Now, Michael Ellis does have a point. What's the problem, in my humble opinion as a critic, as that the discourse that made painting exciting and culturally central at various points in recent cultural history is currently largely absent. I think Peter Schjeldahl and Dave Hickey and Libby Lumpkin all do critique that is interesting and that can step up the level of people's thinking about and involvement in painting (and maybe even sculpture. traditionally, though, the most interesting writing about sculpture has been done by sculptors, vide Richard Serra etc. It's such a bodily intensive artform its hard for most people to make head music about it. Rosalind Krauss did ok for a while but she's awfully ideological, not sufficiently grimy and impure. You will note please that I am a sculptor and not a painter) But there's not much cultural talk that's interesting about these modes right now. The thing is, even when these modes were culturally central in the US of A we're talking a very small community of interest with a broad field of influence, that is, most people were willing to kinda get it, take it on trust, enjoy the buzz. So with this small community of discourse generating such a broad field of buzz, individuals matter. And we're just shy a couple of interesting voices. Volunteers? To generate interesting thought and talk about modes that are obviously still highly relevant to human being (as long as we are still dragging the ol Drittsack around and not existing as light waves--) --
AK
