It's a really interesting piece but I feel the need to question the premise that there's a "wrong" or "right" with art criticism, as if the purpose of a critique is to reveal to the reader the true state of an artwork — as opposed to just being an expression of an opinion.
I realize that "getting it wrong" could be a shorthand for "being so different from the historical majority opinion" but the piece doesn't seem to approach things that way.
It's significant in a way because I think over time majority opinions have a way of stifling minority perspectives on things that are most popularly seen as "great art". I don't mean to sound contrarian, I'm just suggesting that maybe consensus about a given work isn't quite what it seems all the time, that there are social pressures and dynamics at play that sometimes distort how people might consciously consider a piece versus how they might react to it completely independently without labels.
I also think it points to other things, like art perception being contextually dependent. People change and their tastes change — it doesn't mean one perspective is invalid, just that it was occuring in a different time.
Of course, sometimes people just don't fully appreciate something because it's new and are looking at it with a certain lack of imagination. But I also sometimes think we look back at the past as if it were preordained, more so than how we see the future.
I realize that "getting it wrong" could be a shorthand for "being so different from the historical majority opinion" but the piece doesn't seem to approach things that way.
It's significant in a way because I think over time majority opinions have a way of stifling minority perspectives on things that are most popularly seen as "great art". I don't mean to sound contrarian, I'm just suggesting that maybe consensus about a given work isn't quite what it seems all the time, that there are social pressures and dynamics at play that sometimes distort how people might consciously consider a piece versus how they might react to it completely independently without labels.
I also think it points to other things, like art perception being contextually dependent. People change and their tastes change — it doesn't mean one perspective is invalid, just that it was occuring in a different time.
Of course, sometimes people just don't fully appreciate something because it's new and are looking at it with a certain lack of imagination. But I also sometimes think we look back at the past as if it were preordained, more so than how we see the future.