- Yesterday infamous painter Zak Smith went on a bit of a Twitter rant outlying 67 tips for art critics. Zak is good people, a great artist and has some really interesting thoughts on art and art criticism. He’s a successful fine artist and I’m sure he has an MFA from Yale so if you care about that sort of thing you might think he’s not completely talking out of his ass. As someone who’s love of art was destroyed by a combination of art school and disgust at the contemporary art scene I really enjoyed reading his Twitter manifesto. Here are Zak’s points in their entirety. Some of the Tweets have been edited for better organization, but not for content.
You will not believe how much this needs to happen. The art scene is in dire need of another revolution, one that rejects the pretentious vomit some of these artists write in their conceited dissertations. It is so short sighted when sitting in a class learning about art history, and the different art revolutions and how the institutions were generally the cause of stifled creativity and inaccessible ideologies, AND YET that is exactly what's happening with all art schools right now, forcing creative talent to distill some bullshit observational diatribe onto a document that somehow validates who they are as an artist and their work.6. Stop asking for artist’s statements. If the statement makes you like the art more, it sucks and so do you.