RE: [Leica] Details about Salgado in Chicago

[Peter Klein <pklein@2alpha.net>]

Arthur:  Thanks for the comments.  You are right, of course.  Intelligent 
commentary and criticism is precious and welcome, and rare.  I was 
referring to the kind of commentary that reeks of "I know more than 
you.  Sit at my feet and learn, though you never will attain *my* level of 
enlightenment."  Throw in some Latin or Greek, explain in polysyllabic 
prose how the art answers once and for all the Meaning of Life.  It says 
more about the reviewer than the reviewed.

This kind of thing is often employed to wrap art of all kinds into a 
package where what's being sold is snob appeal, and the art becomes less 
important than the hype.

Amen on Shaw and Kael.

- --Peter Klein
Seattle, WA

At 02:19 PM 7/11/03 -0700, Arthur Peterson wrote:

>I agree generally with your point, emphatically so!  As
>someone once said (I wish I could remember who, but at the moment I can't),
>"In any given age, most of the artists were bad, and most of the critics
>were bad, and they loved each other."  But I also think it worth one's while
>to remain alert to the possibility, however rarely encountered, of a critic
>who is, in effect, an educator, someone perceptive enough to realize more
>about an object than others might perceive, disciplined enough to focus his
>consideration strictly on the object at hand, and articulate enough to
>convey his perceptions to others.  Few fill that bill.  There were George
>Bernard Shaw and the late B. H. Haggin in the world of music, the late Sir
>Kenneth Clark in the world of art, and the late Pauline Kael in the world of
>movies.  Whether there is (or ever has been) anyone like that in the world
>of photography, I do not know.

Peter Klein wrote:

>2. All Great Art must be accompanied by reams of verbal diarrhea written
>by an Initiated One of the Order of Deep Understanding, designed to
>aid the great unwashed masses in perceiving The Message, lest they be
>consigned to the pit of uncultured darkness and ignorance.
>
>
>Don't read that stuff. It's bad for you.  Just look at the pictures.


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