THE TUMBLING PSYCHIC JOY OF NOW

Bad Objects #1

A LITTLE NOTE FILLED WITH MANY RHETORICAL QUESTIONS

We are always being told that now is not the time. Or, if now is the time, then it’s a bad time. Since starting this newsletter, I’ve wanted to produce a more regular column to appear alongside the longform pieces I’ve written either specifically for Bad Objects or shared from elsewhere. But it’s always been a bad time. Personally, of course, but also broadly, ambiently. The first of many questions: has there ever been a better time for criticism, but a worse time for art criticism? You might blame the drably regressive character of so much contemporary art, but isn’t it still gratifying to read someone like Joanna Biggs on Sally Rooney, or A.S. Hamrah on Deadpool & Wolverine? Both writers are, in some sense, workaday or regular critics, supported by established publications, not major stars, yet their incisive grappling with the mediocrities of their own chosen forms – the novel or the movies – knows no particular analogue in visual …