Judging Art

Yesterday, I read a record review in the Toronto NOW magazine that really annoyed me. I seldom trust other people's musical judgment enough to read record reviews, but this struck me as a particularly clueless assessment.

Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight
Man, these guys make it easy to keep on writing them off as colossal nu-metal/alt-rock assholes, especially since they continue to kick the gasping horses of those dying genres... a rehash of the same lame hiphop/metal/electro.... Perpetual dingleberry vocalist Chester Bennington can't move beyond the "My life is so painful, wahhhh" phase... Try as they might to sound different, Linkin Park still sound like they're stuck back in 00, which is where they should have stayed.

I beg to differ. I've been listening to rock music for quite a long time now (especially the heavier flavours), and for me, Linkin Park works; the dual vocalist attack, walls of catchy nu-metal guitar (no solos), and imaginative DJ-style beats and scratchings form a genuinely innovative and interesting musical synthesis. It's angry and passionate, it's energetic as hell, it sounds great live, and it's just the thing for exercise or housework! ;) *

The astonishingly well-read Neil Peart, in his book "Travelling Music", recounts his favourite criteria for assessing a work of art:
1. What was the artist trying to do?
2. How well did they do it?

It follows that a reviewer should understand the forms and the goals of the genre of the work they are reviewing. Or, as Peart says:

Early in my career I found it frustrating, and often hurtful, to be judged, misunderstood, and insulted by people who, if they were going to help me, ought to know more than I did about the music I wanted to make. Sadly, they did not.

Personally, I'd never offer an opinion on a teen diva or New Country album. Oh, I know how I'd probably feel about it: I'd despise it. But I don't know or care enough about the forms and goals of those genres to say anything of value about such works, and silence seems the only honest response. It appears to me that these considerations do not trouble our intrepid NOW music reviewer.

This might apply to "modern art" too. Who hasn't seen the "pile of bricks" sculpture in the Tate Gallery of Modern Art in London and thought: "that isn't art, it's crap! I could do that!" I certainly used to think such thoughts. But maybe I was wrong ... maybe art isn't just about virtuosity of technique (though in my opinion that certainly helps)... maybe there is a whole vocabulary and artistic tradition that I know nothing about, which that work is a faithful part of.

(or maybe there's no artistic tradition there at all, it's just a joke on the audience. Or maybe a work is so inept that the audience can see past their own inexperience and recognize it. Ahh, but is your reaction due to your own unfamiliarity or the artist's incompetence? Jeez, art criticism is tough work!)


* Note: I'm responding to the blanket dismissal of the band, whose work has been uniformly excellent up to this point. The new album, is, in fact, not very good IMHO.