Really great piece. "Art, even at its most propagandistic, does not work like fact-checking." Nice one. (I also appreciate you sharing this one outside the paywall, thanks for that!)
Great stuff. To me, one of the best feelings in the world is watching a film you first saw years ago and having a completely new view on it. Even if you "understood" the film the first time, your world (or taste, by this piece's definition) has opened up so much that watching it again is a wholly new experience.
your definition of taste is really refreshing, especially as that word is batted around more and more in the age of AI. everyone has taste but not everyone has *taste*
Really beautiful piece Sam. I don't know if you feel this but I often, almost by accident, find myself double and triple caveating something, in the hope of staving off bad faith reactionism to, what should be uncontroversial critical insight. I've always been one for thinking that criticism and art are magnetic forces, depending on their position, repelling and attracting one another. After all, you could argue that all art is inherent a critique of the idea of art.
I particularly love this quote:
"...I really do mean it when I say good criticism is a love letter. The point of criticism is to love a work enough - even if you don’t like it, even if you hate it - to give it a fraction of your own creative energy, so that it may offer even more to the artist’s audience. A critic, when they succeed, can prompt thoughts that expand to other artwork, in other forms, both past and future. It is not about mastering or consuming or leveraging the creative output of an another in some objective logical proof. It does not end at the assertion of an idea. It begins there."
Wonderfully put. And thanks for writing the piece.
I’ve been trying to form a metaphor about individual pieces of art being like the shared cards in poker—there might be an obvious pair but the real value is matching it with your hand. Your taste, experience, etc.
I like the “lens” method of criticism because you get to see what pops up and match ideas that wouldn’t normally pair together.
Feel like this a subject I’ve been toiling over and tossing around in my head for quite a while now. Nice to see a piece crystallize the reality that “media literacy” squawkers, may also be intellectual grandstanders, and use it as an avenue for unequivocal decree on art (myself a guilty party). Thanks for the read Sam!
Your work always strikes me as such a clear call for the rest of us to be more rigorous, but what sets this essay a part for me is "the point of criticism is to love a work enough - even if you don’t like it, even if you hate it - to give it a fraction of your own creative energy," which seems much harder to learn than the technical aspects of criticism.
So much here that is so accurate and you articulate many of my similar feelings so well. Also you saying "It’s inaccurate to say that I write criticism because I cannot make art, but it’s scarily true to say I don’t make art because criticism is more comfortable" was deeply relatable. Great piece!!
“Having good taste is not about what specifically a person likes or dislikes, or how eloquently they argue for their perspective. It is about having a breadth of possible lenses one can adopt to observe a text, and a knack for sensing which critical practice would be best suited for a given work, in a way that best bridges the gap between the critic and the art.”
I haven’t read a piece that feels like it’s read my mind like this in a good minute. The way you talk about being able to mine contradictions beyond a creator’s purview and how having a serious investment in your own thoughts means they are inherently limited is just perfect. I got started trying to write about film thoughtfully around the age you mentioned and everything you say here reflects what I’ve tried to incorporate into my ow ethos. Thank you!
Really great piece. "Art, even at its most propagandistic, does not work like fact-checking." Nice one. (I also appreciate you sharing this one outside the paywall, thanks for that!)
Great stuff. To me, one of the best feelings in the world is watching a film you first saw years ago and having a completely new view on it. Even if you "understood" the film the first time, your world (or taste, by this piece's definition) has opened up so much that watching it again is a wholly new experience.
your definition of taste is really refreshing, especially as that word is batted around more and more in the age of AI. everyone has taste but not everyone has *taste*
Thank you so much!!
this is just like the ending monologue of ratatouille
ijbol
Really beautiful piece Sam. I don't know if you feel this but I often, almost by accident, find myself double and triple caveating something, in the hope of staving off bad faith reactionism to, what should be uncontroversial critical insight. I've always been one for thinking that criticism and art are magnetic forces, depending on their position, repelling and attracting one another. After all, you could argue that all art is inherent a critique of the idea of art.
I particularly love this quote:
"...I really do mean it when I say good criticism is a love letter. The point of criticism is to love a work enough - even if you don’t like it, even if you hate it - to give it a fraction of your own creative energy, so that it may offer even more to the artist’s audience. A critic, when they succeed, can prompt thoughts that expand to other artwork, in other forms, both past and future. It is not about mastering or consuming or leveraging the creative output of an another in some objective logical proof. It does not end at the assertion of an idea. It begins there."
Wonderfully put. And thanks for writing the piece.
I’ve been trying to form a metaphor about individual pieces of art being like the shared cards in poker—there might be an obvious pair but the real value is matching it with your hand. Your taste, experience, etc.
I like the “lens” method of criticism because you get to see what pops up and match ideas that wouldn’t normally pair together.
Feel like this a subject I’ve been toiling over and tossing around in my head for quite a while now. Nice to see a piece crystallize the reality that “media literacy” squawkers, may also be intellectual grandstanders, and use it as an avenue for unequivocal decree on art (myself a guilty party). Thanks for the read Sam!
I really appreciate this thank u!!
Your work always strikes me as such a clear call for the rest of us to be more rigorous, but what sets this essay a part for me is "the point of criticism is to love a work enough - even if you don’t like it, even if you hate it - to give it a fraction of your own creative energy," which seems much harder to learn than the technical aspects of criticism.
Thank you so much!!
one of the best things i’ve ever read
So much here that is so accurate and you articulate many of my similar feelings so well. Also you saying "It’s inaccurate to say that I write criticism because I cannot make art, but it’s scarily true to say I don’t make art because criticism is more comfortable" was deeply relatable. Great piece!!
“Having good taste is not about what specifically a person likes or dislikes, or how eloquently they argue for their perspective. It is about having a breadth of possible lenses one can adopt to observe a text, and a knack for sensing which critical practice would be best suited for a given work, in a way that best bridges the gap between the critic and the art.”
I haven’t read a piece that feels like it’s read my mind like this in a good minute. The way you talk about being able to mine contradictions beyond a creator’s purview and how having a serious investment in your own thoughts means they are inherently limited is just perfect. I got started trying to write about film thoughtfully around the age you mentioned and everything you say here reflects what I’ve tried to incorporate into my ow ethos. Thank you!
Excellent essay.
Sam out here making Stuart Hall proud
This is quite literally too kind