Air Guitar part 1
In Dave Hickey’s “Air guitar” I found a personal journey through the landscape of an art critic. The author made it fun to try and understand the larger concepts of art criticism that were hard to follow in our other readings. Hickey’s critique of government in the chapter “Shining hours/Forgiving Rhythm” gave an interesting insight into how our society blindly accepts what the government decides is “real” for us.
“By saying the sky is blue, I am inferring that whatever you have just said is too fucking obvious to qualify as human utterance. If, on the other hand, you receive a memorandum from the government officially stating that the sky is blue, you will shrug, but you will believe it, since the government labels things, then counts them, ands averages them out.”(38-39) He goes on to talk about are expectation to feel painlessness in 20th century America when not so long ago we lived in a state of constant pain, violence and depression. I agree with his ideas about society’s change to the “pleasure cult” but I also think that though people are more likely to not expect to have pain they still carry the cultural signifiers of feeling pain most of the time. Weather it be emotional or physical are society seems to not have progressed further in aiding people away from this hurt but instead sedating it with bought items and addictive foods.
In “Pontormo’s rainbow” I liked his objective look at what we consider “natural” and “fake.” Looking at a sunset behind Las Vegas lights could easily make one or the other appear fake. Or it could see like two natural things coming together to create a kaleidoscope of color. There is an idea that man made means fake, I liked questioning my own assumption that a sunset in the desert would be so much better without the Las Vegas skyline.
Margaritte Knezek
