Ode on an English Poet

Some time ago I wrote a piece about the relationship between artists and critics. The piece went something like this: a lady journalist for the Guardian said that critics shouldn't write about their artist friends. I said she was full of shit, though to be fair, I wasn't quite so rude at the time. Here's an example why I think she's wrong.

Enter stage left, Ross Sutherland. Okay, so I wouldn't exactly call Ross a friend in the friendly sense of the word, but he's not quite an acquaintance either. We haven't had a drink together, but he performed at one of my SALON nights, I've got his number in my phone, and we're 'friends' on facebook. According to the laws of 21st century relations, that probably constitutes friendship.

The reason I so vehemently disagree with the lovely lady journalist is because sometimes your artist-type friends are really good at stuff and just because you're a critic doesn't mean you can't be objective about your own friends. Not only that, but you shouldn't be afraid of telling people how good stuff is, even is said stuff is penned and performed by people you have less than objective relations with. Obviously you want to support these people, but you also want to help the viewing public - to introduce them to something new and amazing.

I had a conversation with another friend at lunch last week about modernism and the decline of close-knit cultural circles. Even though neither of us are that keen on modernist philosophies, we agreed that it was a great time to be an artist: with your Peggy Guggenheims and your Gertrude Steins - your Eliots and Picassos and Hemingways and Pounds - this sort of cultural community that sometimes feels like it doesn't exist anymore. And if lady journo had her way, there wouldn't be any cultural community at all - for how can such a thing exist if critics and patrons are encouraged not to patronise (can you use this word in this sense anymore?) the people whose work they admire and respect.

But one glittering bonus that came out of putting on the SALON exhibition is that I saw a whole different side of London's artistic community. There are people making things happen - this man is a very good example - and making cross connections and doing and supporting and having a jolly good time. Ross is very much a part of this and his show reminded me that I shouldn't be so sourpussed about the golden ages of cultural history past - we're doing pretty fine with what we've got.

So. The kid's got talent. I've seen him read his poetry before - from this book - and he's great: most of his poetry is inordinately clever, and narrative driven, but rather surprisingly steeped in formalist technique. Like the best rules and restrictions always do, though, formalism frees Ross up to do all kinds of crazy stuff. His take on univocalism has me in stitches every time I hear it (though it isn't in the current show) and his N+7 (where you replace every noun/verb with the one seven places below it in the dictionary) reworking of the little red riding hood story turns out the hilariously inspired 'the liverish red-blooded riffraff hoo-ha'. But apart from the fact that Ross' poetry is more than good enough to stand on its own, the framing device offered by this show turns it into something altogether more poignant and provocative. What surprised me most of all is how moving the show is - not something I often experience at more straight-up poetry readings.

Ross does what many of the best artists do - in one of my creative writing courses at Uni, the instructor was always shouting at us to, 'write what you know!'* - and has taken episodes from his own sort of annus horribilis and turned them into a lesson for us all: our future is of our own making. Thankfully, he never bludgeons the lesson into his audience but allows it to creep neatly in via his artful time-capsule. One of my favourite bits of the show was when Ross explained how Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' inspired the creation of the time capsule - he managed to make Keats totally and hilariously relevant to an audience full of people who I'm pretty sure had never read any Keats in their life, let alone his ode to an urn. Any man who can do that is all right by me.

The point is critics should write about their artist friends because sometimes their artist friends are great. So go see The Three Stigmata of Pacman not because Ross is my friend, but because his show is great.

* funnily enough he sounded exactly like Wallace Shawn. There's a whole other story there, but I'll save that for another time

critics + artists = love

Is it better to create or critique? As someone very interested in both the creation of art as well as the criticism of it, I've always found it hard to swallow the bitter relationship between the two. Recently expressed in a very facile blog post on the Guardian's website, the writer insists that critics shouldn't befriend artists for the sake of maintaining perfect objectivity. She felt that she might be unable to write a negative review of one of her artist friends for fear of hurting their delicate feelings, as if artists were composed of nothing more than wispy layers of tissue paper.

All art, as well as criticism of it, is subjective. A truism perhaps, but neither has the final say which one could argue rests with the consumer of both. Artists who "can't handle" criticism are missing an important part of the process of art. The best and most respected critics, who care passionately about their subject, can function almost as patrons of artists, providing needed support, encouragement, and exposure. Certainly lazy or vicious critics can do much damage, but again, there is nothing inherently wrong with the concept of criticism.

Creators need critics to write about their work as much as critics need creators to produce works worth reviewing. So why shouldn't there be more intimate relationships between the two? I suppose it's partly because the consuming public enjoys buying into the myth of the artist as a fully-formed genius descended from space: the loners, the womanisers, the larger than life personalities - myths largely perpetuated by the critics themselves, for it nothing else, this myth sells.

Many artists hold negative views of critics because they feel, as Whistler famously did that, "none but an artist can be a competent critic." Perhaps, but artists and critics, and furthermore the public, all have different measures of success. Who knows why the public likes what it likes, critics are trying to look at the bigger picture, understanding the artist in relation to himself, his culture, and the larger canon as well as the artist's mastery of his material. For argument's sake, let's say most artists are concerned with their craft, with the technical details of it: the metre of poetry, the painterly technique, etc. Essentially, artists admire other artists who have perfected their craft, who display a mastery lacking in more amateur craftsmen. While any good critic will of course appreciate these skills, they are also considering the more banal issues of enjoyment and emotional response.

It isn't enough for an artist to say that he hates critics because critics don't understand the art making process, a ridiculous claim. Artists cannot have such fragile egos that any subjective negative criticism drives them to despair. Critics have been proved wrong in the past by changes in public taste and they shall no doubt be proved wrong in the future. Certainly, positive criticism can help a fledgling artist establish a career, but the assumption that a critic owes any artist anything other than a carefully considered opinion is ludicrous. Note I stress carefully considered opinion as too often critics indulge their own egos for the sake of shock-factor or publicity.

But to stress that critics and artists are natural enemies makes no sense to me. These two should be allies against the indolent and more and more culturally ignorant public as well as government budget makers who continually attempt to slash funding for arts programmes in this country. To say that critics are failed artists is a mistake, for what is criticism if not a creative exercise. Not that artists cannot and should not be critics, for on the contrary, some of our best literary critics are also some of our best writers. I suppose if anything, this then is my point. Instead of widening the gap between the two, banning artists and critics from being Facebook friends (that's actually what the Guardian blog writer suggests), we ought to encourage a more fruitful relationship between the two.