#5 Things You Should Read this Week

The third entry in #5 Things You Should Read This Week, written by Daisy Gillam.

The intersection between literature and art, reading and consumption, the internet and AI; this week contains a series of pieces on our cultural relationship to art! From a piece about our inability to understand black art to the labour tools of AI, each article taps into kinds of often unspoken issues, both historic or contemporary, about how we understand the art we consume.

'America Doesn’t Know How to Read the Work of Black Writers' by Tajja Isen

From her book Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service, Tajja Isen’s essay on Black writing establishes the often uncomfortable point that the work of Black writers and the culture around it is not afforded the same wide scale of interpretation that the work of white writers is. Instead of being placed into the category of what is associated with art, she explores the way in which Black art is treated and valued- no matter how personal- for what it can teach white people about racism. Writing ‘people still look to The Bluest Eye as a guide for unlearning racism rather than aesthetic achievement…the surge of antiracist reading list was yet another reminder that the work of Black artists get read, as Morrison puts it, as sociology, as tolerance’, the essay is a must-read for reading as a white person in both understanding and reshaping the relationship to Black art and writers as a serious art from rather than what you as a white consumer can learn from it.

'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' By Linda Nochlin

One of the arguably most famous essays on gender bias in art, Linda Nochlin essay was one of the first to properly address the age-old sentiment that ‘there have been no great women artists because women are incapable of greatness’. The essay, a response to the question a male gallerist gave to her, explores the myth of the male genius, addresses the intersectional prejudice and the racial bias that comes with the exclusion of women from the art industry, the treatments of the concepts of femininity and masculinity in art historically and the insufficient attention given to women artists that are claimed to not exist. There are a thousand articles that address these issues, but Nochlin’s long-form article takes extra time to delve into the chronological history of the art movement; she is conversational, persuasive and profound.

'Choosing To Walk' by Rayne Fisher-Quann

As the AI debate continues to circle, and the problem of accessible online tools such as ChatGPT and Sudowrite becomes more of a problem, this essay gets to the crux of why the AI conversation is so complicated in ways that are often difficult to articulate. Rather than acting as a sole criticism for the use of AI, it lays out the reasoning for why so AI has become so popular; referring to it as a ‘miracle of capitalism’ for its existence out of the capitalist structure of unethical labour and wages. Writing about how we’re ‘trained to optimize for the most efficient path to reward or compensation’, it walks the perfect line between empathy for the kind of freedom that AI brings, the difficulty of writing both as a personal project and one under and advocates for the importance to retain the genuine nature of art through arguing for the value of what you can learn and gain through the creative act of as part of the process itself. 

'A Way With Words: Lauren Elkin' by Millie Walton

In an interview, writer and art critic Lauren Elkin explores the conception and writing of her book Art Monsters: Unruly Feminist Bodies in Art. The interview is not only a great stepping stone into Elkin’s book- where she explores the history of women’s art, contemporary female artists, the links between political empowerment and art the importance of ugliness in art -but also indicates the importance of reading about the perspective of the writer, particularly the woman writer, and how that becomes lost especially in an age of overconsumption and efficiency. She refers to the artists and writers who inspired her; such as Woolf and Carole Schneeman, the course of events that lead her to the writing of the novel, such as the MeToo and delves into the writing process behind a political novel.

'oh so you’re a thought daughter now? should i call joan didion?' by Sarah Cucchiara 

As the internet continues to grow its influence, articles about the internet’s influence on the cultural consumption of art become more and more important. This one delves into the aestheticization tied to the act of art and writing, and its inextricable ties to the surveillance culture on the internet; the continual sharing of writing has prevented people from understanding art in a genuine way. She writes ‘consumerism will be the death of self-discovery necessary to determine one’s personal tastes and distinct interests’; the act of reading has become a performance for the purpose of other viewing what we consume, rather than something to be viewed as valuable as a piece of art in of itself. She explores the aesthetics at the price of individuality, the relationship between intellectualism and desirability and advocates for reshaping the way we view our own relationship to art consumption as an individual action for a wider purpose rather than an identity.