don't make "statements." make art.

AS FOR NEW YORKER critic Peter Schjeldahl's characterization of Chicago as a "receptor city" (Chicago Reader, November 29), what else is new? It was a New Yorker essayist, A.J. Liebling, who in the '50s penned a famously snotty work titled "Chicago: The Second City," painting this city as a dull, boorish backwater forever doomed to ape that glittering gem of cosmopolitan savvy on the Hudson. It's just more of the usual coastal egomania -- the malady of NYCers and LAngelinos who think everybody must want to be them. If Chicago's greatest export is talent, surely New York's greatest export is hype about New York. Maybe we should cede the "Windy City" moniker to them?

But Schjeldahl was right about this: "The major product coming out of art schools is artists' statements." After seeing one conceptual installation show several months ago I was moved to blog that "art needing lengthy explanation probably isn’t good art. ...Perhaps some of these folks should focus on writing statements full-time."

I say this from the perspective of a self-schooled artist (now "retired") and musician who taught myself drawing and piano and singing and composition because I loved doing those things and I wanted to be really good at them. Back when I was really into drawing, I did it purely from the love of creating. Want to make "statements"? Start a blog. Write letters to the editor.

Too much emphasis on theory, "concepts," and self-referential statements at the expense of actual craft or substance, threatens to turn art into onanistic self-parody and the Art World into the butt of jokes. Kudos to Schjeldahl for reminding the emperor, once again, that he really ought to cover up a bit.