The Art Critic Criticized

Monday Morning King of the Class War 2020. Acrylic on paper, 12 x 16"

Recently Charles Thomson, quiet painter from North London, posted a link to a review in The Sunday Times, about a painting exhibition at Saatchi Gallery, a millionaire’s mansion of speculative art stuff. It was a review by Waldemar Januszcak, the professional misanthrope and art critic. After reading, you might feel the pain empathetically, as I did, for other painters an ocean away, and cringe at the flippant arrogance of this poser aiming to please his non-creative betters (the Times editors) during their morning pastries and tea.
I refuse to sully my good taste and break down any critic’s article into an argument. Waldemar Januszczak is just another writer about art who does not make art. A well-oiled ball bearing in the propaganda machine, he helps the sickly skepticism of bloated westerners continue to run like clockwork. Waldemar looks at art, like any person does, and then writes cruelly about it for a paycheck.
No need to counter his subjectivity with my own, still, I feel the need to relegate his type A vanity to the most feared and dangerous monster lair in any creative person’s make-believe world.
What does Waldemar do for a career? He writes about other people’s creativity and path to self-realization. In a recent content rant for a newspaper seeking print ads from any prostituting organization that pays, he mocked the career choice of some painters because they did not live up to his highly subjective worldly view of art.
Strike one.
He searched for confirmation of his opinion at Saatchi Gallery, sent by a newspaper editorial board of non-painting millionaires to critique the aesthetic choices of a non-painting art collecting millionaire, Charles Saatchi.
Strike two.
And finally (although I wish several more strikes were allowed in this game), Waldemar’s mum and dad raised him to be a sadist.
Strike three.
A few rhetorical questions to follow, all with the answer of “no”.
Can a non-painting person ever catch even a chance glimpse into the creative impulses and results of a stranger who paints? Does the latter work a lifetime seeking opinion from strangers whom he or she does not like or love? Can posers like Waldemar reach the freedom of self liberation that so many humble and sensitive human beings on earth strive for? And finally, will an unhappy art critic love art enough to discontinue a professional life spent in mockery of those who seek freedom through art?
Waldemar is an adult counterpart of the six-year-old child who bullied me in the schoolyard. Practically every day, Brad Davies would find me before the bell rang, to declare it time for my morning punch. Brad was big and dumb. I don’t think he had any boxing training—just another nasty, spoiled child set up against a kid who appeared weaker because he knew how to be kind. I let Brad punch me. I just wanted to get it over with. After keeling over, I felt freed to finish the day any way I liked. Brad was just a nuisance, like a bath or bowel movement, to whatever private adventures my 6 year old passion would seek.
I should mention that, because of Brad, and the many other bullies to follow, I became a staunch protector and champion of the underdog. Reading Waldemar’s frightened distrust of painters and especially his wrong knowledge of their painting processes, just turned my visceral reactionary nodules up to high and hot red.
I wish instead of outright mocking their works of art, he congratulated the artists who were awarded an exhibition at Saatchi Gallery. Finally, after all these years, they got their shot at dishwasher salary success. Would not the Times’ subscribers have been better served if Waldemar championed the lucky painter’s wonderful breakthroughs—an especially rare occurrence in an art world grossly distorted by an upper echelon of market-setting frauds (i.e. corporate billionaires)? As a learned art critic, surely he must understand the humiliation, both public and private, that is daily suffered by human beings who “put themselves out there”? Waldemar would get this, right? I mean, with his extensive training in art history, he at least got a B in Private Struggle 101, yes?
Waldemar Januszczak is a non-creative bully, a sadist, like little Brad Davies. I picture him as a brother in some college fraternity practically hazing to death hopeful initiates. In art history class he snickers to his dumb buddies during the lecture on van Gogh. “What a loser!” he says. I suspect, had he an art critic’s freelance opportunity in 1880, Waldemar would have published a loaded pistol of criticism about van Gogh, calling out the poor man to quit painting and avoid all that unnecessary suffering.
My wife and I discussed Waldemar’s article. She didn’t want me to be too hard on him. She’s a very pretty woman, and as a young girl did not suffer a daily Brad Davies’ gut punch. Nor has she ever been insulted in a workaday world she inhabits replete with mutual politenesses. Oftentimes I remind her of a cruel world and those art critics who seek to undo much that healthy expression has to offer, in order to protect their own professional relevance.
I have very strong opinions, but unlike Waldemar, I am not a public twit. And, I can admit to all and sundry that I am an artist who doesn’t even like art very much. Likewise, as an artist I can promise you, and I’ll stake my “career” success on it, that Waldemar, not only does not like art, but he is determined to punch it in the gut until it cries. His betters, who sell everything from deep tread rubber tires, to highly absorbent paper towels, would not have it any other way. They have an agenda. A world of artists would make for absolutely rotten consumers of the trite and inane. Millionaires of no creativity, and their viable army of sycophant soldiers like Waldemar, subsist to make creative people question their own powers of creation. They keep good people guessing while the sad people buy more useless crap to make the dumb millionaires even richer. Owners of The Sunday Times not excluded.
It will end someday when masses of humanity cease to put faith into the media trolls of planet earth. Top down media is dying. The people have gotten smart to the old time censoring of realities. Likewise a million trolls collapse every second on the Internet. For Waldemar to remain relevant, he’ll have to paint a picture someday and have it hang in a parlor at a party, or posted on social media and criticized in universal cyberspace. Like the Stuckists do every day. Meanwhile he remains an art gossip, anyone’s mother or brother, with a subjective opinion about none of his business.
Lastly, during that same conversation, my wife agreed that I would continue to paint, even if I remained a dishwasher sharing the rent with other dishwashers for a flat on skid row. Every day, day after day, I would practice my art. To know if Waldemar can be a valuable tool to criticize artists who paint for reasons other than getting paid, we should ask if he would continue his career if nobody gave him two pence worth a shit.
Ha! The sadist without encouragement. Brad Davies ran home and cried into his pillow.
Artists of earth know very well that Waldemar is a coward. He would know it too if he dared some day to make his own oeuvre of paintings and show them to friends and some strangers. I shall take my wife’s advice, and be nice. May the art critic live a long, satisfied, myopic life, and die alone and soon forgotten even by his grandchildren. To the Saatchi painters he criticized for receiving career changing attention on a late autumn day, I give you all the following advice and encouragement:
Just keep painting. Because even if you’re a total ass like Waldemar Januszczak, at least the progeny of your line will remember you for as long as it takes plastic or oil to disintegrate.
¡Viva el Stuckism!