the politics of what other people think, 1

I remember mentioning to some art professional once how ambiguous and complicated everything in art was. The response was that this is true but that people don't want it that way. People want things simple and clear. This was around the time when I was also hearing a lot of criticism based on how a given painting might "read" with the public. These self-styled critics loved to interject that "reading" into just about everything they said. The problem is that this painting "reads" as if...

The problem is that this public does not exist any more than does an audience for the Today Show. The Today Show likes to create a nation that looks a lot like Colorado but unfortunately even Colorado doesn't look like that. Not does Chicago, nor the suburbs of Dallas nor any of these ugly cities that are designed around the bland backdrops that serve as settings for these fake news shows.

Obviously we can apply the same criticism to loads of other areas, like Politics for instance, where discussing issues rather than what fictional people think about the issues via polls is considered "liberal." But since this is an art blog I will try to stick to that topic. Clearly if you are "reading" paintings you are able to put on a pair of public-spectros and see what "the public" sees.

On it's face this is so ludicrous that it would be funny if it were not so pervasive, but I will pick it up again in a later post.