrased the press release below. Is it any better? Or just as bad? I've tried to include everything that was in the original and not add anything else...
For the first time in its four-year history, Platform for Art has paid an artist to produce a new work of art for the front cover of the pocket Tube map. Frieze Art Fair also coughed up some of the money. I've heard of Emma Kay, but only fairly recently. She's used the Tube line colours to create an attractive image that will be on the map cover from September until early 2005.
You Are in London (2004) looks simple, but there's more to it than is first apparent. It is a multi-coloured target made of concentric circles of different colours, and it's rather fun. Part of that fun is in the fact that when you look at it for the first time, it seems familiar, and you can't quite work out why. Then it suddenly occurs to you that the colours are those used to represent the lines on the Tube line map. This works because everyone knows the Tube line colours, but you have to make a bit of a leap to realise that's the reason the target looks familiar in the first place. Once you've made that leap, then other similarities occur to you, such as in the graphic design of the map and the target. There are also links with other works of art. Lots of artists have used targets in their work. Jasper Johns, Ugo Rondinone and Kenneth Noland are the only three I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure there are more. And of course the target could suggest that being in London means that you are on target, possibly even at the centre of things!
In all of her work, Emma Kay is interested in how people remember, and sometimes misremember things. You Are in London shows how she remembers the tube line colours. (That's my opinion, anyway.)
peter howard | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 2:28 p.m. | #
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I agree, Peter, that's it's all about how you say it as well as what you say. Your paraphrase is much more open than the patronising tone of the original, not least because it includes the self-effacing phrase "could suggest that...", and the review is far better as a result.
Next time I reckon Transport for London would be much better off offering you the job of art critic instead.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 7:13 p.m. | #
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Sadly, there are some poor souls in our society who read the critics in order to know what to think! Don't believe me? Well in the West End and On Broadway a single influential critic can literally make or break a show in one 700 word article full of similar pretentious guff.
Peter | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 7:33 p.m. | #
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Do the order of the colours on the concentric circles reflect the actual order of the lengths of each line in reality? (ie is the largest circle the longest line?)
(sorry if that fact is hidden in there somewhere and I missed it)
Blue Witch | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 7:37 p.m. | #
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Er, no. That would be 'real life', not art.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 8:02 p.m. | #
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This debate is looking quite warm.
Maybe a bit more fuel?
I started to write a detailed comment here but it just grew into a post so I thought it more considerate to put it here and not fill up your comment box with my lengthy ramblings.
drD | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 8:14 p.m. | #
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OK - so tell us DG - what order should they be in?
And there's nowt wrong with reality into art.
Blue Witch | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 9:00 p.m. | #
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I'm saving that particular post about tube lines for another time, OK?
diamond geezer | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 9:11 p.m. | #
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It looks like that breast cancer device, or the target symbols that Belgrade residents would helpfully wear so we knew where to aim the missiles.
Matt | Homepage | 29.09.04 - 10:17 p.m. | #
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Am I too late to make a comment...
I don't know much about art but I know what I hate.
Uncle Hunty | 30.09.04 - 1:43 a.m. | #
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I picked up a new tube map on the way home, so I am now the proud owner of a copy of this particular piece of art.
It prompted a double-take as I worked out why it seemed so familiar. I was also reminded of the frequent reoccurrence of the target in the work of other artists: Jasper Johns, Ugo Rondinone and Kenneth Noland to name but three...
diamond geezer | Homepage | 30.09.04 - 8:12 p.m. | #
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Who gives a fuck what the cover looks like as long as thye've put the stations on the right lines, & the fucking tubes work properly occasionally!
gawblimeyman | Homepage | 30.09.04 - 10:20 p.m. | #
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GawBlimey i) Thanks for getting to the point; and ii) you're just living in fantasy land!
Madge | Homepage | 01.10.04 - 3:15 p.m. | #
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