Brian Sewell RIP
 

I don't normally care that much when famous people die, but this time I feel the word is a bit worse off today than it was yesterday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Sewell

Wow, yeah, RIP for sure.

What a man. RIP

Critics

''It is the critic’s duty to prick the balloon of vanity. Art criticism is a poor thing is this country, and critics are often no more than a parasitic or symbiotic element in a relationship with the Arts Council, the Establishment, or the market, all of which use critics but do not respect them, for they are the tools of the exposure and advertising necessary for commercial success. I try to stand apart.''

Evening Standard, 1991

I don't disagree with him but in fairness his career involved its own symbiotic relationship with the yBas, the Turner Prize, etc. They were good for him in providing him with an easy target that people were interested in reading about and he (in terms of the persona he cultivated) was perfect for them in allowing them to define what they were doing as 'the kind of art Brian Sewell hates.' You rarely read an article on Sewell without mention of the yBa's, and vice versa.

In fairness, his career also involved writing about art with a talent that had few rivals. You just have to skip through all the controversy to find a gifted man with a brilliant take on appreciating art. The media feuds and arrogant views of him interest me the least.

I agree. He was very good and obviously better than his quite caricatured media profile suggests. I was just taking issue with his quote. Something I always really liked about him was the sense that he really loved art, which I don't think is true of a lot of critics at the moment. His attacks on a lot of recent art felt like they came from a deeply held belief that art should and could be better than this. It's just a shame that a lot of his views were picked up by those who just needed a justification to attack contemporary art altogether. He wasn't anti contemporary art. Some of his writing on artists like Sean Scully was incredibly insightful, and deeply sympathetic. I've even heard people say he's anti modern art, which is completely absurd.

It would be an incredible shame if he was remembered for not liking fucking Damien Hirst or that other woman who does art.

True but we should maybe blame him for that if it happens. He was happy to push that angle when he could've been focusing on work that actually brought out the best in him. The last book of criticism he published emphasised the very kind of art he had the least interest in, and showed him at his most glib. He chose to waste his time on that stuff so we can't really complain if it ends up defining him.