Quirk

[holly_evolving]

Artistic criticism drives me nuts. If you want to understand why, click the link here:

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp01142011.shtml

See, what happened in that news post is what happens pretty often in artistic criticism - people who are not the artist say what they think the artist means, and get to have that taken as fact. But in most cases, the artist is not even alive to set the record straight as Milholland got to do here.

Here's the thing: you may think you know what Wilkie Collins meant. But unless you're getting it from something he said he meant in an interview or an essay or something, you're making it up. Extrapolation is just making it up with authority.

Comments

[brilligspoons.livejournal.com]

Do you mean this in regards to just crazy people like the guy Milholland wrote about, or are you including academics and critics who interpret works all the time?

[holly-evolving.livejournal.com]

Proper literary criticism makes me just as crazy. Academics and professional critics are fine UP UNTIL the point where they say, "the author meant this," when the author never said so. It's one thing to say, "based on historical context or some other content, I believe that the author means this here," and another thing entirely to say, "It's a fact that Van Gogh was thinking this at the time, and this is fact because of these colors," when there is no evidence from Van Gogh himself to support that statement. And critics I read in my lit courses DID THIS, and it upset me to no end.

[brilligspoons.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, the ones who put words in authors' or artists' mouths are really fucking awful.

I dunno, I was taught to be the opposite? All through college it was drilled into us that there HAD TO BE contextual evidence, etc. etc., for you to make a claim, and even then you had to explicitly say, "THIS IS CONJECTURE"; none of our professors ever let us say, "the author meant this" without back-up.

[holly-evolving.livejournal.com]

And see, that's fine with me. But when someone says, "Here's what Dali was trying to say," without any proof, that makes me nuts.

Viewing art, reading, hearing it, does not mean you own it. My writing is mine and always will be, and if I share it with people, that does not make it theirs. I am perhaps a bit nuts about this, but I've heard professors say the opposite and was horrified. That's a lot of why I don't share much of my own writing.