Irreverent Truths
by Gorgon


Critics tend to be unkind, especially to each other, being by nature unkind, but then there’s Richard Lacayo fawning all over Michael Kimmelman in Time Magazine. Reviewing Kimmelman’s The Accidental Masterpiece in the Sept. 5, 2005, issue, Lacayo calls it "the work of a man who is both intellectually and physically intrepid, somebody who peregrinates between art-world topics and his own life experience, shedding light on the uses of suffering in the creative process or the sources of the urge to collect." Lacayo, who’s as poorly educated as Kimmelman, doesn’t realize that sharper light has already been shed on such subjects by brighter minds than Kimmelman’s. Kimmelman, like Lacayo, has a low-watt mind, doing less to illuminate art than the average graduate student’s master’s thesis. Both write criticism lite -- criticism with little or no intellectual nutrients and a good deal of artificial flavor.

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