(1)

Douglas:

Maybe you could focus on noted controversies: Tom Wolfe and the books he
wrote on the arts (the whole nexus of book and replies or reviews in
magazines and newspapers).

(Tom Wolfe: The painted word, New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975).

George
whiteseljsucc.jsu.edu

(2)

Hi Douglas:

For an analysis of art-writing and reviewing in the Australian context see
Helen Grace "Pavilions of the Ego: The Critic as Art Object" in Sunil
Gupta (ed.) Disputed Borders: An intervention in definitions of boundaries"
1993 Rivers Oram Press, London.

See also Joanna Mendhelson "An accidental art critic" in Katherine
Brisbane (ed.) Critical Perspectives: eight award winning arts critic, 1997
Currency Press, Sydney (this collection consists of reflections by critics
from various fields - visual arts, film, literature, theatre, concerts,
food,
recordings - on their profession and role as a critic writing for the
various
metropolitan newspapers in Australia).

Cheers,
Francis Maravillas
Francis.Maravillasuts.edu.au

(3)

I'd like to see an entire chapter devoted to how the television news media
-- in particular the national and local news on network stations --
approach modern trends in the visual arts. It would be difficult to obtain
tapes of these programs; but, if you could, you'll doubtlessly find in them
an unending barrage of ridicule and derision, and almost never a hint of
sympathetic or sensitive reporting. Why is this? Perhaps (as an hypothesis)
the News programs instinctively cater to the same audiences to which their
commercials are directed. The goal, I suggest, of this kind of criticism is
to validate the value system of the audience and to keep them as viewers.

Robert Baron
robertstudiolo.org