The Mirror Displaced: Artists Writing on Art

Portrait of Tom McGlynn, pencil on paper by Phong H. Bui. Based on a photo by Maya McGlynn. Not all artists consider themselves writers too, let alone critics. The poet Alice Notley, in reviewing a new collection of poems by Edwin Denby in the St. Mark’s Poetry Project newsletter of 1976, prefaced her review (not quite a disclaimer nor a benediction) by stating, “Poets can’t write criticism because what they understand about a poet they adore is what they themselves do or would, it is visceral—death to analyze? critics can’t write criticism because they never are knowing.” Notley succinctly expresses the passion of a reader/writer as not disinterested , opposite the un-knowing objectivity of the critic. It’s this lack of disinterest that makes her an accurate reader of Denby. As a passionate reader/writer she has skin in the game, which allows for an intimate play of critical precision. Most visual artists I know are quite well read, and many poets and writers I’m familiar with see more museum and gallery shows than some of my painter friends. The abidance of such clichéd distinctions as the inarticulate painter and the writer solely caught up in language has never jived with what I’ve experienced in reality, which is usually a vast commingling of knowledge beyond such romantically-limited job descriptions. As a child I constantly made drawings but also read promiscuously. My primary aha! moment in reading, after voraciously consuming a polyglot mix of non-fiction (mostly picture) books of world history and the natural sciences, happened with Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris— my first experience with the novel form. I was about 9 or 10 when I picked it up, mostly, I’m sure, because of its promise as a horror story, but was pleasantly surprised to find myself “hearing” the voice of the writer while I read. I may have tried to relate this epiphany to my mother (whose book it was I had borrowed) at the time, I don’t recall that as clearly, but what I’ll never forget is the incantatory power of that meta-cognitive voice: it’s presence, its “sound,” the […]

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