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			Mar/April 2009 At the end of Robin Rhode’s talk (he is a South African artist and professor of art at the University of North Carolina) at the Southbank in November, a secondary school teacher whose name and location I missed asked an antagonistic question; ìI use your work a lot in my classes and I’m disappointed to hear you talk about it so superficially. It seems it’s all about the image and there’s nothing behind it.î That’s not verbatim but it gives you a general idea; one of plaintive regret. After an hour of hearing the ‘artist’ ‘speak’ about his work I was overjoyed that someone else, who had the presence to criticise him to his face, was similarly enervated by a terrible description of what I thought was novel art. The girl I was attending this talk with was required to write an essay based on a quote by Rhode and how it related to his exhibition. A 2,500-word essay what’s more! I was involved in plenty of callow, chalk-based hi-jinx at art school but I doubt anyone was required to write an academic essay about them. I guarantee the paper she submitted would have shown more erudition, more flair and depth of artistic sensibility than Robin Rhode could ever muster if asked to analyse his own art. Maybe it’s a little irrelevant to compare an eighteen-year-old white, middle class public school girl with a thirty-year-old South African man in terms of their relative educational standards, but I feel morally obliged to clamour. I don’t think Rhode has a future in academia. As an individual he is not worthy of extended analysis. The artistic climate he emerged from (access the arts in S. Africa?) and his place within the discourse of performance art and street art (if he has one or not) are perhaps more pertinent topics for discussion. Faced with what seemed like a direct attack in the Q&A session, Rhode (and most of the sycophantic audience) shot the teacher a severe look and proceeded to tell him he had not understood the talk. End of... I’m sure, in a rational world, these people should be waking up in a cold sweat, leaning over to the curator of their show and saying ìI’m sorry, it’s shit, it’s all bullshit. I can’t live with the guilt, pull the exhibition.î When we were divided into topic classes I was fortunate I suppose not to be placed in the 21st Century Contemporary Art in London group. I simply can’t understand how someone can produce reasonable work – yet really nothing special – that is unable to be further elucidated due to a critical dearth of actual substance but still be lauded (included on the syllabus) to the same extent as furiously talented artists of yesteryear. I was particularly bemused at someone’s suggestion that the root of my dislike for artists like Robin Rhode was a lack of comprehension. On the contrary I understand it all too well. Since the beginning of term my writing style has been criticised for excessive floridity. I’m surprised to find my vocabulary and grammar being admonished; my thought being that academic books on art contain some of the most overly wrought and obfuscated sentences ever published. My favourite part of reading history of art is getting involved in discussion. I was pleased to find that our class time has an emphasis on student contribution that allows sometimes fresh (sometimes obtuse) ideas to be voiced to a knowledgeable tutor, although, as before, I have not had the chance to meet all the staff and perhaps I have been lucky with my selection so far. There is a problem with being effectively a whistle-blower at such an early point in my degree in that I can only comment on the establishment through inductive reasoning. I went to a lecture given by the performance artist and university lecturer (!) Andrea Fraser and at about the half-way point I had an epiphany. Her lecture was a performance itself! Of course, she was parodying the way contemporary artists nonchalantly spurt loads of half-remembered post-modern theories and how their rambling spiels overuse the prefix ‘the discourse of’ to pointless ends. But no, the talk concluded in earnest and it was plain to see that she was just a charlatan. The fact that she was doing this in the lecture theatre of my most prestigious university worries me slightly. Did she fall through the net? Was there a communication breakdown between departments and she was booked accidentally? I bloody well hope so. My favourite work this month is a drawing by Wyndham Lewis, Girl Reclining, which is currently on display in Room T1 in Tate Britain. The excessive, mechanical delineation of the girl’s body through the artist’s style is at odds with the humanity of the pose, a languorously twisted torso and upward-turned face. The extremities of the drawing push at the edges of the paper, emphasising her magnificent length and the face is insouciant; a portrait of an aloof beauty.


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	Fledgling • Mar/Apr 2009 • May/June 2009 • Jul/Aug 2009 • Nov/Dec 2009 • Jan/Feb 2010 • Mar/April 2010 All of this site is © The Jackdaw - a newsletter for the visual arts 2010. Drawings are by wood engraver Ian Stephens - contact him on: 01604 460457.