Letters To The Editor: Hip-Hip-Horray!
This letter to the San Francisco Chronicle is a miniature act of critical sabotage, praising Bay Area art writing while making that praise sound like a death sentence. Williams mocks the familiar cycle in which local painters are elevated through learned discussion while the larger problem of artistic quality remains politely avoided. The invocation of Robert Hughes is decisive: the letter insists that the unfashionable demand for "quality" still matters, even when the art world would rather bury it under collegial description and regional boosterism. Its sarcasm cuts both ways, attacking the solemnity of newspaper criticism and the exhausted rhetoric of the 1950s soil from which local reputations are repeatedly grown. As an early Samizdat artifact, it already announces the later Williams position: criticism without judgment is merely etiquette with footnotes.
- DATE:
- December 27, 2002
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Letter / Open Letter
- PUBLICATION / VENUE:
- San Francisco Chronicle
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- Lawrence Williams; Kenneth Baker; John Zurier; Nellie King Solomon; Mark Van Proyen; Robert Hughes
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- San Francisco Chronicle; New York Times; Artweek
- PLACES:
- San Francisco
- KEYWORDS:
- quality still matters; Robert Hughes unfashionable demand; local painters elevated wrongly; art writing praised as condemnation; Bay Area art criticism as cycle of politeness; quality as forbidden term; brevity as sabotage