Bishop Vs Gillick

Bishop's Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, while not the best (actually a rather dull) article, was very brave. Taking the opposing view of a new and rather popular artistic phenomenon isn't an easy thing to do. I know Bishop's article was a muddled mess of journalistic style, bad references, and wrong information, but the goal of the article was to set up a foundation for theoretical discussion about Relational Aesthetics, to have both sides of the argument being represented. So maybe next time Claire wants to do this sort of thing she should consider commissioning another writer to do it for her, I still say props to Bishop for trying to initiate what potentially could have been a very interesting discussion.

Gillick's Letters and Responses, however, while very well written and astute kind of made him sound like a whiny little bitch boy. Yes Claire's article had wrong information in it that needed to be corrected, but I don't think such a personal attack was really necessary. Gillick's article reads a little like 'Claire said mean things about me and plus she's a big fat stupid head'. In the art world not everybody is going to see the same things in your work. And people are sometimes going to say things about your work that you had no intention of bringing up. But if you go around writing articles saying that your work is only about this this and this and that everybody else's views and opinions are WRONG, you're not going to make very many friends. Especially when your work is like a fridge, and the light only goes on when people open the door (and, I'm assuming, form their own opinions about the contents of said fridge.)