Theorists

I've just read a reassuring review of "Art Since 1990", a self-styled "landmark study in the history of modern art" by a bunch of what are probably the word's foremost theorists on the subject, namely:

• Rosalind Krauss
• Hal Foster
• Yves-Alain Bois
• Benjamin HD Buchloh 

I've linked the names to their Wikipedia entries for anyone interested in art theorists.

Frankly, I'm not.

But here's a link to a review of their book by Jonathan Jones, Guardian art critic:

Lost in a labyrinth of theory

A couple of excerpts I particularly like:

This book is the final ludicrous monument to an intellectual corruption that has filled contemporary museums and the culture they sustain with a hollow and boring, impersonal chatter. Art has been lost in a labyrinth of theory. 

There is no good work of art that cannot be described in intelligible English, however long it might take, however much patience is required. And yet this book begins with four theoretical essays explaining the post-structuralist concepts the authors believe we need before we can meaningfully discuss a single work of art. It is the supreme expression of an art culture that sneers at "empiricism" as a dirty word.

The point about plain English strikes a chord.  It's how I sorted the wheat from the chaff as a technology journalist when people were trying to blind me with science.

I find Jonathan Jones' words reassuring because they match my reaction to a lot of the philosophical stuff we're covering in the Context of Practice course.    In my view,  theories belong to science where they can be tested against facts.  The theorists that concoct them to analyse art are being too clever for their own good.

Having said that, I'm becoming a bit of convert when it comes to studying other artists - which I guess is what "empiricism" means in the above quote.

At one stage I would have said that studying other artists ran the risk of stifling my own creativity.  Rather than dreaming up my own ideas from scratch I might end up adopting ideas from other people's work and simply "extrapolating" them.

 Credit to Grayson Perry for my change of attitude on this one. His Reith Lectures and his "Vanity of Small Differences"are full of references to other works of art.  As a result, I end up feeling that there's a lot of depth there.

The same thing could be said about John Grayson's lecture.  I felt as though I was tapping into a mine of knowledge about other artists - which is why I ended up researching a lot of them afterwards and listing them on this blog.

I guess these are examples of other people's "intellectual scaffold" - something I need to develop to underpin my work.  I'd better make a point of drilling down on artists I like in the future - an empirical rather than a theoretical approach.