Difference of opinion

If you’ve been reading ‘Career Suicide,‘ you might have, like me, been enjoying Alistair Gentry’s vitriolic take on art galleries, art markets, and most often art speak. Taking pot shots at wordy artist statements and lofty press releases is perhaps a little too much like shooting fish in a barrel to be considered very hard, but the author’s rewording of Tacita Dean’s commentary for her installation ‘Film’ was spot on as far as I was concerned.

Which is why I found it interesting to read ‘Bad Language‘ a couple of days ago written by Ben Street. It’s not quite the opposite of ‘Career Suicide’ but in it’s calm outing of  the stance of the insider playing an outsider it comes quites close. It also shares a little of what the character Alfred North was talking about in ‘Please Don’t Eat the Daisies’ when he warned against critics that get used to telling jokes, namely:

“For a critic that first step is the first printed joke. It gets a laugh and a whole new world opens up. He makes another joke, and another. And then one day along comes a joke that shouldn’t be made because the show he’s reviewing is a good show. But, as it so happens, it’s a good joke. And you know what? The joke wins.”

As Harry Hill might say “Well, I like ‘Career Suicide’ and I like ‘Bad Language’. But which is better? There’s only one way to find out…FIGHT!”