Still thinking on structure.

These are two mediocre photos from my recent snaps. The flower might be nice because of its very delicate and papery stance against the thorns below. I wish the plastic bag photo was in better focus - and I do have one like that, but this has the shadow and I like the unreality of it. I can't see an image like this without thinking of American Beauty, not a bad thing.

Just listened to another Frieze podcast, this one on art criticism: Empathy and Criticality, how should one respond to being affected by art?
Tough listening but invigorating too. The critics stuck fast to their position as newspaper reviewers/writers and eschewed any kind of ideology or objectivity in what they do. They came across as quite arrogant and incredibly self-assured (always a bit suspicious), but if they are paid to have opinions then I'm not surprised.

It was quite refreshing to think about opinion arising from having seen a lot of art and nothing more - no intention in the approach to the art, no looking for something.

How do we look at art? What are we looking for?

There was stuff though that I didn't agree with, like, continuing the idea that looking at art is decipherment - 'working it out'. I have problems with this model. And also the idea that criticism is translation. There may be an element of that in criticism but it reflects badly on the art. If there's a problem then it is in how we look, not that art needs translating for us to get something from it.

Funny, I was reading something yesterday about this, hang on, ok, on signandsight.com in a review of Notation, calculation and form in the arts. They say: "There are images which are tricky to slot into the index of representation. Perhaps because they consist of numbers or writing systems and as such are intended not so much to demonstrate as to be deciphered". (1) So there is a divide between decipherment and demonstration? Not sure that this is always true.