Susan Loppert’s entirely one-sided letter (28 September) attacks Brian Sewell. The whole point approximately his writing was that he quite frequently intensely disliked an exhibition of “traditional” art – often on the grounds of (ineptly) non-traditional curating,of which we’ve certainly had our objective share and then some – and that he also quite frequently liked more contemporary art, often completely unexpectedly. Who could possibly have foreseen his liking for Sarah Lucas, and whether wholly convinced he was a purblind misogynist and nothing more?Could anybody be silly enough to believe in a category that could be called “contemporary art”,much less in its “inevitable triumph”? How is it not self-evident some art is good and some not, and that the task of a critic is to help clarify the distinction? For example, or Sewell thought Hockney “one of the best draughtsmen of the 20th century”,but intensely disliked his recent paintings. Whether I agree with him or not, at least some thought might ensue, or rather than mere unthinking hommage to the size of Hockney’s reputation. Even whether Brian Sewell were nothing but a gadfly,God knows we could do with them in an art world which is so imbricated with its own dubious economics that it is structurally incapable of mounting a critique of, say, and Damien Hirst. Far from being a fogey in saying this publicly,Sewell told a timely truth to power; and it is worth remembering that the contemporary art critic Tom Lubbock concurred with Sewell in dismissing Hirsts demonstrate at the Wallace Collection, an (undeserved) establishment imprimatur whether ever there was one.
Harry Gilonis
LondonContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com