I'm not even kidding, people. It gets. us. talking. about. art.

Twitter's all on fire with responses this morning—responses from viewers, and writers, and critics, and artists. If you're not following, say, cmonstah, or hyperallergic, you really should start.

I lambasted critic Jerry Saltz in my "review" of the show this morning. Then, I read his explanation of why he took the gig and how he feels about it (recommended to me by another art person you should be following on Twitter, jeffweinstein).

Jerry responded to my post very graciously, applauding the joke I made on him.

I was moved to comment in response:

Jerry,

I hope you do feel the love. I'm prepared to succumb to the illogic of this experiment—how can I not? Art is my team, period. (Also, as an aside: I like what you wrote about potentially risking your sex life with your critic wife in order to do this show.)

I'm particularly sensitive to your every move on the show since I can't help putting myself in your shoes as I watch. Should the lone critic stand for nuance or flash? If there's too much nuance, don't people just stop listening, anyway? (Slash—doesn't it get edited down, anyway?)

I will share with you my somewhat embarrassing, dorky thought process during last night's portrait exercise:

"Wait—a portrait is not always an exercise in 'capturing inner essence.' What about outer essence? What if the essence of the artist is a hundred times more interesting than the essence of the subject? Or vice versa? What if the artist and the subject sit there and contemplate each other and just get nowhere? Can a good portrait still come out of that? Is a great portrait necessarily a true portrait?"
ETCzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

This thought process, clearly, would not be the stuff of entertaining television. But maybe it would be the stuff of a good after-conversation, and so it goes.

Therefore I will cheer and I will jeer. I will root for your sex life.

Best as always,
Jen

If you would like to have this after-conversation here, go for it in the comments.

*The first time around I forgot to report the awesome detail that last night's episode was titled "Self-Reflexive." 1990s postmo(der)nsters are rolling in their meta-graves!